two four one

My tutor I'm sure will feel exceptionally lucky tomorrow when he opens his parcel and finds not one, but two assignments from me.  Well, lucky or more likely gobsmacked having not had a sniff of an assignment since September. Like buses eh...

So he has assignments two and four from me.  Three was done in September, that was the critical essay.  So I haven't submitted any photos since about July...hmmm, doesn't look good does it?!?  Yes, but, no but, guvnor I can explain.....here comes the ramblings of not very-believable excuses.

Well, I can't really cite personal reasons or technical issues or time constraints or illness...so why then?? I'm normally very organised and adhere to deadlines pretty well.  I think I'm struggling to find the right balance between quality and time constraints.  There is a gaping hole between where I want to be and where I'm at...so I delay, try to improve, read a bit more or try a different approach...and so on. The problem with this approach is that there really is no end point.  You don't arrive at a destination, so you can keep on going indefinitely, well until yesterday.

Assignment Four first
Having admitted the above I do think street photography is not something you can rush, particularly around here, an area not particularly heavily populated. Since September I have learnt so much about the street photography genre and I am pleased with my progress on this.  Still a long way to go, but over the past six months I am starting to get what could resemble a bijou portfolio of street photography images that improves as I weed out the weakest on an ongoing basis. I will post up this assignment as well as the near-misses here shortly. However, closure on this assignment is not the terminus of my street photography journey.

Assignment Two now
Well, hands-up on this one.  I tried two or three different approaches that I just was not happy with, didn't excite me and my heart just wasn't in.  For heaven's sake the remit was broad enough - Interactions.  Shouldn't be too difficult, but it wasn't gripping me - don't ask me why. Well eventually, I did have an idea and my submission has sort of morphed the brief in to something of greater value for my own personal learning.  So out came the large format camera and a sort of social experiment within which interactions would occur. I've entitled the project 'occupation mum', which gives you a clue about the theme.  I'm full of self-doubt about the concept, the quality of the images and whether the approach is too simplistic. Again, I will go in to more detail on this in another post, but as the images are on film and my scanner doesn't seem to be talking to my mac I can't even upload low-res images at the moment.

So there we are...street photography that is impulsive, fast, quick-witted to the slow, methodical, pre-meditated, almost meditative photography that derives from using a large format camera...I would say two ends of the spectrum in many ways.  So my learning has been varied and by undertaking the two alongside each other, one has provided a very good antidote for the other.  I am expressing no preference for one over the other as yet as I could name all manner of difficulties derived from both types of photography.

Here again...we've all been there...I await, a little anxious for the comments of my tutor...