July 2016 "An online audio-visual piece doesn't necessarily have to be the piece of art in itself, but may simply be part of the "presence" of the work, put together to promote it, possibly to co-incide with an exhibition or publication, or to help generate interest more speculatively. This post by Sharon Boothroyd on WeAreOca discusses a piece of work that is particularly relevant to both our discussions on contemporary landscape photography and the slideshow format. The sequence in question was designed to be at the exhibition. Read the post and if you have any comments of your own, add them and include a link in your learning log." OCA Course Material The collection of images which formed the slide show was composed of approx 80 images, selected from 5,500, viewed in 18 minutes. As a slide show, the viewing is compelling although I found I had to set aside quiet time away from distractions to view it. This becomes an isolated experience, compared to a gallery visit which I think of as a social visit, usually with someone with a like-minded interest with whom I am able to share the experience. The timing was interesting, being equally divided, forcing me to look at some for perhaps longer than I would have liked to. There was a temptation (which I resisted) to skip through these. Some photographs I felt were similar to well known photographers, some were familiar to me and others I wanted to look at for longer. The website does, however, provide the facility to click on the images and informs the viewer of the photographer, their reasons for taking the images and what compels them to take landscape photographs. Should there be music? I think if there was music I would have turned it off to concentrate on the images as I found the text was a distraction in itself. As a medium, there are more photographers presented here than gallery exhibitions I have been to, and with information behind the image. So it works for me as a good resource which I would use in future. Comments for OCA post:
Boothroyd, S. (2012) Online Exhibitions Available at: http://weareoca.com/photography/online-exhibitions/?utm_source=Tutors+by+subject&utm_campaign=c3af55c4bfE_bulletin_4_October_2012&utm_medium=email [accessed 19th July 2016]
June 2016 "Look at some of the audio-visual slideshows on the websites listed above. make some notes about particular works of interest, considering how they are edited, sequenced and how audio is used with the images. Note down your own personal observations. Whether or not you intend to present your photographs for assignment 5 as an audio-visual piece, suppose that for this exercise you will. Familiarise yourself with any basic slideshow or video-making software and compile an edit of your work, experimenting with transitions, text and music and/or sound effects. Save your work so that your tutor and/or assessor can view this if necessary. Write a brief evaluation of your work." OCA Course Material Is this the most appropriate treatment of the work? I think a slide show works well for this assignment as on this occasion there is a great deal of change happening. A slide show allows for the inclusion of more images. How long will the slide show be? Newark and District Photographic Society suggest the performance should last no longer than 12 minutes. At the beginning of my slide show, the introduction is displayed for quite some time to accompany the narration. The following slides are shown for 10 seconds each. I played around with the timing; the default setting on the programme is 7 secs and by imcreasing it I think there is enough time to look at the image. I was initially concerned over the amount of images I used, and watching Hanna Katrina Jedrosz's "I feel every stone of the road" (2014), the speed of her images presented on screen seemed to be quicker than mine. Maybe though that is because I am familiar with my images? Her images worked well with her journey; my work was representative of several journeys into a particular area of land. Have you got relevant audio and or textural material to accompany the images? I found a performance on Youtube of "Childs Ballad 123 The Curtal Friar" which links the narration and photographs together. Not being entirely sure around the Youtube fair usage policy, I used some of it on the slide show but have asked for permission to use it from the performer. Using Washington Irving's book "Abbotswood and Newstead Abbey" (1835), I took some of the sentences from the chapter on Sherwood Forest and Fountain Dale and applied my own words at the beginning and end of it. Irving's book is out of copyright. Sir Walter Scott mentions the Friar, although his book is more story like than Irving's which is a descriptive journey. Other works I found were a newspaper cutting (image too small to enlarge) and 3 postcards from a book. So as not to infringe the postcard book's copyright, I overlaid the modern view over the top. There were ideas on local history pages, but it basically came down to 2 written stories and the idea that the people who lived at Fountain Dale at the time of Sir Walter Scott's visit (the Need Family) placed the signs in the tree to associate Robin Hood and Friar Tuck with the space. This was a tradition which continued as it became a place marked on the Ordnance Survey map. Examples of work I looked at were Ride to the Wall by Howard Bagshaw (4 min 16 secs) because I had seen the procession of bikes along the A38 and Chariots of Fire by Ian Bateman (5 min 44 secs) because the title interested me. Both are different works; one being about the people visiting the national memorial; the other being more factual. Chariots of Fire used the same photographs reinserted again to illustrate a point which worked. Both have different audiences and different messages. I did not need The Wall to be any longer, and I found the sound track repetitive. I liked the transitions in Chariots of Fire. I used Windows movie maker which is a very basic programme. It has the ability to overlay a soundtrack and a narration, and although the slider bar adjusts the volume, it is more difficult to fade one out behind the other. The choice of transitions is limited. The font size can only be changed as a whole on the titles page. I looked at Powerpoint, but I was put off from using it this time because the version on my laptop looked like it would take a little time to understand. If I was to do this again, I would invest in a microphone to improve the sound performance. I changed my narrative from a descriptive one to a more flowery version to perform as i felt there was too much information.
Revised script
Original script
Had I have started planning the assignment for an audio visual performance, I could have made better use of my time by knowing what images I wanted instead of having to make a couple of extra trips such as an image to overlay with the postcard. I felt I couldn't leave the work at Fountain Dale unfinished and had to wait for there to be some water in the old fish pond. If there was not so much work happening, I may have used postcards to show the transitions, in keeping with the old postcard book I found. Edit 1 Edit 2 Bibliography Jedrosz, H. (2014) I feel every stone of the road.[installation, presentation]
Sheffield: New pastoral paradigms: Explorations in landscape and the self. Bank
Street Arts. 23/07/2016
(1999-2016) Society rules Newark and District Photographic Society [online] Available from: http://www.newarkphotoclub.com/rules.aspx [last accessed 27/07/2016] Bagshaw, H. (2011) Ride to the Wall(4 min 16 secs) [online] The Royal Photographic Society. Available from: http://www.rps.org/special-interest-groups/audio-visual/about/av-examples [last accessed 27/07/2016] Bateman, I. (n.d.) Chariots of Fire (5 min 44 secs) [online] The Royal Photographic Society. Available from: http://www.rps.org/special-interest-groups/audio-visual/about/av-examples [last accessed 27/07/2016]
