Sorting it All Out

Spent the last three days trying to sort out those images I wish to use in the final submission. I had about 1800 images that I had taken for the project over the past 10 months covering a wide range of 'costumes' and activities from around England. As stated in previous blogs I widened the scope of the project by including modern day wear on the grounds that we all make a statement about our perceived personality in the way that we dress. I also agreed with my Tutor, in his response to Assignment 4, on the way that the images could be presented. I moved from the original proposal to present the work in a purely linear form to a more complex, but more interesting, layout. These changes required an structured approach to resolving the various issues around which images to use and which to discard. As always there is the conflict between those images that best tell the story and those that I personally like that have a less certain relevance to what it is I want to produce.

I arrived at the decision as to how best to achieve my aim by returning to the original RAW files. I then discarded those images that 'failed' either because they were less relevant, similar images to others, because of technical issues or photographer failure ( I did take the opportunity of examining the photographer failures to learn from my mistakes). The remaining images (132) I printed  as Contact Sheets.  I cut up the contact sheets creating individual images and then placed the individual images into different groups that I felt offered the best chance to discover what I wanted. Using Lightroom I examined these and discarded those where the story I wished to tell was best served by other images. Currently I have 98 images that need further decision but I have l left the final decision to after I have mocked up a book to see the 'best fit'.

There is also the need to consider the text within the book and the best way to provide narrative and captions. To this end I have returned to a study of the book "Context and Narrative" [Short M (2011) "Context and Narrative" Lausanne AVA Publishing SA] as it offers a number of pointers and suggestions that will assist me in the provision of the text.