From October to December I put contacting photographers on the back burner, I was so caught up in my main project and photography in context that I had only made a list of about 25 photographers by christmas. As soon as we started back again is January I made sure to email photographers straight away before I got caught up in the new project, and so firstly I contacted Karina Lyburn, a personal branding photographer based in Nottingham, Karina was extremely helpful and said she would be more than happy to let me assist her with one of her shoots, so then I asked her my first set of questions, finding out more about her as a photographer how she works and the industry. I then continued to email more photographers in the next couple of weeks after that, I contacted a range from both Bristol and the East Midlands as it is close to where I live, and will be going back to after graduating. To my surprise, I didn’t get any responses from Bristol based photographers, but did get responses from photographers around Derby/Nottingham. I contacted Nick Dunmur, Andy Hook, Pete Thompson, Sian Hallam-Davies, Lu Jeffery. I got three positive responses out of that group, Nick said he would look over options and opportunities and get back to me, which made me hopeful. Andy Hook replied and asked if I was interested in assisting on a test shoot, he didn’t have a specific date, but I said I was interested which also left me hopeful. Sian is a studio owner in Nottingham (The Flour Mill Studio) and I got into contact with her, to find out the shoot I was assisting Karina with is Sian’s personal branding shoot! These positive responses made me feel satisfied for a while, so I kept emailing any more photographers on hold. Pete replied and told me he couldn’t offer any work experience, but can offer advice, and Lu Jeffery took my phone number incase anything came up that was suitable. This made me feel like I would be just about set for my work experience so I stopped contacting new photographers and focused more on DPIP2 and photography in context, especially with the deadline looming.
Karina’s shoot came along in February, and after that I created new questions, more based around marketing and branding, and so as I hadn’t heard any news from Nick or Andy I sent the questions to them also, sort of as a little reminder. I got replies to my questions from Karina, Sian, and Nick, but sadly no new news on assisting. I took part in putting up ‘I am Kurious’ exhibition for our last main project, this made me think more about in the future where I could sit my images, and when creating images thinking about where they will sit and how they will sit in a exhibition context. I also entered a live brief competition – ‘Portraits of Britain’ ran by The British Journal of Photography. As by this point I hadn’t racked up many hours of assisting work experience, I decided to work hard on shooting portraits for this competition. In total I did six shoots, they weren’t extensive shoots, just a roll of medium format film per shoot, practising shooting portraiture in different working locations. I have tried to focus on just people at work, so I am not lost for choice. I felt this went well, so far it has improved my confidence with meeting new people and approaching them. I have improved my skills with portraiture as well as technical skill with medium format film. The competition deadline isn’t until May so I will be carrying on shooting portraits of people at work.
On reflection I can definitely see room for improvement with my handling of this module. Even though I haven’t made the hours, it has been a huge learning curve for me, and has set off many things to think about, do and work on. It has put me in the right place to start branding myself, putting my self out there and making more contacts. One major error was time management, as I felt the deadline was so far away, I made my priorities on my other two modules. Stupidly not leaving enough time to ensure I completed all the needed hours. It has definitely made me realise how I need to manage my time moving into third year, as I can not make the same mistake I made here. Looking forward I have several opportunities which will be helpful to me. Firstly an arranged shoot with Andy Hook, secondly I will be collaborating with a make-up artist/hair stylist over easter to create an ad campaign, involving a model, this is something quite new to me, so it will be a valuable experience. Lastly over summer I am assisting a wedding photographer as he doesn’t have an assistant anymore. Wedding photography isn’t where I want to be and the end of my career, but it is definitely a starting point and will provide me with transferable skills which will be useful in the future.
Isobel Percy 