Assignment Five – Applying the Techniques of Illustration and Narrative

The fifth and final assignment in the Open College of the Arts Art of Photography course is ‘Applying the Techniques of Illustration and Narrative’.  This assignment is designed to draw on all the techniques and approaches developed over the previous four assignments and the course participant is required to prepare the assignment in the form of a picture essay for a magazine with one cover image and up to 12 images inside.  Each image, according to the course notes (p180) should have a caption and a short text linking images can be used. The assignment follows the section below dealing with Assessment Criteria and Reflection.

Assessment Criteria and Reflection

At Level 4 of the OCA programmes the emphasis is on the acquisition of skills and good working habits including the keeping of learning logs .  Additionally, Level 4 students should be informing themselves about others’ work by reading and viewing exhibitions.  The learning logs associated with this assignment, which is itself being submitted as a blog, are all found at ‘adivinglifeblog.wordpress.com’.  There are four types of blog; exercises associated with projects, reflections, book reviews and exhibition and photographer reviews. In general terms, therefore, the requirements of the programme are  being met.  The specific assessment criteria for Level 4 programmes, together with my reflection of how this assignment measures against them, are given below.

The Demonstration of Technical and Visual Skills – materials, techniques,observational skills, visual awareness, design and compositional skills. 

The images captured for these exercises and assignments  have involved still life, street and nighttime photography, a range of locations, lighting conditions and subjects that, in turn, have required the use of the full range of camera settings and techniques including slow and fast shutter speeds, narrow and wide apertures, changes in ISO and the use of a tripod.   Additionally, post image processing has involved conversion from RAW, cropping, perspective correction and levels adjustments.   The work to date therefore has demonstrated a wide range of technical skills.

The Quality of Outcome; content, application of knowledge, presentation of work in a coherent manner, discernment, conceptualisation of thoughts, communication of ideas.

This assignment represents the culmination of the skills and knowledge gained in the course to date. The application of design principles, the management of lighting conditions and colour and, in particular, the conscious use of illustration and narration signify and coherent approach to image making.  The use of regular reflection, based on self generated insights and tutor feedback has ensured that my development has maintained momentum throughout the course. The work has been structured appropriately and narrated to ensure that lines of thought within the work are clear.

The Demonstration of Creativity; imagination, invention, development of a personal voice.

A key underpinning context to this final submission was the feedback from Assignment Four, a reflection on which is here.  The essence of the feedback was that while I had exhibited a strong and robust capacity to engage with the material and make images as part of the exercises I needed to work to use those techniques to build a body of work with a theme or an identified outcome.  This in turn required engagement with the project at an emotional as well as a technical level.  The advice to think about why rather than how I was making an image was important.  This insight triggered a review of the image making that I have engaged in that met both technical and emotional requirements.  Once this review was completed I had gained greater insight into the images that met both criteria and, very interestingly, those images were the ones that critics, including the tutor, noted as being ones that  held the viewer.  This insight has proved particularly important in helping to understand what my ‘voice’ might be.  Although much more work is needed I have feel I have achieved something of a breakththrough.

In addition to the course notes I have found the following texts of particular benefit in the preparation of this assignment.

Context and Narrative (2011). Maria Short. AVA Publishing. 175pp.  The book is reviewed here.

Composition (2012). 2^nd Edition. David Prakel. Ava Publishing. 192pp. The book is reviewed here.

Context; reflection, research, critical thinking (learning log).

Because I have a research background I am used to the need for reflection and critical thinking and am happy that the blogs in which the exercises, book reviews, exhibition reviews and reflections are covered are providing me with appropriate learning opportunities.

The Assignment

Dockland to Playground – A Celebration

All Shiny and New – The Samuel Beckett Bridge and National Exhibition Centre

Where the Grand Canal Meets the River Liffey

What was a rat infested complex of basins and warehouses around where the Grand Canal meets the River Liffey has been almost completely transformed into an upmarket, celebrity occupied, playground with the Bord Gais Energy Theatre, the Samuel Beckett Bridge and the National Exhibition Centre as jewels in the crown of this part of Dublin.

Digging Down to Build Up

The quays upon which this part of Dublin has been built were engineered by men working in trying conditions.   In metal boxes – caissons – into which compressed air was pumped to keep out the water they dug the bases for foundations beneath the waters of the Liffey with the ever present risk of Caisson’s Disease – the bends.

Reminders of a Past

Glimpses of a Future

Present and Past

Into the mid 1990’s this part of Dublin was a dangerous, run down complex of warehouses, bond stores  and early bars servicing the docker communities.

Keeping Warm in the Present

Keeping Warm in the Past

Where the citizens of this area now warm themselves by jogging and dining alfresco with blanket wraparounds the citizens in the past worked loading and unloading barges that made their way into the south Midlands along the Grand Canal.  The horses that towed the barges and made the deliveries around Dublin towing carts had to be tied up somewhere.

Playground

Entertainment

The Daniel Liebskind designed Bord Gais Energy Theatre is the centre piece of the ‘Grand Canal Plaza’ and now offers lunchtime and evening entertainment.  In 1975 I worked on the reconstruction of a warehouse in the Grand Canal Dock and lunchtime entertainment was usually the retrieval of the body of some poor soul who had either fallen in drunk or been pushed into one of the canal basins.  The area has definitely changed for the better.

Assignment Four – Feedback Reflection

Assignment Four of the Open College of the Arts Art of Photography Module deals with light and its use and challenges in photography.  The assignment and underpinning exercises required a structured and technical approach to the management of light both outdoors and in a studio situation.  From the outset the assignment and exercises appealed to my technical background and the dredging up of long forgotten physics topics such as Raleigh Scattering.  And therein lay an area for development – astutely observed by the feedback from my Tutor; ‘You have demonstrated a good technical approach and your work on this is strong’.   I will come back to this below.

The overall feedback from the tutor was that the exploration of the exercises was robust and comprehensive and that there was real engagement with the technical practice. Interestingly the tutor observed that some of the images used in the exercises were more visually engaging than the exercises used in the assignment.  I remember at the time of working on the assignment images being very engaged from a technical perspective and being very satisfied that I had been able to previsualise what I wanted to achieve and then execute my vision.  However,  I  also remembered that this was technical rather than emotional satisfaction.  I kept being reminded of an earlier observation by the tutor that I should be thinking about why rather than how I make images.  The final set of observations in the feedback dealt directly with this question; use the techniques to develop messages and not as end in themselves;  be conscious that the exercises lend themselves to just taking an image to demonstrate a technical approach but the assignment can be a body of work with a theme or identified outcome.

Having received the feedback I realized that my plans for the final assignment would have to be revised because it had become obvious that where I had some emotional rather than technical engagement with images they resonated more deeply than where images where engagement was solely technical.  This posed a problem because while I had some vague idea about the types of images to which I had an emotional attachment and/or a need to make my knowledge was not sufficient to help me make choices about what  I wanted to work on.  As a result I spent some time going back over my images both for the course and not to see if patterns emerged.  This proved a rewarding exercise because it became clear for both my underwater and overwater photography that certain broad types of image engaged me more than others. Whilst this exercise of working out my ‘voice’ is ongoing I am in a much better position now to move on.  A related point is that using the Peter Honey classification of types of learning I am a ‘pragmatist’ meaning that my default is to learn only if it meets a particular purpose.  The drawback to this approach is that less time is devoted to reflection and this may be a block to growth and development.

Review: Photography; A Critical Introduction. 4th Edn. Ed. Liz Wells

Photography: A Critical Introduction (2009) 4^th Edition, edited by Liz Wells and published by Routledge is a  core text on the Open College of the Arts Art of Photography module.  The focus in the text is an exploration of key debates in photographic theory and their placement in their social and political contexts.   The individual chapters cover key issues in photographic history, documentary photography and photojournalism, personal photography, photography and the body, commodity culture and photography, photography as art and the digital age.  Each of the chapters is written by different authors including Derrek Price, Liz Wells, Patricia Holland, Michelle Henning, Anandi Ramamurthy and Martin Lister.

The use of multiple authors with different styles and approaches could have led to a disjointed text.  However, the use of a common format for each chapter including sidebar referencing f texts mentioned with summaries of the text in the side bar, a comprehensive glossary, chapter summaries and case studies means that there is a coherence to the text.

As a new student to photography the significance of many topics will only emerge over time.  However, there were some immediate learning points, particularly in the chapters on photography as art and the commodity culture. Specifically, the transition in photography from picture taking to picture making as discussed in the chapter on photography as art and the use of images in commodity culture in the chapter dealing with advertising photography.