Assignment 5: Assignment Notes

Assignment 5: Assignment Notes

The following is a submission to accompany my images and summarises my approach to the assignment and my reflections on it. Many of the points I discuss here are considered in more depth in my learning log at https://ap231photography.com/.

The Brief

The brief for this assignment included “..Take a series of 10 photographs of any subject exploring the theme ‘Photography is Simple’. Each photograph should be a unique view; in other words, it should contain some new information..” The course notes also suggest that “you should just feel comfortable with your subject… it should say something about you”

In these notes I will explore how I have attempted to answer that brief.

My Subject

The images of the “Peak District Landscape” I found for Exercise 4.4, portray the landscape of the moors as an idealised wilderness with little reference to the influence of man in managing the landscape as I experience it living close by. The images include stereotypical features and make no reference to the mining and quarrying, the collection of drinking water and grouse shooting for which the moors are managed.

What I intended the images to show are features within the landscape which indicate these activities. In this way I hoped to better represent my own experience of the moorland landscape.

“Photography is Simple”

I attempted to address the theme of simplicity by making the images when I went walking on the hills near my home. I went out not with the specific aim of making the images but to experience the environment in a walk. I tried to capture subjects as I came across them and the resulting images are therefore my own reaction to the landscape.

In this way the process of making the images was more spontaneous than the creation of the images for other assignments. I used a variety of equipment, depending on what I could carry for the length of the walk planned. I also had little idea what I would come across and had to react as I saw something.

My Influences

On reflection I had very few overtly conscious influences. However I was trying to depict the landscape as I experience it and not a stylised version. Thus in this respect a main influence is the work of Fay Godwin; particularly her series “Our Forbidden Land” showing man-made structures in the landscape, and a less conventionally attractive side of the British landscape. Similarly the work of photographers such as Robert Adams, and others in the exhibition “New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape” show the landscape as it is, not how we might imagine it.

Reflections

One of the main learning points I have drawn from this assignment, is not so much about photography itself, but about how I look at the world around me. I think I started this process with the first assignment in this course, which made me look at where I live and how that is a product of its history and changes of use over years.

It is this process of looking at how the parts of the environment create the whole which has begun to influence me, and, I hope, my work. Those parts of the environment which build up into the whole may be due to changes in use over time, as was the case in my “Square Mile” assignment; or its use simultaneously for different functions, as is the case with these present images.

Another point on which I have reflected is that my assignment notes for this assignment are much shorter and less wordy than for any of the other assignments. My initial reaction to this is that I have not written enough or considered enough research and background reading. While this may well be the case, I am very conscious that I was trying to make this “Simple” and by so doing make my images more spontaneous and automatic, drawing on the influences and experience I have gained over this course in a more subconscious way. I think this relates to my concern which I raised with my tutor that my work is not so visually strong and does not always fully express what I intend as well as I can express it in words. My previous assignments I have had a lot of ideas which I have expressed in writing, and this is not reflected in the quality of the final images – I think best exemplified by “The Decisive Moment”.

In the end I am very pleased with these final images, I think they do indeed show what I intended and I would hope that I am moving towards better representing my ideas visually rather than verbally.