Assignment Five feedback

The summary includes: 

"Your level of reflection and research given the circumstances you produced the work under are both thorough and extremely engaging, successfully marrying your interests in history, human geography and the arts. The research evident within your writing demonstrate a fluidity of thought, of which the act of photographing becomes part of the research process. The technical execution of this body of work does not yet reflect the research and thoughts behind it with such fluidity, but I suspect this is something you know already and see more of the longer photographic journey you are on."

That is a reasonable summary; I undertook this module because it allowed me to synthesize several interests, not just photography. Perhaps a little more around what is meant by the technical execution would help. My concern was that the images were considered not very good. I queried this in email correspondence, with reply as follows:

"No that’s not what I meant, so good job you asked!.....What I was getting at was that I think you’re doing yourself a dis-service if you put yourself down in terms of not wanting to produce something other than the typical landscape image. I know you understand how to communicate on a deeper level within your writing/research, I think at present, the visuals aren’t as strong as the written work. I was trying to raise your aspirations! Does that make sense?"

And in a subsequent email:

"I think you’re doing exceptionally well given the circumstances and that getting better (photographically speaking) is a long old journey - we’re all on it!"

That puts one's mind at rest. It is one thing to say 'nice commentary, shame about the images', another to say that 'the images are fine but perhaps do not match the strength of of the commentary' It seems that the latter is the way to read the comments, whereas my concern was that it was the former. I certainly have no issue with that conclusion. I love the writing and the analysis; to a degree the photography is an adjunct to that but one that could be developed further. This is perhaps an example where the written basis of feedback does not allow sufficiently for the 'flavour' of comments to be expressed.

The subliminal part of the assignment appears to 'work best'.  I would agree with that, and it could have been developed as the sole (or main) object of the exercise, combined with Tutor's idea that the note image could be used to 'script an entire walk'. I would contend that the set as presented does at least partially achieve that; providing a sense of the surreal within a broader remit of words within the landscape, and a contrast in the way language is used within the landscape.

Tutor adds points about lack of cohesion. Was unsure what this referred to and received following on querying:

"The lack of cohesion, as I see it, is that the images are strong singular images that communicate in one way, whilst the text sits next to it in a way that doesn’t quite feel cohesive."

The point about a lot of the text was to enrich the experience - to extend the viewer's appreciation of what he or she is looking at, to add context and information. It is a subjective point.


Tutor comments that text works well, albeit the text was half hidden in the Flickr presentation. That is an irritating feature of Flickr. I tried several approaches unsuccessfully - the viewer can use zoom function to mitigate - but I could find no way of incorporating all the image with all the narrative for some images. The crop required to view the text is minimal, and hopefully does not spoil the effect. Tutor says the text 'works well...strong and well written' but then wonders if 'it's too much to take in alongside the images'. All I can say is that the comments add to the context and it is not unusual for substantial text to be placed near images for amplification (open almost any page at random of Alexander's Perspectives on Place for example). 
 
There is a further comment wondering whether I looked at alternative formats, which made me think again. I had supplied prints and a Flickr presentation but an alternative could have been images with narrative on the prints - similar to a book format. This is mocked up on this link, and works quite well. Tutor also mentions evidencing a slideshow done in past. An example is one I prepared in respect of a cycling trip to Vietnam.


More generally, there is recognition of the multi disciplinary approach brought to this module. That is pleasing as I have tried to knot together human geography; an awareness of landscape and its amazing variety; and an interest in walking and journeys. Perhaps the 'technical' belies this to a degree, but the different dimensions I use hopefully more than compensate.. I enjoyed doing the Assignment for this reason.