With submission for assessment
due in the second half of September and holidays having taken up most of the
second half of July and the first half of August I have now entered a frenetic
period of activity in order to complete the course work in time.
·
Following on from my tutor’s comments and my own
observations I have produced a revised photo book (see below). No further work
will be carried out in this area.
·
I have made a final decision on which
images/prints to submit for my major project portfolio and am getting some “trial”
exhibition prints produced by two companies (see below).
·
Following on from the changes to my portfolio
images I have made some minor changes to the multimedia presentation, which is
now complete and ready for submission.
Photo Book
My tutor kindly offered to
comment on the first draft of my photo book. His very helpful suggestions,
which related both to the design of the book and to the image content, combined
with my own reflections on having received the book from the printers (“Blurb”),
encouraged me to make revisions to the style and content of the book. One or
two of the images were not “up to scratch” and this allowed me to make a final
choice regarding which images/prints to include in my final portfolio.
Having made modifications to the
text and images, a revised photo book was printed by “Blurb”: the front cover is
reproduced below.
Front cover of my revised photo book (against a black background)
All the portfolio images are
incorporated into the book in (7x5) landscape format and a few additional
images use this format too. The result is a rather orthodox and clinical feel
to the book’s design. However, I wanted to show consistency in the different sections of the submission (images/prints, multimedia, photo book). One “letterbox”
and one square format image are included in the book: neither of these is
included in the portfolio. I’m happy now that the photo book represents a fair
overview of my project work which, in conjunction with the multimedia
presentation, will provide necessary insight into why and how I carried out the
project. The photo book will be submitted for assessment without further
modification and I will purchase further copies for personal use and possibly
to accompany a future exhibition.
Portfolio Images and Prints
I finished practical work in
July. All the portfolio images for section 1 had been chosen by then, as had
most of the images for section 2. I had hoped to complete the portfolio with a
strong image of a bird in natural habitat, (such as a reed bed) on a nature
reserve. Unfortunately, for various reasons, a suitable image could not be
produced or reproduced. This necessitated a slight re-ordering of the final few
images and the inclusion of a photograph of wild swans being fed at Welney
Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust reserve. These changes are reflected in the second
photo book. One advantage of using the Welney image is that it provides a link
between the two sections of the portfolio and reinforces the direct connection
between people and birds that was evident in the first section.
I spent a lot of time researching
how to go about producing a print portfolio. This involved producing A4 prints
of a variety of my images on standard matt and glossy and “fine art” A4 papers,
using my own printer. My tutor had a look at some of these prints. It became
clear that, for the subject matter involved, using specialised fine art paper
would not offer a significant advantage over “standard” archival print paper.
Indeed, some of the best results on my (Epson) printer were achieved using “Permajet”
inkjet gloss (271gsm) (this is my favoured combination for competition prints).
After further research I chose to have the portfolio images printed on C-type
gloss archival paper, costing about £10.00 per print. At the time of writing I
am getting a small selection of prints produced by two separate companies.
Assuming that the results are satisfactory I will choose one company to print
the remaining images in early September.
Multimedia Presentation
I have made slight changes to the
multimedia presentation, in order to incorporate the final portfolio image set.
The videos and accompanying sound remain unaltered. My only remaining challenge
here will be to ensure that the 238Mb presentation copies satisfactorily to
disc, so that the assessors can watch it! A screen grab of the opening slide
from the presentation is shown below.
Multimedia
Presentation: Opening Slide
Future Work
I have updated my logbook/blog
with details of exhibition reviews, status reports etc. and plan no further
work here. In addition to putting my print portfolio together I will write two
more blog posts / logbook entries, one describing how the major project has
developed and changed since its inception and the second discussing what I have
learnt during the two years that I have been working on the course. Finally
comes all the indexing and organising that occurs with every assessment submission……
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