Week 6
What were some key discoveries in this module in terms of your creative process? (It may be useful to break this down into the different phases of creative inspirations, pre-production planning and organisation, the actual shoot, and post-production and presentation).
In this module, I struggled a lot with the idea of creating something with a stranger as that seemed really out of my comfort zone. Luckily, we were able to do someone that wasn’t in our close family or friends. Thankfully, I have a friend who spends a lot of her free time doing little paintings for herself. I know she has always done this, and we’ve talked about it a few times and when this project came up, I knew she would be right for it. She does not do it to show off her work and does not claim to be a good painter, but rather does it out of enjoyment and as a sort of stress relief. I found it really interesting that it is something she does to unwind, whether it is printing a picture and colouring it in or doing watercolour scribbles. I’ve never been one to have a particular hobby, so I love that she has a ‘comfort’ activity to do in her spare time. The actual shoot was very easy-going, she was comfortable and communicated with me if there was anything I wanted her to do. I just let her do her thing as I snapped a few pictures around her. I got about 30 pictures and narrowed them down to my favourite 10, which demonstrated her ‘story’ of a break/downtime in her busy day-to-day life.
What were two key learnings in terms of the experience of ‘collaborating’ with your ‘stranger’/participant?
The first key learning experience was to let things happen organically. I found myself being quite stressed out about what the pictures were going to turn out like and what they were going to be of. I tried to write down some points on my phone of photos I thought would be essential for the ‘story’ but I found that it just came to me very naturally. In the environment she was in, I made to capture all her little painting equipment as well as her surroundings. She said she prefers to paint outside when she can although it is more rare, especially when the weather is no good; luckily, we got very fortunate.
My other key learning experience was time management. Now that someone I knew was doing a favour for me, everything was on her time. We found it quite difficult to find a day where everything matched up for the both of us, and I had originally planned to get two pictures of her at work and her at university to better display the ‘story’ of this being her ‘downtime’. Unfortunately, she went away for the week, and we were unable to do this. As a result, I learnt that I have to be a better planner and give more time for myself to carry out my ideas.
Otherwise, I think everything went pretty smoothly and generally I am happy with how my pictures turned out.