Week 6 was primarily used for planning our Strangers and stories assignment. Although I found this assignment quite challenging, I have honestly found it relatively enjoyable to complete. I found that the class material we worked on and learnt aided my assignment as I was able to apply some of that knowledge to my own shoot. I found that during this assignment I was able to properly picture what I had to do and wanted to do, and used the feedback from MIMESIS to see the areas I wanted to actively improve.
Some key discoveries I made during this assessment were my preparation and planning. I tried to prepare this assignment weeks in advance. This gave me more time to figure out what readings I had to refer to in my blog posts and how I would flesh out those posts with what I had learnt that week. I decided in order to improve from last time I would try to split both my 300 word blog posts into two sections, one being that weeks reading and how I relate that to my own work and course work, and the other being that weeks practical activity. Something to improve on next time would be to lock down a model for my shoot a lot earlier on. I found that it came down to a week before Strangers and stories portfolio was due and I still didn’t have a person to model for me. Another thing I could improve on in future could be the way I plan my shoots. I organised to meet with Phoebe (the subject of my photos) at around 3:00pm on the day and shot photos around her residents. I hadn’t actually planned what I wanted the images to convey and what exactly I was going to take photos of. This meant that a little time was wasted during the shoot as I tried to figure out what I wanted. In future I could plan a specific location and also each shot I wanted to get prior to the meeting and shoot time.
During the shoot, two key things I learnt in relation to working or collaborating with your participant would be; to be well prepared and to create a comfortable environment. During the shoot I realised that I was not as well prepared as I could have been and this lead to a bit of time wasting. The participant is ultimately there just to have photos taken of them so I realised there wasn’t much time to be indecisive about what I wanted in each shot. It is also important to be extremely gracious as the participant is giving crucial time out of their day to be photographed. I also found thats it’s important to create an environment where the participant feels comfortable to put them self out there and try new things. For me this meant having a quick chat before hand and subtly getting to know them better. This made the environment relaxing ad helped me to get more natural images.
Overall, I found this assignment both challenging and also extremely beneficial. I look forward to improving my work even more next time.