Revisiting 'Traces of my Dad' reflecting on the key issues..

Re reading my own reflection of this piece of work together with my tutor's feedback, I can see a number of issues that I want to address over the next few weeks before I prepare  my coursework for assessment:

Punctum v stadium - looking again at the final images

Can a 'constant'look be achieved? 
Can a more  constant look be achieved and would this be more desirable?


Did the Photobook work as a vehicle for the concept underpinning this project?
What worked in terms of design and quality of production - what could be improved? Do I want to have another 'go' at creating a photobook? 

Tutor report (1) on Assignment 5 - my initial response

Here's my tutor's feedback with my initial response in red...

 
Feedback on assignment 5

Most of what I want to say in general is in the annotations/notes that I have added to the documents you sent in and these are good, they really do help to understand what you were setting out to do, how you went about it and what you think of the result.

You have done some very thorough research which is evidenced by the good reading list you have included for this assignment.  You seem to have all the key texts and it is good to see a student engaging well with the theoretical side of the subject.  This practice should stand you in good stead for the rest of your degree.

I mentioned that I am not a fan of gloss for books (in fact I am not a great fan of high gloss at all!); in general I like to see some sheen on images, perhaps semi gloss, lustre or semi matt, as I think it tends to give the tonal range the best chance.  Gloss has a tendency to have reflections and I find matt rather lacking in tonal range but sometimes it is important to give the images a textural feel (and look of course)  I also think that glossy books just look cheap!

I'm not surprised here as my own view after getting the photo book back from the printer was that I should have opted for a more matt finish ( see my reflective account posted on 29 April).

I think that you need to think about a constant ‘look’ for the images in the book.  If you are trying to create an old photos look then you need to think about what old colour photos look like and whether you want your images to look as though they have been on a frame on the piano for years (faded some of the colours disappearing and so on) or whether you are trying to make them look as though they have just been taken but at some time in the past.  The other approach is to clearly separate the old (and ‘old) images from the new ones that are portraying a memory.

Fair comment...my initial attempts to try one kind of 'look' for every subject suggested that this would not work across all subjects but hindsight is a marvellous  thing..and I need to revisit this again
.

For me some of the treatment you have applied post production, colour rendering, grain and so on, detract from the quality of the image (both technically and emotionally) both in the book and the separate image that you have included.

Definitely worth revisiting my approach here ..

Also you should look at the different ways of cutting out a subject from its background.  In my experience different subjects work better using different techniques, but which ever you use try to make the edges as un-obvious as possible by feathering or whatever.

Interesting  as I did try some feathering but  a new technique for me and I need to go back and try this approach again.

You might want to think about making a new set of prints or at least preparing a new set of digital images (depending on how you are planning on submitting you work for assessment) that address these points.

I have decided to revisit my approach here and produce a new set of digital images. I did not like the glossy photo book and think my concept worth a second attempt using a semi matt finish.

You have Camera Lucida in you reading so you should think about what Barth says about punctum vs stadium in the image and how this relates to your images. I think; if only because of the way Barthes has written about it, his context for the explanation; the sort of subject that you project is dealing with makes these things particularly pertinent.  For example how do these concepts show in the Nearing Retirement image?

Hmmm...I need to go back to Barthes'  'Camera Lucida' ..

For me, and I get the feeling for you too, the final book is not a successful as the research and preparation work might deserve.  I think you could fix this by thinking about the overall ‘look’ of the images as I discuss above and perhaps by including either a foreword or afterword that give at least some of the background to the project.  I don’t think that a viewer coming cold to the images would realise what is going on but given a bit of a clue the images could give rise to all sorts of ideas and emotions in them.  You should at least discuss all this in your log/blog as trying to fix things that don’t quite go as right as you thought they would is the way we learn and is central to the purpose of these modules.  Credit is given for critical assessment, proposed remedies, and suggested ways forward.

Learning Logs/Critical essays

I mentioned Harvard referencing.  It is not vital that you use it for informal log/blog entries but you must use it for formal essays and critical reviews.  I have given links to help you in this for the future.

I have now researched this referencing system and from now on will use it in my blog and also for any written work if providing references or a bibliography. As a trial run, I have revised my Reflective Account as best I could given that my approach to recording detail such as the chapter / page number was not as consistent as it should have been. Won't happen again!

I think that the content of your blog is fine and makes an interesting read.  You might want to give it the final once over to check that it is as easy as possible for the assessors to find what they will want to see.  The index should be clear and there should be the minimum of clicks to find anything.

Looking for light Jane Bown

Came across reference in the Guardian ( 27 April 2014 ) to a documentary about Jane Bown who worked as a photographer for the Observer. Mark Kermode's review can be found at  http://goo.gl/BROzS

I hadn't heard of Bown but I discovered that she was a portrait photographer of some renown and legend. Thought I'd check the film out as her work is in monochrome , an area of photography which I am increasingly drawn to. Her photographs are presented without aural accompaniment - as Kermode says, ' allowed ( indeed demanding) to speak for themselves'.

As you might guess, I also discovered that cinemas were not queuing up for this film, certainly not in the south east outside London. However, I'm told there will be a DVD coming out soon ..and I will be buying it!

Reflection check

Now that I've completed Part 5 of this course, I'm taking the opportunity again to look back  and reflect how I have progressed against the assessment criteria.


Demonstration of technical and visual skills

This last part of the course gave me the opportunity to practise much of what I had  learnt before from day one of the course. I can see that my technical skills have developed significantly over the last year; skills relating to using my camera i.e getting to grips with such  as highlight clipping, noise, white balance etc. which have improved the quality of the images that I am now taking. Looking back over the last five assignments can  see examples of how these skills have developed.
I enjoy processing my images far more than before which comes down to an increased confidence in using the software. Purchasing Lightroom early on was a good decision though getting to grips with it added an extra level of challenge! I believe I see a substantial improvement in my design and compositional skills since day one...it would  be interesting to see what others thought.

Quality of Outcome

Producing a photo book for my personal project was a first for me and I am looking forward to a critique of this as my own feeling is that it could be made better in terms of presentation of images and quality of captions. Some advice here as to how this might be achieved would be welcome.The prints that I produced on smooth pearl photographic paper looked better to me. 

I spent some time trying to articulate the idea behind my project and how and why I chose the final interpretations which I hope makes clear what was intended to anyone coming to this piece of work. I am more used to doing this as a matter of course now than earlier in the year.

Demonstration of Creativity

I think my concept for this project was imaginative. The stage at which I decided to explore the idea of conjuring  up memories through new photographic images  demonstrates a degree of creative thinking; this before I realised through research that there was a huge body of work relating to memory and photography.
If I am honest the end result was not as creative nor imaginative as I had hoped although if asked to explain why,I would have some difficulty in explaining. I need to perhaps 'sleep' on this for a while to see if I can explain this to myself let alone others. 

Is it a 'cop out' to say it probably takes an outsider view though to judge whether my project really does meet this assessment criteria?  
Context

As I have progressed through this course, I have noticed that research has become an increasingly more important part of my work. Certainly the last two assignments have demonstrated this and Assignment 5 did spur me on to read around the subject of memory and photographic traces. And I very much enjoyed this.

Lastly, my learning log is becoming more a work diary now and I hope that my entries are coming over as more thoughtful and considered. I believe that I am getting to grips with the concept and practice of reflective learning ..it is not yet instinctive but I feel I am moving steadily in the right direction.

Traces of my Dad - a reflective account

Traces of my Dad – a reflective account

‘The memory is never entirely lost and family snapshots are a means of recalling buried past traces ‘ enlighteningthoughts (1)

Researching my family history last year, I realised that there was very little trace of my Dad other than a few black and white images from the early days of his marriage and fading colour ‘snaps’ taken over the years to record family events rather than my Dad.

This gave me the idea and title for this project, ‘Traces of my Dad’.

Is it possible to ‘conjure’ up memories of my Dad through photographic images taken now that trigger a visual memory or maybe more- a sense of smell perhaps? Could I conjure up the memory of someone not there? Would this memory just work for me or conjure up a sense of who my Dad was for someone who did not know him?

‘The photograph is a prop, a pre-text: it sets the scene for recollection ‘Annette Kuhn (2)

I chose a number of themes: Dad’s workplace, his wartime experiences, his character as expressed by hobbies and my childhood memories. Whether I used colour or monochrome would be determined by the intended outcome. And I imagined that the images would likely be a mix of representational/ still life/ interpretative / photo journalistic - again dependent on the best way to achieve a particular interpretation.

Not surprisingly, I discovered early on that the images I had in my mind did not always translate into a feasible image or in reality turned out to labour a point too much. For example, I had in mind to capture a shadow which would give the sense of my Dad just being out of picture or glimpsed as a shadowy form- such as a shadow of bike and rider. The position of the sun and location worked against this. When I eventually achieved a shadow of a bicycle- it just did not say anything. 

With no images of my Dad’s family before the war, I wondered if a good family history starting point might be his father, Henry Gordon Greenfield. Dad never knew his father who was away at war when he was born and died in Ireland in 1919. 

P700

Just before Christmas I accidently found out 

from my elderly aunt that my grandfather 

was buried locally in Worthing cemetery.  

Would this provide any photographic reference?

I managed to find the gravestone, erected 

by the War Graves Commission, and a passing chance encounter with a stranger in the cemetery provided 

more information on my grandfather.

A plus factor for family history but not for my project though. The visual image of the grave did not say,

as they say, ‘speak’ to me. 

I also had the idea to convey the passage of time by through images in a rough chronological order reinforced by the colour of the final image e.g.  a 1950s image being black and white, a 1960s image being faded Kodak colour etc. . Experimentation here made me think that applying this consistently across all images resulted in a contrived feel which did not always benefit or enhance the actual images.

And how about using colour to represent smell or heat etc.? I was thinking here of a hot, sunny greenhouse being a faded amber colour. Again when I tried this the resulting version did not create the ‘feel of summer heat ’that I was looking for and so ended on the pile of rejections.

Roland Barthes  talks of objects being ‘accepted inducers of associations of ideas ( a bookcase indicates an intellectual)‘  (3)and I considered this when composing still life scenes for the project, e.g. the juxta position of cigar and tangerine indicating Christmas. He says, ‘Thanks to its code of connotation the reading of the photograph is always historical; it depends on the reader’s ‘knowledge’ just as though it were a matter of a real language, intelligible only if one has learned the signs’ (3). This of course, presented me with a potential problem if my audience is much younger than me.

This brings me then to the question of captions. I decided to go ahead and produce a photobook to present my project. As advice on the OCA website suggested, photobooks are not as straightforward as one might think. Not least in respect of captions. Advice says keep the caption simple, so this is exactly what I did, trying where practicable to hint at what the image represented to me. With hindsight, I think the need that I felt to explain images suggests a lack of success in what I was trying to achieve.

What worked well? Some images worked really well from the point of view of composition and processing the image, such as the cigar and tangerine or the chrysanthemum - others less so e.g. the lemons and pumice stone. I was able to use a number of techniques learnt earlier in the course during the processing of  images. If I am honest, I probably spent too much time adjusting the colour of images in a search to achieve the level of interpretation I wanted drawn from the colours chosen.

I was glad that I had decide on the subject of this project last year as this gave me the opportunity to investigate locations and possible images in a practical way. I was able to photograph ripening tomatoes and flowering chrysanthemums in the right season.

I did move away from the initial brief en route in that some of the themes did not work sufficiently well so I abandoned them e.g. the idea of shadows and a room or scene just left. Problems with the lighting of some still life subjects were solved using a ‘soft box’.

I am happy with the end product regarding the images. They are not perfect and I look forward to a critique here to help me move on.

I am less happy regarding the photobook itself.I noticed an error after the work had been sent off that I could have avoided i.e. a slight cropping of the cigar image from the left side. ‘Proof reading’ images is tricky, like proof reading text, you see what you want to see sometimes. I am also not sure whether the choice of a highly glossy finish was such a good idea. Perhaps a more matt finish might have worked better. I would certainly welcome advice as to how this project could have been improved and better presented in photobook form; whether an explanatory introduction is advisable and whether I should have used more explanatory captions. 

Lastly, the aim of this project was to explore the concept of memory via photography and my interest in family history.I believe this was achieved. I know from my reading around the subject of memory and photography that I have only touched the tip of an iceberg and I will want to go further into the subject.

‘ memories evoked by a photo do not simply spring out of the image itself, but are generated in an intertext of discourses that shift between past and present, spectator and image, and between all these cultural contexts, historical moments. In all of this, the image figures largely as a trace, a clue: necessary, but not sufficient, to the activity of meaning-making; always signalling somewhere else. Annette Kuhn (4) 

My intended outcome was a collection of images which give a sense of my Dad – images on a personal theme drawn from my interest in family history. Whether these photographs will create a visual ‘memory’ that others experience and whether other people’s family memories are triggered, I have yet to discover.

Footnotes

1. enlighteningthoughts. The Memory Box (video reconstruction), http://goo.gl/IL08HD   enlighteningthoughts.wordpress.com

2. Kuhn, Annette. ‘Remembrance’, p18 in Family Snaps. The Meanings of Domestic       Photography, edited by Jo Spence & Patricia Holland. Virago 1991

3. Barthes, Roland. Image, Music, Text. Fontana 1977

4. Kuhn, Annette. ‘Remembrance’, p18 in Family Snaps. The Meanings of Domestic   Photography, edited by Jo Spence & Patricia Holland. Virago 1991

Traces of my Dad..

I have completed the photo shoot and selected the images that I want for my photo book. I've decided on a title - 'Traces of my Dad'  and the book has been ordered.

While I wait for it's arrival, I want to review the images I used and how I arrived at the finished product. It has proved harder than I imagined and the final images are different in many ways to those that I imagined and went after initially.Once I see the photo book, I will write a final reflective account which will accompany my images.

Searching for Dad image..
Originally I planned to use the idea of looking through a frame of fingers to what I imagined would be a scene of some sort as a link between myself and my Dad . We often went of sketching trips when I was young and I remember him looking at a scene in this way. The original starting point was the image below :

P690: f8 @ 1/640  ISO 200  37mm

When I came across an old black and white photograph of my Dad doing his James Dean pose, it struck me that this could be the focus of the viewer and serve as the starting point of the project.

P676 Scan of an existing photograph

The starting point became the book cover as well as the title page.

P675

One thing I have discovered is that still life images are not one of my strengths and combined with the need to find appropriate props made some of the images more tricky than I expected. For example, getting a cigar to burn in the right way with the right degree of curling smoke if there are no smokers in the house can be a real challenge.

P679: f5.6 @ 1.5  ISO 100  43mm 

This image ( P679) also presented a dilemma regarding what caption should I give it. Or did it need a caption? What would the viewer think this said about my Dad? Would they need to look beyond the obvious here? This says Christmas to me - this comes from the combined image of a smoking cigar and uppeeled tangerine. My Dad only smoked cigars at Christmas and when I was a child that was the only time you ever saw tangerines. The fact that the cigar is still smoking makes me think the smoker is not far away...So I chose the caption 'Cigar smoke and tangerines...' but with hindsight I wonder whether I needed to have one.

A working man...

P651: f10 @ 1/60  ISO 100  18mm AWB

Probably too obvious an image ...does it suggest the absence of the nurseryman and the wait for his return ?

The smell of sun ripened tomatoes on the vine..

P644: f10 @ 1/200  ISO 100  38mm  AWB

Trying here to capture smell as a memory trigger, linking to the nursery theme. I suspect I was tempted to chose this version because I like the overall composition rather than introducing what was probably needed more to create the impression on the viewer i.e. a more yellow/ warm feel than this end result. The colouring in P651 indicates -a better feel of warmth perhaps. A conflict of composition and processing that came up more than once during the project. 

Lemons, a pumice stone and a working man well turned out

P680: f5 @ 1/2000  ISO 1600  31mm

Again looking for the idea that Dad is not that far away ..certainly in the way my memory is triggered by this image. Why chose this still life arrangement? 

Over lunch about a year ago, my aunt now in her 90s and the only remaining sibling of my Dad, mentioned how particular my Dad was about his appearance when he went out after work. As a nurseryman, he was very conscious of the effect that this kind of manual work had on his hands and 'religiously' cleaned his hands every night with lemon juice and a pumice stone. My aunt's comment triggered my own memory of Dad in our kitchen each night going through the same cleaning ritual. I never see a pumice stone without thinking of this. That said, finding a pumice stone of the shape I remembered proved a challenge. Finding none to be had in our local high street,I had to resort to having one sent via Amazon from China!!

P682: f5.6 @ 1/0  ISO100  18mm

 Little changes, fifty years apart..same old patter

Dad worked in a greengrocer's for a number of years when his nursery became less viable in the 1950s. The image above ( P682) is a recapture of a photograph taken by a passing professional photographer sometime before decimalisation. I came across it in a drawer of bits and pieces relating to Dad that my Mum had kept over the years. I placed the original against a black background to bring out the lovely customer friendly quality that Dad had, so expertly captured in the original image.

So I then tried to see if I could recreate the original by replacing the original image with a modern version which conjured up the same sense of my Dad. Luckily Portsmouth has a market every Friday and I found a very helpful and patient stallholder. He was very interested in Dad's photo and my idea to try and recapture it..also very willing to try different poses in between customers. I am on a promise to take back a few different images of him for his family.

Originally I tried this out in black and white as I thought this would bring out the differences between the two images but this did not work at all - it seemed flat and lacking in interest. I felt that there was not enough interesting 'structure' within the composition nor a quality of light that resonated with me so I opted for a colour image. I adjusted the tone curves here to achieve a feel of looking back through the use of colour..you might say a slightly faded look.

P681 : f13 @ 1/15  ISO 100  18mm

In shooting for what became P683 below, I  had a bit of fun here capturing this particular version of a lovely chrysanthemeum  taken last autumn when I was out and about looking for 'nursery images ' for this project. I went for the look of 'yesteryear' and used a heavy grain. The reason for this approach is the fact that Dad went back to nursery work before he retired. He grew many kinds of this flower and the slightly richly faded ( if that's not a conflict of terms ) look here is intended to convey his working life coming to an end. That's how I look at it but again, maybe other viewers would  interpret this differently...however, if people wonder what it does convey in the context of the theme here, maybe that is how it should be.

Nearing retirement

P683: f10 @ 1/320  ISO 100  40mm

'Some memories never shared'...I think this caption works well with the image below.

P684:  f10 @ 1/6  ISO 100  250mm

I chose the caption of ' Dad cycled everywhere for image P685 below  It is interesting in itself as I took it in Singapore earlier this year. I tried out many ideas as to how to convey this side to my Dad e.g. shadows of a cycle, cycles with an allotment backdrop ( Dad always cycled to his weekend gardening job).

 

P691

P692

 But at the end of the day the bicycle below reminded me more of the one that Dad used..

Dad cycled everywhere..

P685:  f4 @ 1/15  ISO 3200  18mm

An unexpected side of my Dad was an artistic streak that stretched way back to before the war. P686 below shows the earliest example that I have - one of two pen and ink drawings that he made on honeymoon. Hence the photo book caption  'Amateur artist on honeymoon...' I used a heavy grain to give an impression of a painting .


P686:  f5.6 @ 1/25  ISO 100 22mm

'Looking forward and back' 

I still use Dad's easel,a tangible link to memories of Dad quietly painting away in our dining room after tea while we watched television next door. It also links forward to my own efforts with acrylic paint. For the viewer here though, the image is a rather obvious link to Dad and his interest in art but the blank canvas possibly suggest the artist about to come back.My shadow in the glass of the small pen drawing is a further and again obvious link.



P687: f4.5 @ 1/5  ISO 200  26mm

P689: f5 @ 1/100   ISO 1600  31mm

Different aspects of Dad ..not the sum of all the parts but some traces...



Creating a web gallery - editorial 2

Looking at various web gallery designs and doing some research as to what such as WordPress and Smugmug offer has crystalised my thoughts as to what I need for my web gallery.

The front or home page will need to give the name of my Web Gallery and display one large image indicative of my style of work. It will also have simple 'tabs'  ( e.g. P696) directing the visitor to the rest of the gallery to folders and some biographical detail about myself -maybe tabs such as Home, About, My work , Blog, Contact etc.

P696: Word Press theme: Octavia

I will also include some widgets e.g. facebook, twitter and Flickr ( see below for full range of social widgets available through Word Press) to provide some functionality beyond navigation.See P697 below:

P697: Widgets

In addition I want to have a contact page which allows comments and  a blog page facility.  

What about a platform for my website? Research on the Internet suggests that there are two options i.e. I can use a free service such as WordPress.com which offers a free hosting and a free wordpress.com domain name. Alternatively, I can use a self-hosted site where you pay for your own hosting service, your own custom domain name and create your website there on your own ( you can still use WordPress for free apparently, but a self-hosted site offers more flexibility and control.  

My instinct is that I am not quite ready to create and launch a web gallery. That said, I will go ahead and to explore costs and available designs further and 'play' with some free possibilities.