A Zoom meeting organised by Mark, one of my fellow students was held on Friday 21st May. There were five other students on the call. This was first time since I first started the course that I have joined a student get together, so all of the participants were new to me.
I was quite nervous as I know they have met before, but I needn’t have been, they were a really interesting group and have set up a shared google drop box for us to share work we’d like to discuss.
Looking at and discussing the exercises and assignments with others who are doing the same course was really interesting. Everyone was really relaxed and constructive in their feedback which felt really supportive and helpful. It was really good to hear peoples experience about the course and in particular those who like me are or have struggled with part 2. I hope I was able to reassure them that once you work through it, parts 3 and 4 are most interesting and engaging. Well at least I think so.
We looked at exercises from Part 2, through to Assignments 2, 3 & 4. I really enjoyed talking about others had approached these and the different styles and outcomes achieved. It made me go back and look at how I’d completed them, which was a good reminder of how the course has developed.
I hadn’t put anything in the shared drive, but I felt relaxed enough to share my 4th Assignment, which I had just submitted to my tutor for feedback. As it’s quite a personal piece, I wasn’t sure how it would be perceived, but the feedback was really positive and I was really pleased that they got what I was trying to achieve. It was good to hear which images they thought worked and which were a bit more ambiguous. I will be interested to see if my tutor has the same thoughts. My idea of creating a book with the final images was well received and I was encouraged to do that, so I might try start that ready to complete once I have finalised the project.
One common thought of the students was that a lot of the photographers we are asked to research have taken years to complete their projects and have had time and mental headspace to develop and construct their ideas. We felt that the new time constraints of the modules and the turnaround time for Assignments makes that a very difficult thing to achieve. As I have had an extension and need to finish by 7th August, I am conscious of that even more.
To combat that a bit, I have started looking at the Assignment requirements right at the start of a new Part. In part 4 that helped me get started, but it change and develop as I read the course material and thought about how I could incorporate it into the work.
We spoke for two and half hours, in which time, everyone was really engaged and contributed to the conversation, which was great. Mark is going to set up another meeting in a month’s time and I would very much like to attend.
Mark also mentioned a ‘rest of the world’ group, which sounds like a really diverse and interesting group, so I may also try and attend one of their meetings as well.