Assignment 4. Tutor Feedback.

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Original Reflection

For this assignment I would have liked to re look at exercise 4.2: Artificial light, using a high street as I really like the work of Sato Shintaro. The bright colours and graphic novel like feel in his ‘Night Light’ collection was something I found inspiring. I would like to go out and photograph artificial lights on the high street but, unfortunately, with a 6 month old baby, I can’t see me having the opportunity to do that with an early bed time routine, an unpredictable morning wake up and later sunsets at the moment. For that reason I continued my research in to artificial light to find a different source of inspiration.

In my research I came across Todd Hido’s “Homes at Night” collection. I liked how these photographs captured the normality of a light in a house, but at the same time, made you question what was happening inside.  I wanted to use that inspiration to create my own series, in which I captured homes from my home.

I feel my photographs work as a set, as they have a feel of the neighbourhood they were taken in and have similar tones and lighting. However, if I were to do this again, with the freedom to just go out whenever I wanted, I would expand this to more of a ‘one square mile’ type of set. I think that would allow me to capture more variety in my work with a larger area of different photo opportunities, whilst still keeping the neighbourhood type feel to the set.

In my work for exercise 4.2, I photographed things inside my house. It was quite difficult to find the time to go outdoors to take photographs for part 4. For that reason, I used candles and lamps, indoors, to create the artificial light. This was also new to me as I’d never photographed within my house before. I always felt that I needed an outdoor setting to get a good photograph. Perhaps because of the genre of photography I liked but also through an undiscovered creativity to find an interesting frame within a household setting.

This assignment has been a challenge for me. It’s one I thought I would enjoy when starting the exercises, particularly when looking at the work of Shintaro. However, with the restrictions of being a new mom, and also still being in lockdown, and the pressure of a looming deadline, I felt the need to rush to get something that works for this brief. Although I’m happy enough with the photographs I have, I’m disappointed with my work as a whole. I don’t feel I’ve had the time (with or without the deadline) to do what I really wanted to for this assignment. The last month has been a struggle and I don’t feel I’ve had enough free time to take photographs. That is, therefore, the main reason for my set being homes from my home, as I found I could get a little time here and there on an evening to capture what I could see from my house.

From this, I’ve learnt that I won’t always be entirely happy with my work, and perhaps I won’t always be able to submit the perfect set. But, I can use that to figure out new ways of working, and allow myself to critique work which I’m not entirely happy with. Sometimes, deadlines & obstacles will force a different result from what I’ve imagined / hoped I’d be submitting. There is still the option to re work the assignment if it really isn’t good enough, and that is OK. It’s not really the way I like to work, but if I can work to make something better, I will.

Thoughts following Tutor Feedback

The images submitted for assignment 4 were the images I was least happy with throughout this course so far. I felt I had not got the time within my personal life to create the set I really wanted. Due to Covid-19 restrictions and my own restrictions with a really young baby, I found it really difficult to go out to photograph this assignment. For that reason I was pleasantly surprised to find such positive feedback from my tutor.

When considering how my photographs were captured, I was pleased to see my tutor thought they worked well for this assignment. With the fact that I took them indoors – through windows – I am glad they worked to give the unsettling type of feeling I was hoping to bring my from influence found in the Todd Hido collection.

My error within the write up of this assignment was in not discussing the image quality. I did not include in my reflection that I had taken these images through the windows of my home. Perhaps this is something I should have looked in to more and used it to my advantage to add to the lockdown type feel to these images. I wanted to show an eerie set of images. After reading the feedback, I could have discussed the noise, and the halo in image Three. I could have let these things add to the isolated feeling of being stuck at home, looking out, rather than ignoring them as an issue.

This feedback has really shown me I need to look at my photographs and not only acknowledge the imperfections, but embrace them! Not all images come out as we expect, and not all photo opportunities are as we want or plan them to be. This is something which is so great about photography (also a little stressful for someone who likes to plan). We have to take the shots as they are. For that reason, this set should not be one I am unhappy with, they should be ones I was not expecting and should have looked at the positive within them too. Looking back at assignment 4, there are things I would have changed but at the time it was the best I could achieve with these limitations and my write up could have expressed the reasoning / results better. This is something I will take forward with me.

My tutor also expressed that my reflective writing is an “asset” which I am very proud of. I find that writing reflectively now helps me focus on what I did well and what I want to improve. At the start of this course I didn’t feel that way, so it is something I have worked on and I am glad it has shown to be worthwhile.

Within part 4, I really struggled with the studio type lighting. I did not have the right things in the house to create what I wanted / thought I was being asked to do. This was not made easier by retailers not being open, meaning I could not go out to buy props as I normally would have done. Looking back, I would have tried this exercise with less natural light in the room. I feel that could have given me a better set of images. Artificial light and night time shooting is definitely something I am keen to explore in the future.