Hangouts—12 January 2020

Forum Live

Good turnout today with 10 people participating: LS, KA, SG, CW, KW, AF, SS, NM, DL and me hosting.
KA wondered if having someone else produce the scans of her analogue work was acceptable. No one could see an issue with this, largely because many elements of the photographic process are already made by someone else: camera body, lenses, film, chemicals, sensors, etc.
AF raised the question of what a subverted landscape might be and if it would be acceptable in the Landscape course. NM indicated that she didn’t have a single (traditional?) landscape in her landscape set. CW suggested that we think of landscape as a metaphor.
KW is preparing her blog for assessment and was given a number of suggestions on how to do this most effectively for assessors. She also asked whether it would be acceptable to submit her work for DIC via Instagram. The answer was a resounding yes, with strong encouragement to have a backup plan in case there is a problem with the platform during the assessment period.
SG, a L3 student, is working on Polaroid landscapes and may have a book of her WiP to show us at the next Hangout. KA mentioned the collection of Polaroids she shot at Lacock Abbey.
KA agreed to host the next Hangout, likely on Jan 26.

Rest of the World Group

My second hangout of the day, but with fewer participants: LK, MR and MU. In short, two Canadians and two New Zealanders, none of us born in the country we live in.
LK is working on an essay of the ethics of the FSA.
One of us learned that assessors don’t read essays but depend on the judgement of the tutor involved.
MU mentioned the importance of patience and organizational skills for L2 and L3. Participants traded names of OCA students whose learning logs are particularly well laid out.
MR encouraged us to look at Time.com’s list of best photobooks of 2019. He thought American Origami looked particularly good.
LK suggested that MU look at the work of Shona Grant re: bookmaking.
I mentioned that I was looking at L2 courses now that I am close to completing L1. It seems that Documentary gives relatively little space to doing photography, while Landscape is lighter on research but may involve a project over a whole year. This could be a problem, given my travel plans. May also want to look at Self and Other and/or Digital Image and Culture.
MR agreed to host the next hangout, possibly Feb 23/24.

Hangout—12 December 2019

Today’s hangout was well-attended, with nine people participating for the full discussion and a tenth arriving for the last moments of the meeting. There were two major points of discussion:

AF was concerned about the possibility of self-plagiarism after a discussion with his tutor. Is there a chance that returning to themes or motifs may amount to an inappropriate use of one’s own work?

The consensus was that self-plagiarism was only a real danger if one submitted the same, or substantially the same, work for more than one assignment or course. In fact, tutor CS mentioned that it might be possible to go too far the other way by doing something completely different for every assignment and never really developing a body of work.

I am not overly worried about this, but I must admit that I have approached many of my assignments for OCA as a chance to try something new. My aim hasn’t been to aim for coherence but to use at least the Level 1 courses as experiments to see what I do and don’t like. If I don’t experiment now I may wind up producing much the same type of images that I have for years. We’ll see where this goes as I get ready to take on Level 2 early in the new year.
ES raised the topic of cliches and tropes, and what the different terms meant for our work. The other terms that she raised (such as “synecdoche”) were familiar to me from my studies in rhetoric and have been popping up in some of the theoretical readings we have been asked to read. The rhetorical terms are useful as shorthand but I wonder if we sometimes run into difficulty as we transpose them from the written/spoken word to a visual language. It seems to me that theory and technical language are only useful insofar as they allow us to understand, but they should never be allowed to get in the way of effective communication. They should follow the process of making art, rather than controlling it.

I volunteered to host the next hangout session on January 12, 2020 and have set things up on the OCA website to allow people to sign-up and identify their topics for discussion.

Hangout—2 December 2019

Eight of us participated in this Forum Live discussion (CW, AK, AF, JC, KA, SS, NM and me) and it was good to see some new faces.

The first item of discussion was SS’ wish to find a way to better photograph his pencil drawings from a sketchbook. He wanted to be sure to capture not only the correct nuances of shading and line depth/blackness, but also something of the texture and tone of the paper itself. This led to a number of suggestions (and a bit of a tutorial) about how to use a histogram to adjust curves and black/white/gray points to achieve desired results in an image.

AF presented some WIP for a project tentatively titled “I am still here.” The work comprised a series of photographs that were taken on a neighbourhood walk, almost a return to EYV’s Square Mile assignment. Participants viewed the images and made suggestions about sequencing and how it might be important to provide the viewer with some context for understanding them, given that the individual photographs depicted fairly mundane settings. Although some pictures have interesting compositional elements, it won’t necessarily be clear to others what the photographer had in mind. AF himself wasn’t entirely clear on how to pull the images together, although the resonances with his childhood were apparent (he has lived in the same neighbourhood all his life). CS thought the work had potential and suggested including an artist’s statement, with pairs of images playing off one another.

There followed a question and response from KA, who wondered whether using film would be acceptable for her next course (first at L2?). The answer was a clear ‘yes.’

The group decided that it would be good to meet once more before Christmas and then again a month later. The next dates are December 15 and (tentatively) January 12.

All going well, I will try to have most / all of my CAN A4 essay ready for the Dec 15 discussion.

ROTW Hangout—3/11/2019

Lynda (BC, Canada), Mark (New Zealand) and I have been meeting regularly for some time now and have branded ourselves as the “Rest of the World” (ROTW) Hangout. We all recognize the value of hangouts but don’t always find the other OCA meeting useful because of the differences in timezone. We had been hoping for more people to join us this time, given that 11 people had signed up. As it turned out, five participated—the usual three, plus Bob (UK) and Nuala (France).

No one had WIP to present, so I started things off by talking about my experience with the little exhibit I had on display in a local bistro for six weeks. I sold five of the 13 pictures I had on display, so I have effectively covered my costs and am quite please with that as a result.

I also mentioned some of my struggles around CAN A3’s self-portrait work and received some helpful suggestions from the group. I think Nuala’s work for this assignment (“Thou shalt not age”) was quite gutsy, so I may go back and look at it again.

Mark talked to us about his own prep work for CAN A3 and it sounds as though he will go the “absented-self” route. He is looking at doing it with reference to the Maori term Tūrangawaewae which indicates “the place where one has a right to stand.” Several of us made suggestions, based largely on our own experiences of being immigrants/foreigners in places where we live and the history of colonization. This will be an interesting piece to see develop.

Lynda is working through her Documentary course and having some difficulty in locating historical images of the area where she lives. I suggested that she might like to look at the National Archives collection online, check into the layers of meaning suggested by the original Indigenous place names, and also sent a link to some work done by Bonnie Devine that I found powerful during a visit to the Art Gallery of Ontario. Lynda also introduced us to the work of Diana Thorneycroft, which has a particular resonance for those familiar with Anglo-Canadian culture. I got a kick out of Thorneycroft’s humour and imagination at the service of serious subjects.

Nuala has completed a 2.4m dot-matrix scroll on the story of the Internet’s creation and is also thinking of creating a related video.

There was discussion around the relevance and outdated nature of some of the assigned readings and a concern that writing in the field is often more difficult to read than it needs to be. I think this is a common complaint about academic writing and can be put down to a few things: the occasional need and benefit of a specialized and technical vocabulary; bad writing habits; and the fact that the audience in mind is often other specialists/peers/people who control academic tenure. In other words, a broad readership is usually not in focus and, for some academics, not desired.

Bob made some good recommendations of printing paper, particularly for black and white (Pinnacle FibreGloss 320gsm) and the work of photographer Manuel Vasquez.

Mark agreed to host the next hangout in roughly a month’s time, to make sure we get it in before the holiday season starts.

Hangout—11 August 2019

Just four of us today (AF, BH, CW and me), with CW signing in from a train.

We opened with a brief discussion of my request for resources on editing my work (not in the sense of post-processing, but the in sense of selecting which images to include in a set, and in what sequence). The assessors of my EYV submission suggested this as an area for improvement, so I was looking for some food for thought. AF’s suggestion was to pay attention to documenting my thought process; BH finds that setting images aside for a time gives him some critical distance; and CW finds that laying physical prints out on a table is very helpful. All good suggestions and I suspect that editing one’s own work is just one of those things you get better at by doing.

AF asked for feedback on a series of images for I&P A3. The images were of a spartan office with very few items pointing to its purpose. The consensus was that the series was effective and was more of a ‘mirror’ than a ‘window’ on the photographer.

BH presented some WiP for I&P A5 laid out as a book. There were comments on some of the specifics of the book (why one cover with B/W images when the rest of the book is in colour? reduce signs of ‘student’ work) and a longer discussion on whether the design of the book presented a coherent whole (heavy bold and blocky text seemed to work against the faded inscriptions of the headstones that are the focus of the work; consider reducing text and possibly making it more faded as the reader pages through the book). Heard again that projects are judged as a whole, so a book of photography has to work as a book, and not just as a collection of photographs.

OCA Hangout—30 June 2019

Tutor Clive White and five OCA students (AF, KA, AS, HW and me)

The discussion on this particular hangout turned around the challenges two Level 3 Photography students are having with their Body of Work projects.

One student reported feeling lost in his project and was concerned about its “lack of meaning.” He was encouraged to find something that engages him and trust that it will engage others (not advisable to try to create work or an entire project based on what we believe others will find interesting).

The other student had taken thousands of images for his project and was feeling a bit lost after not being able to “land on a thread.” He was encouraged to go back to the main theme of the project and perhaps to concentrate on a smaller number of images with visual interest—some that were less “deadpan.”

In sum, the bulk of the conversation had to do with managing a long-term project, both in terms of its scale as well as in how to maintain interest and motivation over the life of the project. It was helpful as a Level 1 student to be able to sit in on the discussion although, in my case, it might have been very useful to me as I was labouring through Assignment 5 of EYV. I will see if I can benefit from some of the insights about remaining focused and doing work that interests me, rather than others, as I continue through my program at OCA.