Q: What were some key discoveries in this module in terms of your creative process?

Well, on a technical level, I would have loved another source of lighting. I love the low, neon-based lighting as an aesthetic (as I demonstrated in assignment 1), but I am beginning to realise they either had better artificial lighting capabilities in their cameras (my Canon 70D is showing its age), or a another source of it. Doing every experimentation under the sun, I still found myself physically having no possible way to get the desired effect and quality that I wanted, it was normally a compromise of one (which I suppose is, to some extent, the idea of the camera settings and the main trichotomy of aperture, shutter-speed and ISO usually, to some extent, demonstrate that is somewhat the essence of photography settings).

However, now I find myself having more questions. Because how do they, practically, ever get that effect in situations like the ones I was in? I couldn’t bring a light-box into an underground bar, and even if I did it definitely would not have been optimal or overtly portable. Thinking back to Arnaud Moro, who inspired me for assignment 1, I am somehow more amazed at how easily he achieves his effects. I would love to see his “bad” photos to cross-compare where I do things differently, because I found myself with a similar amount of lighting, but with a lot more difficulty in highlighting them or using them to gain the effects in the sort of stage-setting, backdrop-type of way he does it. He claims not to heavily edit his photos. That seems impossible to me currently (though exciting if true – I will learn how to get there!).

Q: What were two key learnings in terms of the experience of ‘collaborating’ with your ‘stranger’/participant?

I found myself asking My-Tien to take the lead and I sort of followed her around with whatever she found interesting/engaging. If there was anything particularly eventful or something she wanted, I told her to let me know and I’d take photos of it. This for the most part seemed to be a pretty good method for being in the right place at the right time, but some more that were candid could have made my collection a bit stronger I feel, as there are quite a few posed photos (though most of those are the ones involving Andrew, her partner).

I tried not to be too manipulative of my events, I wanted my photography to not be staged (unless the goal was to be staged, like the group photo). Though the night had a lot of photographs being taken in general so it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility to be asked to take a photo. Retrospectively, I’m not sure if that was the right call. I found myself being grateful when I captured a moment that was genuine, but it left me with limited opportunities. I think I possibly should have asked for greater direction from My-Tien about what she would find engaging, or what best highlighted what was important to her, which I guess, in hindsight, beyond Andrew and the bar, I’m not still necessarily sure what that is.