Introductory Post

The following is based on my email to tutor having decided to enrol for this course:

I have completed TAOP, People & Place and Understanding Visual Culture in Part 1. Have taken a year out due to serious illness of one of our sons, Mark (see his blog on https://wrestlingmelanoma.wordpress.com/). This is an ongoing situation and I have been in contact with Steph about need to delay enrolment and/or get additional time if required.

Given that I would lose my 120 credits and that Mark is stable presently and well able to look after himself, I have decided to take the plunge and enrol for Landscape. I have started the course using the online Chapter 1 and like the new style of being ABOUT as well as DOING. A lot of the course will I think chime well with what I studied on UVC.

My particular interests in this course are:

• relating some of the concepts of Lacan, Barthes and others to the course; the concept of what is reality in particular interests me and has relevance to Landscape imagery;

• looking at the role of post processing - why do we do it? Does it enhance the beauty or the sublime? I take the not always accepted view that PP now is an integral part of the photographic process and that  reasonable expertise in PP is as important as that required for in camera techniques;

• integrating with another of my interests: walking National Trails. I like the variety and the integration of nature with human geography; the physical and the artificial. Hinkley C site is as interesting as Exmoor AONB, for example. I would like to use Trail photographs as main project material.

So far, I have been entirely digital, not printed a single photograph or piece of writing in any module, relying solely on blogs. I think it may be a requirement of this course to produce some printed images.

The course promises to be interesting  and will be a great opportunity to marry my photography with my interest in walking; to incorporate concepts from UVC; and to review new techniques and ideas in Landscape photography.