The final products

I received a photobook today from one of the Open College of the Arts colleagues. Keith is just completing his BA in photography and I’ve followed his blogs for a few years now because he works on areas, and in ways, that I find interesting. You can see Keith’s website here and  his blog here.

I enjoyed Keith’s book, entitled Lifting the Curtain, but where it really stimulated my thinking was in regard of its product values and this triggered lots of through about my final exhibition and how I intend to present my work.

I only ever produced prints for my first degree and I had them printed by a commercial printer. I think my approach was conservative because I was concerned about presenting my images poorly as I have no knowledge creating and laying out books and so wanted to keep within my area of competence and let others – in my case printers – apply their expertise where needed.

Up until now I have tried to keep away from thinking about final products as I am only at the end of my second term but receiving Keith’s book has inevitably got me thinking about this again.

I don’t think I should be afraid of producing a book if that suits my subject matter. Indeed it seems that a growing number of places offer a book production service aimed squarely as the photographer so one of the things I will need to do at some point is research these to make sure if I produce a book it meets my – as yet unknown – criteria.

I do expect to explore making a video of some sort. I had not envisaged that when beginning the MA but the requirement to make one as part of my Unit One Mid point Review – see here – indicated that this could also be a useful way of communicating.

But I must not get ahead of myself.

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