Although Im not sure how aware of it I was at the time, the biggest photographic challenge was creating an image that was a mix of “Crime Scene” without the sterility and Landscape. I believe this was a big move for me towards creating images that actually said something.

I really enjoyed the “process” I had quite strong opinions about what  wanted to produce and it was only when I started going through the various processes that things started to change and evolve. One idea that I had at the beginning was to produce the images in the style of postcards. This did not pan out but might be something I come back to in a later unit.

The critical review was invaluable. It wasn’t something I enjoyed but made me really start to understand more about how images can be created and their effect on the photographer, sitter and viewer. It was something I found very difficult but looking at the images at a very basic level then working out what these things might mean has been very useful in my ability to analyse both my images and other practitioners

Realising that I couldn’t really control what the viewers thought or felt about the images was something I accepted at first and then came to realise was in fact a plus. I wanted the images to be seen as individual events and spent quite a lot go my time trying to find ways of doing this. I then realised that the images together also had something to say. Letting go of this idea to try and control what viewers thought or felt was so helpful, and partly down to my tutors advice. It allowed me to see that the images were indeed far more than just my creation.

I think I need to look closer at the images produced as “crime scene’ photos and treat them as a genre in their own right. I also want to continue my research into the historical idea of the sublime which is where I started further back in the unit.

I found peer reviews extremely helpful and hadn’t realised how different peoples views could be of the same images. It was also a great exercise to boost confidence and gain insights into how the images came across to people who were new to seeing them. It was during one of these that I realised how much people what to link images together when presented with a set. It took me a while to realise that this was not a negative aspect.

One of the biggest aspects of image making that I learned through this unit was relating to text. I hadn’t really considered how much text can change what an image portrays. I thought of text as being just an explanation or title. What is absent in the text can be the whole point of a set of images, as in Seawrights Section Murders, the font used as in Shot at Dawn by Chloe Dewe Mathews and wether the text is part of the actual image or a separate piece of text.

Allowing the process to evolve rather than fighting it will help me to be more creative. I had a firm idea of what I wanted at the start and found it hard to let this change and evolve at times. When I did it worked out very well but I wasted time fighting the process.