Progress Update 6 February 2017

Following my previous progress update in November 2016 I have been extremely busy, producing a new draft of my photo book after my tutor’s ‘edit’ of the 37 images submitted for my 4^th assignment had reduced them to just 9.5 (don’t ask about the half!). After a lot of hard work and research and a tiny bit of inspiration I submitted the new draft, complete this time with just 25 images, to my tutor on ‘deadline day’ (26 January 2017) as my submission for course Assignment 5. Thankfully this time the text and images met with general approval and, for the first time in 15 months, I feel that the end of the project is in sight! Of course there is still much work to do and there is also still time for me to introduce fresh ideas, replace some of the less successful images and maybe introduce one or two additional ones, but time is now on my side as I still intend to submit for assessment in September 2017. The following bullets provide a brief chronological overview of how the project has progressed between receiving my tutor’s report for Assignment 4 and submitting my work for Assignment 5:

·         I modified and rearranged the text, returning to a roughly chronological account of my relationship with my mother during her final years, adding a new section of text and then splitting the text into 20 sections, to be accompanied by 20 images.

·         I modified and harmonised the ‘9.5’ images remaining from the Assignment 4 work, to produce 10 images that I associated with 10 passages of text. These images, originally produced in a mixture of ‘landscape’ and ‘portrait’ formats, were (with some difficulty) all converted into square format images and produced in colour, 50% desaturated and mono- versions. One further image from Assignment 4 was retained, but radically altered.

·         I produced 9 new images, harmonising them with those already produced, in order to give me the required set of 20 images for the photo book. This work, which was spread over an intense period of 5 weeks on either side of Christmas, was the most difficult part of the project and involved, amongst other things, looking through my entire collection of mounted slides from 1993 onwards, picking out, projecting and photographing a handful that were of relevance to the project. All the photographic work was carried out in and around my house. I will discuss some of the influences during the production of the new images in a separate post.

·         I produced a new ‘emotions’ graph/image in (2:1) landscape format, to be incorporated across two pages of the photo book.

·         I wrote two passages of text and produced two new accompanying images on the general subject of clinical depression, to be incorporated into the photo book at a point roughly half way through the book.

·         I combined text and images in a Word document to produce a crude draft of the photo book for submission for Assignment 5.

Future Plans

Following a recent tutorial discussion with my tutor and the receipt of his Assignment 5 report I have formulated the following plan of action for the coming months:

1.       Look through every one of the 25 images, making modifications where necessary. The modifications will range from making minor ‘tweaks’ to building up the image from scratch again (all the images are composites) and in a couple of cases I will probably replace the image. My tutor has suggested changes to a few images and I am not happy with one or two others. Nevertheless, this work should not prove to be too arduous.

2.       Continue to experiment and absorb influences in order to look for ‘better’ replacement images and perhaps some new ones, which could be incorporated into the photo book by splitting some of the text.

3.       Produce a suitable cover image(s).

4.       Make minor modifications to the text, look at fonts and font sizes etc. Spend time looking at photo books in order to decide what I want to have for my final submission.

5.       I plan to have completed (1) – (4) by the end of March 2017. I will then use what I have in order to produce a ‘first iteration’ photo book, using a conventional supplier such as ‘Blurb’, in April 2017. I will also get prints of all my images.

6.       What happens next remains to be decided. I have until 1 July to submit the work for my 6^th and final assignment, and I anticipate (hopefully just) one further iteration of the book before I submit for assessment. Time frames may change, but at least I now feel confident that I can complete the course work in good time.