Thoughts on progress and approaching assignments in the future

I’ve finally started the coursework for part five, probably about a month behind schedule but it’s far from disastrous as I have plenty of time. Moving my work premises was more time and energy consuming than I’d anticipated. It seems that Assignment One “Beginnings and Endings” was strangely prophetic. A lot has happened in my life, (beyond moving work) but whilst painful, it was all ‘pending’ and I think that was why I chose the subject of impermanence as I think deep down I knew, change was coming.

In a few weeks, I’ll hopefully be off to the Lake district to stay in a little cottage by myself, do some walking and photography. My aim is to re-shoot Assignment Two. What I’ve realised, is that my original idea for A2 was not conducive to the location and so the two were always at odds with each other. Where I’m staying in the Lake district is on the edge of a magical piece of woodland and I hope to invoke that sense of the fairytale, magical realm. Being so close by as well means I have the option to shoot at either end of the day and get the ‘twilight’ effect I’d wanted.

It’s given me food for thought in terms of how I approach an assignment. In the future, I want to go through that process of research and test shots or testing out a location in a way that works together a bit better. I always struggle for time to fit in the work for this course. In the past, I’ve sometimes been out and shot the material for an assignment and then written up some research to try to fit. Sometimes I’ve got away with it but often I feel I’m stretching things and it feels a bit muddled.

My trips to Holkham beach for Assignment Five have been worthwhile. There’s some material I like but I want to allow it to develop. Whilst I’ve done plenty of reading around liminal spaces, I’ve not written anything formally. So that needs to be done before the next trip. I’ve booked myself a caravan for a few nights in October to (hopefully) shoot A5. The light and the weather will be quite different to August and I’m conscious I will have to be flexible in my approach and respond to the conditions.

I’m getting very comfortable now in using filters but I think I will probably swap lenses. The full frame 35mm lens I was using is very soft around the edges at larger apertures. Partly yes, it can kind of work but, not really. I find myself bothered by it. I wanted to open up the aperture to it’s maximum. I have another 35mm lens, albeit a DX cropped which from what I remember is much better at f1.8 so I will sacrifice the larger view for a more consistent image and learn my lesson in buying lenses!