Putting together your practical work

Old and out of date. 
New for 2020 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JK4VfqXBzY&t=975s

What do you write and what do you include when putting together a response to your practical work?

Here's a suggestion as to how you might go about it, needless to say adapt to your own methods if you don't like all of it, but if you're completely lost as to what to do and write, this may offer a solution. One of the key points of this approach is the use of a display folder, as it means at any point you can edit and remove pages to improve the folder in any way.

This method is ideal for your work at the developmental stages - test shoots, trials and experiments. Remember your work must be developed over a series of stages as your work out what you're going to do for the final product.

The Blue section should be your 'Planning' what you intend to do, your resources, where, when and who? Needless to say the more details the more indicates your levels of planning and organisation. The Red section is also 'Planning' but more visual - a lighting plan, showing where the light sare and included a key to explain what the components are. Generally most photography courses want 'Visuals' diagrams and sketches and if you can include these that'll be great.
The Green section is examples of images from the shoot, you can use contact sheets/thumbnails, but I've made mine slightly bigger and selected some of the images that were typical from the start of the shoot rather than all of the images, showing that I was working with poses. The text in this section deals with the colour of the background and the poses and the decisions I was making as the shoot progressed. Keep the details simple at this stage, just write about what you were trying to achieve or was expecting to happen.

Page 2 (below).

Top left - more images from the shoot either selected ones or the whole contact sheet, it's up to you, showing how the shoot comes together and ideas are developed. Right-hand side ringed in Green images of how you've set up the lights. Always step back and shoot images of your light set ups either with the camera you're using or a phone or whatever is at hand. This gives you the opportunity to add details about the equipment and is good for future reference if you use the lighting again and want to replicate the lighting.

Ringed in Blue is the image that influenced the shoot with the lighting we're trying to replicate. In this instance I've not done a lot of research into the image, but potentially you could find out who shot it and do some research into the photographer and possibly add additional images from the same series. I've written about the light and the exposure, but more could be added relating to the fact that it's high-key and the composition and a lot more (See prompts in side bar).

Page 3

This section is potentially the part where you're going to pick up loads of credits that meet the criteria. The way we advise you to do this is to structure the response to your own work using he Gibbs Reflective Practice Model which works with either 5 or 6 prompts (I've missed out no.5 "Conclusion" in this instance). Reflecting on your work making sense of it, criticising it with the intention of identifying areas of strength and weakness is an essential aspect of your work. Making sense of it and analysing it is essential too and Gibbs steers you through the process in an orderly manner and is a dream for your lecturers/assessors to mark!

Most of the sections can be relatively short and concise, the parts you do want to focus on and produce more written material around are the analysis and  planning sections. The planning part leads you into the next round of work.

Page 4
On this page, I've chosen what I felt was one of the better shots and I've taken the time to reproduce it at A3 set in a white surround. You could if you wished have it printed as a full bleed image covering the whole page. The choice is yours.

I would advise as when you produce these final shots you do so at the best quality you can stretch to and keep the approach that you use consistent.

* Note (For my students for 5135 - Fashion promo and WN25) if you do this as you go along and you engage with the process fully you should end up with a pretty useful folio of images as we'll be using some really top quality lighting techniques. The images will be massively improved if in each session your models are styled appropriately. I had to rush this example so wasn't able to get hold of a blonde model and make the images as high-key as the Kate Mosss Vogue cover.

Don't like my approach? Have a look at these here - some of the best from all around the world.

http://www.studentartguide.com/articles/art-sketchbook-ideas



Example of sketchbook work.

Here's an example of how you might choose to put your work together. At our college we suggest either using the traditional sketchbooks or this method using A3 display folders. The current course leader advocates the use of the traditional hard-back A4 sketchbooks.

The next question we're confronted with is "What the hell do I write and what do I put in it"? Another thing that seems to be lost on students is the work rate and how organised you have to be to get the work completed and in your books.

Question... What the hell do I put in my sketchbook?

There's a number of answers to this - one is everything, the other is the stuff you need to meet the assessment criteria. The bottom line is what-ever you do put in your books, whether it be a minimal approach or an everything approach it does have to meet the assessment criteria.

To this end, it is essential that you engage with this aspect of your work and you make sure you know what it is you've got to do - ask the question "What criteria do I have to meet - what exactly do I have to do"? This information will be on your assignment/brief sheet under the section titled "Assessment Criteria". It tends to be a bit 'wordy' so if you don't understand it, ask someone to explain it to you in terms of what you have to do. If in doubt ask.

Work Rate... Fast and efficient, do it as it happens. Use college time to write stuff up, print things off, read the BJP's, stick your work in your book. Do it there an then!
When you're working in the darkroom where you have to wait for things to happen, don't wait around, use this 'dead time' to write up records and explanations of what you're doing.
Do you travel to college by train? Work on the train?
Set aside time to do the work and do it as it happens.
Diary Style. Work on your book as though it's a diary, do a bit every day, write it as a diary.

Page 1. Always ensure that you have a page that identifies your work with contact details for the college in the event that you lose the work. If it gets left on the train or somewhere the chances are someone will return it. Without this page, you may never see the work again and we cannot assess work that we have never seen.

For our current students, the next page may include the work that was produced prior to joining the course - research work using the British Journal of Photography (Images and you're analysis of the work and the accompanying text).

 

The first lesson was the Visual Language work where we explored and shot images of mugshots over two stages. Simply record what you did, what you were thinking and what you understood of the task at that stage using both images and written work. You could include technical details, but the most important aspects are the visual language aspects - the conventions that relate to creating images that look like a classic police mug-shot discussing the complexities involved in making the image.

 




 Once you'd shot the first series the results and conventions were discussed and you went out again and we developed the work further aiming to make the work a more convincing version of the classic mug-shot...

As much as you can you're advised to include sketches and drawings. UAL love sketches and drawings and the more you do the less you'll have to write. There's a balance to be had between how much writing you do and how much you illustrate your learning through the use of images (photography or sketches). Potentially you can write a lot less than the example here, but you then need to use images and sketches far more in the process of evidencing your learning and analysis (See the example at the bottom of this post). 

Listen for suggestions in lessons, if an idea or experiment is suggested, you should grab the opportunity and try it out. In the lesson the lecturer discussed the one-eyed aspects of using lenses at different focal lengths. That was a prompt for you to do additional work that would help you attain the higher grades...

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Research is essential and as you go through this course you'll be directed as to how to go about your research at this stage you need to have completed research in conjunction with your practical work you need to do outside of college. (See your brief 'Sinister'). The research at this stage is being directed in that we're pointing you towards specific artists and resources. In response to the artists you're being directed to look at you need to include images and then start the written content offering your initial response to the work prior to reading and learning about it. Once you've offered your opinion and analysis of the work, you then need to read the accompanying text and then write up a summary of the important aspects that relate to your task. This might look like this...

 



 

 

There are loads of examples of how sketchbooks can be put together and a particularly good resources for exploring how others do it is here

On this website you'll find links to videos such as these and you may find them helpful...