Week 9 Independant Reflection

by LEN Coursework

This week has gone in a blink as the process of production kicks in. The exhibition took time at the start of the week. The image set is now fixed and has gone to print. Link . I met with the gallery space owner who is very excited about the show and is using it to advertise his own space. It is an internet and learning centre. This means he is pushing the show for me. Posters have been designed and will be placed in strategic places. A couple of friends are helping with putting the show up. They wanted me to do lots more work but I explained I get no marks for this work and need to now focus attention on my marked deliverables. Great reaction from them was ‘just tell us what to do and we will do it.’

I am now focussing on the WIP Portfolio and my Oral presentation. Had a great session with Cemre on Thursday. Following this I laid out around 30 images on my sitting room floor for an afternoon and evening while watching cricket and then a movie. Patterns emerged and I played with different arrangements. I then carried out a ruthless cull and sequencing to create a narrative to the 15 images below. I will now leave these on the floor, get more eyes on them and add or subtract to make the submission as strong as it can be by August 19th.

Preparing the Oral has helped with the above process with the Portfolio. I have also found my own CRJ extremely useful in putting the Oral together. The frustrating part has been learning how to use Adobe Rush to make a movie for the oral. This is a tool I need so I must go through the pain.

Next week is more of the same. Prints for the exhibition will be ready on Monday. For the portfolio I want to ask what story is it telling and if that is the story I want to tell. Does it need some words? What is missing?

I need to keep focussed on production and delivery now. However, I feel an itch to go further with my project. I am excited about where it might go and am keen to explore ways of expressing The Truth & Beauty of me with me both in images and not in images. Although my exhibition is about an abandoned village the work was created out of my own emotions when I was in the village. This connection interests me.

Onwards!

Categories: Coursework, Project Development, Surfaces and Strategies

LEN

I am a Photographer. As well as taking many photographs I am currently studying for an MA in Photography at Falmouth University. I will direct my attention through the lens of my camera for the next couple of years and see what shows up. I see a photograph as a little bit of magic capturing a moment in time. If successful it surprises and engages your emotions. It tells a story about the wonders of being alive or tells us what we need to change to make it a better world to live in. That is enough for me to get going and then like walking a 1000 miles, which I did across the UK in 2010, or walking 200 miles across Cyprus, which I did in November last year, it is one step at a time.

I was a writer. The title of my unpublished book was ‘You Would Have Done The Same.' It is about a successful guy in love with his wife who lets her die when he discovers her in the process of committing suicide. The title gives a clue as to what I think you would have done. The book is 200 pages long. I found it cathartic to write it but after two years of work and reviewing with agents decided it probably needed another 2000 hours to get the whole book up to the standard of some of the pages. Writing is great but it is a lot of sitting down so I decided to get out and walk, play tennis, play bridge, go birding, watch football at Nottingham Forest, Arsenal and Valencia and anywhere else if I can, meditate, cook and eat. I was a writer who has so far failed to become an author.
I was a young man who loved Mathematics and thoroughly enjoyed getting a BSc at Liverpool University. While there I went often to Anfield and the Philharmonic Hall. I was all set on doing a PhD until I went for interview practice at BP and got seduced by the excitement of an International business career. BP was a great adventure building trading teams and businesses in London, Antwerp, Cleveland Ohio and Singapore. Fabulous people and some great challenges and also very hard work, constant jet lag and lots of fun along the way. I married Karen, my stunning wife, and had the most amazing time with her and our three boys Alex, Tom and Dan. She has multiple sclerosis and we have taken on many challenges together but somehow keep creating a new normal against the horrors thrown our way. She is the love of my life.

After BP I decided to coach senior executives and quickly realized I had a lot to learn
about what makes people tick. I had a fantastic 18 months on the International Programme of the Cleveland Gestalt Institute. A great faculty and a
wonderful group of people on the programme. We studied and worked in Dingle, Singapore, Holland, Cape Town and
Lisbon. This also got me interested in the way we think and make decisions so I studied for an MSc in Psychology atUniversity College London in 2010. The
Masters was in Cognitive and Decision Sciences and I found it fascinating what
we do know but also how much we don’t know about how we think and make
decisions.

I loved coaching and making a difference. I got a number of people to hear themselves, remove some of their own chains and free up the way they thought about the world. I remain fascinated by how people react to and engage with the world. My Masters thesis was why do two people given the same information make different decisions? Put simply, it is because each of us are unique in the way we are constructed.

Since returning from Singapore I found English winters tough so moved to Spain where I now live. The people are lovely, the scenery amazing, food delicious and the sun shines all the time. Almost.

All of these experiences will feed in to my time now as a Photographer. Three motivations I am lucky to have are enthusiasm, curiosity and a continuous interest in learning. All the time I look forward to meeting old friends and making new friends and experiencing this wonderful life together.