It’s finished!

For the last year, I’ve been working on a project about the Lincolnshire Meridian.

Here’s the story – last October (gosh a year ago now), I completed my ARPS with a project on Fine Art, and the Lincolnshire Landscape.  I’d also been a member of a project orientated group (Lincolnshire Image Makers) and quite separately, another group of four, who decided that we would each make a new project which we could then present as a talk to be used at camera clubs, and elsewhere.

Some of you may understand the feeling of relief after completing something challenging like the ARPS – but after the results were in, and I’d passed, there was a certain feeling of ‘what shall I do now?’.

My project was to take the Meridian line through the county, and record interesting facts and pictures, and hopefully learn a bit on the way.  I didn’t think it would take so long.

12 months later, and the job is pretty much done.  It involved innumerable trips out – lots of research, and a trip to Greenwich to complete the section on John Harrison (Clockmaker, and calculator of Longitude) and his clocks.

There’s still one bit to get – Barrow (up near the Humber Bridge) is having a statue of Harrison made and installed in their market place.  I was hoping to get this to complete the project, but as of the time of writing, it’s not taken place.  The statue is being made – they seem to have all the funding in place, but it’s not been installed.

My first booking to give the talk is on September 30th – at my home camera club Cleethorpes – and I hope that they’ll give me a friendly reception as I bumble my way through a first reading.

I’m sort of excited and nervous at the same time.

Three days after that – I’m to give it again, at another club – further afield.  I’m not naming names in case it all goes AWOL !

Anyway – the Meridian project is done, apart from a few tweaks now, and it’s a relief.

I’m not entirely sure what the next project will be yet, but we have plans to do a joint one about either the Lincolnshire coastline, or the Fitties, or something else.

In the meantime, I need to sort something just for me again.

Practice Makes Perfect?

I’ve been reading a lot this week about photography, and how we improve.  Practice is obviously the answer, but it is always?

When you go to a concert, you hear the singer, the pianist – you see paintings in a gallery, the prints on a wall.  To get this good, the artist must practice every day – to get out of form before a concert is unheard of (well maybe not always! but you get the idea)…  So when you look at images, you are seeing the end result of weeks, and maybe years of work, and practice.

I know it’s nearly impossible to get out and shoot every day, but what other ways are there to keep your finger on the button?  I think that talking about image making, talking about photography generally is practice – as is looking at other people’s work – visiting galleries – sharing images.  Even looking at images on Instagram, Facebook or even Google, is practice.  Every time you look at someone elses work, you are honing your own skills, mostly indirectly.

So, how do you practice with your camera ?  Well, there are a number of ways – you COULD just walk out the house and shoot anything and everything you see.  Is that practice, or just shooting for the sake of it?  Or, you could go on a workshop, and immerse yourself in the photographic life for a week, absorb, and create… that seems good to me… or you could set yourself a project!

A strategy is needed, and I think that the best way of learning, of moving on, is by ‘finishing’ things; and by finish, I mean print, or otherwise share your work with the wider world.  I prefer the former.  A book, a print to hang in your home, a set of images to a theme.  This makes it harder to do, but also offers a challenge to the photographer.

On the other hand, by sharing your images online, you leave yourself open to critique by others.  I’m intrigued by photographers (and I use the term loosely), who post images on Social Media, but who won’t accept that sometimes, not everyone will like them.  I like to ask people why they took an image, or why they processed it in the way they did.  The answers vary, but on ocassion, they take great offence that I had even the temerity to ask.  Why is this?

Back to projects.

As I said in a previous blog post, I used to be a one image producer.  I didn’t do projects, or even panels of three.  It was one shot, or nothing.  Since I became a member of the Linconshire Image Makers though, my whole ideal and attitude changed.  It’s taken months of talk, and work, (and nagging), but finally I’m seeing not only the results of the discipline, but I think my whole attitude to photography and art has seen a dynamic shift, and because I’m questioning my own work, I’m starting to question other people’s work too.

Within the group, it’s simple.  This is what we meet up for – we look at each others work, and work of the major photographers, and ask why this, why that, why this image, and not that one.  Outside the group, well, as I said, it’s not so easy.

I’m considering a Social Media blackout for a month or so – I need to get my head around where I want to go with my imagery, and I need to plan a strategy to get me through the winter, and maybe well into next year.  My website needs an overhaul (it’s long overdue), and I want to allow myself time to experiment more.  I’ve run through the multiple exposure sets, and I won’t stop doing these – they give me immense pleasure,  but I want to also run a set of images on a ‘what if’ basis….  What if I shot everything out of focus?  What if I did everything with a dutch tilt? (a type of camera shot where the camera is set at an angle), What if I photographed…………… (fill in the blank as you desire).  Maybe just 6 images – maybe a project of just one image, maybe 15 or 20.  What if I set myself a project to complete 100 prints in a twelve month period? (that might not happen)……. but what if it did….?

As someone said to me only today – “it’s only a photo”….. and when I questioned why denegrate it to “only a photo”…… I was met with silence….. and there the matter rested.