PYW showcase journal

Promoting Your Work SHOWCASE JOURNAL 1st June 2017 Roseanna Gyles

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Contents 4

Prior research

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Week 1

12

Week 2

14

Week 3

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Week 4

22

Week 5

23

Week 6

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Week 7

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Week 8

32

Week 9

38

Week 10

41

Week 11

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Week 12

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Book making planning and evaluation

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My exhibit

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Exhibition Day

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Reflections and Evaluations

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1st semester planning and research for promoting your work module

During the 1st semester we were urged by tutors to start thinking about and contacting places in which to exhibit our work for the upcoming PYW module. After much research we found somewhere that was willing to let us exhibit our work there for free (most were asking for ÂŁ400). Not only that it is in a prime city center location and fits what the group had decided would be desirable characteristics. We were interested in the idea of exhibiting our work in a non-traditional setting, we were looking for somewhere with a warehouse kind of feel. The ability to have live music was also discussed; The Old Red Bus Station

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matched all of these requests and upon going to the venue and meeting the owner we were told they had actually hosted a few exhibitions like this before. They were even willing to let us exhibit our work there for 2 whole weeks, the only catch being that we come and remove it on any nights where they were having late-night music events because these can get pretty rowdy. They did however hint that they might even be able to store them for us and they said hanging them back up would be fine because we could leave whatever we were hanging them by in the walls.

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The photographs on this page show the areas which The Old Red Bus Station were going to allow us to use for our exhibition.

The bar area (right page) regularly hosts photography and images exhibited here would have been safe to leave on any nights where events were happening too. We discussed having one pace of work by each student exhibited here.

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Week 1

During the first week we were advised that we would no longer be putting on an exhibition in a venue of our choice but rather we were being given two rooms at the university to arrange our showcase within.

We had previously set plans in motion to exhibit our work over a twoweek period at a newly developed venue in Leeds city center so being told the university would not to fund this as they had done with previous years caused a bit of stir within the group. Once the benefits of having the exhibition at the university had been outlined planning carried on regardless.

We discussed the different groups we would need to arrange and what each role would require. I decided initially that I would like to be involved in the making of the book and the designing of materials relating to the show.

I noted down the requirements for roles relating to both of these things but when we were later asked to call out which group we would like to be in we were told initially to choose just one. I picked design when it was my turn to decide, If I could do this again I would pick the making of the book first because I wasn’t aware at the time it was a one person role so when it got picked a few people later I didn’t have the option to work on it anymore, yet the design team had around nine people in it.

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Some of the requirements for the design team are: •

Designing a poster specific to the photographic journalism course exhibition.

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Designing a poster to advertise the final showcase of the school of Computing, Creative

Technologies and Engineering (CCT&E) courses overall.

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Creating artist statement boards.

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Creating name boards for all CCT&E students exhibiting in the showcase.

I got to work on designing a poster immediately when I returned home from this first week’s session. At this stage we had not decided on a name so I used the idea for a name I had developed from a short brain storming session during some free time in the seminar.

The image below shows some of the names I came up with from this, with the one I decided to use in my concept poster and suggest to the group circled in red.

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The image on the left is the poster I created after the first week’s session

Photos used are my own, if this poster was to be used photos would be switched out for ones by other students too. An idea for including a section of one photograph by every student would be to use strips of each photograph to produce a striped effect within the shapes rather than singular blocks of one photograph.

During the first week we also discussed what our input to the show would require as individuals. I noted this down so I could begin planning and executing processes as soon as possible.

Individual responsibilities: •

Exhibition content – photographs and any copy.

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Content presentation – printing/framing/installation.

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Business cards/individual promotional materials.

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Any digital material to be displayed on a screen, either individually or

as a contribution to a group slide show.

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Artist statement.

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Presentation plan – in case the hanging of the exhibition is done by

the event team for example rather than the author/artist.

•

Working as a group to produce a professional exhibition using indus-

try standard practices.

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Week 2

Picking a Room

During the second week we were advised that

Regardless we were told we must make a deci-

contrary to what we had been told the week

sion between the two rooms. After much con-

previous, we would only be allowed one of the

sideration and two rounds of voting the group

rooms, so we had to choose which one.

unanimously decided on the Acre room.

Meeting at the Acre room later in the day a fairly

Of the two rooms I prefer the Acre room be-

heated debate took place after some students

cause I feel it has more character than the Jubilee

registered their unhappiness with the way the

room. I feel that whilst in the Jubilee room the

module had been restructured. The main issue

objective would be to cover up the room with

brought forth were with regards to the spaces

the exhibition, in the Acre room the exhibition

we had now been forced to pick between, nei-

can work with the space to produce a unique dis-

ther area is an actual exhibition/gallery space

play of work.

and neither of the rooms are very large, so once all students work has been hung the space will inevitably be quite crowded. Had we not previously been told in semester one to begin looking for a venue and have found one, these issues would probably not have been as disruptive to the planning of the show.

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My main worry with having the exhibition in the Jubilee room has a lot to do with the greenish tint the room has from the pale green paint and wallpaper used on the walls. The tint could possibly have an adverse effect on the tones in the photographs being exhibited. The colour and overall look of the room had connotations for me and a few others of care homes or hospitals. The old green frumpy curtains and the grand piano that is covered with a raggedy beige/yellow cloth did not help this vibe. We were advised we would not be able to remove either of these things, or even move or uncover the piano, which I think is part of the reason people began to rethink whether this room would be suitable.

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By the end of the week two session we had agreed on a room and began preliminary planning with bodies responsible for supplying lighting and gantry to construct false walls to give the room the space needed to hang all of the work.

Along with three others I also stayed behind to plan a meeting with the dean of the CCT&E school to discuss the universities contribution to the exhibition both in resources and budget. We planned such questions as; will the university cover the costs of things like posters and hiring extra gantry if needed.

The purpose of the appointment was also to secure the room we had decided on. We made the appointment for 10:00am the following Friday.

Before week 3 session

We met at 10:00 with Colin Pattinson, Dean of the School of Computing, Creative Technologies and Engineering.

He advised that the university would pay for any extra gantry required and the provision of large plywood boards to be painted and hung from the gantry as makeshift gallery walls. He also said that the university would pay for the overall posters for the whole AET faculty showcase and that they might pay for the posters for our specific exhibition, we just need to get it to him in good time for approval. We were also given the go ahead for alcohol to be served.

He said that he would look into whether or not we could begin constructing our exhibition in the room on the day before the launch.

On a less positive note he also included that we may have to share part of our space with the Broadcast Media Technology students. I had previously registered an interest in exhibiting my work along one of the walls of wooden alcoves facing the windows, this is something I would likely rethink if this area is going to be used to show students from a different courses work because this could cause my work to look out of place or be missed by the right people.

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Week 3

During this week’s lecture and seminar we decided on a name. We had previously anonymously each wrote down a name idea on a piece of paper and given it to the lecturers, the plan was then to reveal them then do an anonymous vote by the same method. Unfortunately the pieces of paper were lost in transit so in this week’s session the tutors decided to use a different method, getting us to generate more name ideas on the spot. These names were then written on the board, a raise of hands then voted for each one. Everyone was able to vote for as many names as they wanted, the numbers of people who had voted for each name were written next to the names. All of the names with few votes were then rubbed away and another voting stage using the same method occurred. The two ideas with the highest number of votes were then each up for vote and again we could either vote for one, vote for both or vote for none. The name with the most number of votes was ‘Archive’, winning by just one vote.

A good number of students were unhappy with the name choice and felt the method of choosing and voting for a name had been unfair. Due to this one of the tutors devised an online voting form where students were told to vote anonymously against the names given, which were all derivatives of the names that had received the most number of votes. It was also possible to add a different name idea.

This method of anonymity I think works better with voting because voters can be much more objectively decisive without the influence of others present. My one criticism however is that in order to suggest a different name and have an equal part of the voting consideration this would need to be done before the voting was open. Opening both the idea for a new name and voting at the same time meant that any new name suggested would not be considered by all.

During the seminar part of this week’s session we got into our respective teams and started planning and executing some of the initial processes for organising the exhibition. In the design team we decided the promotional poster was probably the best place to start so we all began drafting some posters using some of the names from the online voting form. We then uploaded our finished ideas to the shared Google Drive folder that had been made for this. The next stage will be to decide which poster design works best.

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Since I had already designed a poster based on the name I had came up with I changed this to one of the names which the group had elected as the best few, this can be seen below.

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The top image uses a photograph of the James Graham building (where the exhibition is being held) as the fill.

I experimented with having the university logo and name as a larger element within the poster.

The bottom image is a draft design, the text and logo would be filled with students work in this example. The strips of students work would need to be much thinner I think for this design to be graphically effective.

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Week 4

Designing a logo and deciding on a direction to go in terms of the poster was this week’s task for the design team. We discussed the various posters we had made with the rest of the group and decided unanimously that the one made by Ella Sedman was the most graphically pleasing, this decision also helped finalise the name for the exhibition since until we had seen this design we had not fully agreed upon this. I particularly like how the poster uses full bleed photographs as the background because I think it really highlights the fact that it is photography related exhibition, something I think previous years posters had been lacking. Another great thing about the poster is the way it works with different images when the colour of the text is changed to match the colours of the image in some way.

The idea is to each submit a few photographs which may be included in the poster, we have been given the design layout as an InDesign file so we can each explore different designs using our own photographs. The plan is either to have each students work printed on a poster and have several of these made, or to select a handful of the posters which work best and have more of each one made and used to advertise the show. I think it would be really great if we could get one image from each person on a poster so that there is a variety of different posters but which all follow the same design. I think this could help the posters to be more engaging whilst also being fair to all students. It shouldn’t be too time consuming to do either, once the layout is finalised it would simply be a case of placing each image within the design.

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Here are some examples of logo and name designs I came up with during week 4.

The one below was inspired by EU vehicle registration plates. The vehicle element was supposed to symbolise the road ahead for the graduating students.

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Week 5

Book I registered an interest in developing the book

Etiquette

again after it was brought to the attention of

Lecturers were a few minutes late to this ses-

tutors that the original person who was given

sion after a quick meeting had been called by

this job hadn’t been attending the sessions con-

the student reps. A good number of people

sistently.

weren’t attending the sessions and as such the bulk of work was being delegated to the few

• Applying for jobs

who were attending. This had brought on some worries from the class about whether certain

• Finalising logo

tasks would be completed and also the fairness of marking us as a group if some people

• Sending contributions to bank (Deadline 7th

hadn’t been turning up at all whilst others had.

April)

It was decided that the members of the group who had not been attending should be ignored

Show-reel meeting Gemma Povey

should they attempt to contact other students

Gemma Povey is part of the marketing depart-

for the purpose of catching up on what they

ment at Leeds Beckett and essentially in charge

had missed. An email was sent out urging these

of what does and doesn’t make it onto ‘The Big

students to come in and speak directly with the

Screen’ in Millennium Square. The screen is a

course leader should they have any problems.

joint venture between Leeds council and the university, Povey stated that it is for this reason that she has to be very mindful about what content is appropriate to display on the screen.

Images glorifying alcohol or drug use or advertising brands, even where only incidental, are prohibited and will not be displayed should they be sent to Povey in the showreel.

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We had been told that last year the market-

Week 6

ing department wouldn’t even allow an image of a women breastfeeding to be shown, even

Christian Bennet from The Guardian came to do

though nothing inappropriate was visible. When

a talk for us this week so the seminar was cut

questioned on this Povey said she had stopped

short so we could attend this.

this image being published because at that time the partnership with Leeds council was new

During the lecture we gave presentations show-

so the department was being extremely cau-

ing what each group had achieved so far and

tious about what they published in order to set

what the plan is moving forwards.

a good starting basis for this relationship. She stated that if the same image were to be sub-

I presented a PowerPoint made by a member

mitted this year she would now give it the go-

of the design team who could not make it in for

ahead because she was confident that they had

this session. It had examples of posters, invita-

proved themselves enough to the council that

tions and logo’s that had been created by mem-

they could deal with any backlash.

bers of the team and then voted for by the class as a whole.

We viewed last year’s showreel and as a class we critiqued it as a form of research for the planning of our own. We agreed that last year’s had looked a little basic and that portrait images didn’t really work well in the landscape format of the screen, so we decided not to have any in our own version. One of the students volunteered to make the showreel and began planning to do so.

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Week 7

This week we managed to finalise a number of deadlines for content and funding for the exhibition.

For my part I am creating a mock up of the book including templates for formatting and my own section formatted with images to serve as an example to present to the rest of the group next Friday (24/03/17).

It has now been finalised that I will take sole responsibility for the production of the showcase book, which will include photographs from ever student exhibiting. I had asked to do the book initially but was told no because it was a sole role and was already filled. In the weeks that followed it was mentioned a couple of times by a few of the other students that someone else should be assigned to this role as well to ensure the book was completed by the deadline. Eventually the student reps raised complaints at a meeting; afterwards tutors announced that someone else would be required to work on the book since the original person assigned to this role hadn’t been attending consistently. I registered an interest in this again but it wasn’t really until this week that I knew I would be taking the full task of this on.

Although this is good, finding out in week 7 that I now have full responsibility of creating this book is not. If my interest in working on this aspect of the exhibition had been acknowledged initially I would have essentially had a further 7 weeks of planning behind me.

Due to this large task being given to me half way through the production cycle I will be taking a lessoned responsibility in the design team. The design team is quite large as it is so tasks will be split up and I will only be drafted in if necessary.

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The Above image is the first cover design for the book I made and below is a rough sketch I made for another design. The curved lines would have sections of students work in them.

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Week 8

Headshots During this week’s session we had our headshots taken in the studio. These will go on our artist statement boards and on the website. It had previously been suggested by a tutor that we each take a selfie and then use these as the headshots. Although using a selfie may have given our exhibition some creative flair it was decided unanimously that having a set of studio portraits with consistent lighting and backgrounds would give the exhibition and more professional and polished feel. I am really happy with the way these turned out and I especially like how the white backgrounds will merge perfectly with the white backgrounds of the artist statement boards. In terms of graphic quality I think this will be a nice feature.

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These images and the ones shown overleaf are the original templates I made to demonstrate how different layouts would look within the square format of the book. I showed this to the group and asked that they submit photographs to the Google Drive folder which had been set up and include a rough guide to how they would like them to be positioned within the pages.

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Week 9

• Planning our areas- guide to be given to the venue team by week ten.

• Showing the template design for the book to everyone present who hadn’t yet seen it.

• Explaining again what I needed from people for the book.

The image on the left shows the first stages of planning for the layout of my exhibit.

I was originally thinking of having alternating black and white frames and mounts. I also experimented with the idea of having the photographs alternate between colour and black and white.

At this stage I was thinking about having 2 square frames hanging in each wooden alcove, as can be seen in this plan.

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Although I had registered my interest in exhibiting my work in the wooden alcoves I knew there was still a chance this wasn’t going to be possible so I also planned a design for my work to be exhibited on the white boards which were being hung from gantry. This can be seen below. The frames in this design are considerably smaller than the 50x50cm frames I plan to use in the wooden alcoves.

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The finalised posters were shown today to the class alongside the final postcard invites. Several issues were addressed with these during this session including the fact that images had been removed and replaced by the designer’s own photography in one case, which had resulted in all of the posters images being portraits of women. We felt this was a bit misrepresentative of the exhibit as a whole and as such the designer agreed to reopen image submissions in order to achieve more variety in the promotional posters. My photograph had originally been used as one of the poster images but was removed without explanation, this was a little disheartening but since there were only going to be 3 photographs used on the posters now I felt it a little arrogant to ask why.

The photographs on these pages show what I submitted originally and the initial poster which was created using one of these.

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The photographs below show what I uploaded for the second round of submissions for the poster and the postcard invites.

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During this week’s seminar I also had my artist statement checked by a tutor and some changes were made based off feedback. The amended statement can be seen below.

Roseanna Gyles

“The production of too many useful things results in too many useless people” Karl Marx Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844

The photographs exhibited here underpin Roseanna’s research into the fall of Soviet communism and its continued effect on countries of the former USSR, specifically Bulgaria and Romania. These two bordering countries were chosen due to their close geographical and historical relationships. Roseanna’s research has revealed these similarities and led to the discovery that a large majority of Bulgaria and Romania’s social, political and economic issues seem to be rooted in an overwhelming and long underlying corruption of power.

These photographs show, in a creative way; what this current situation is doing to the state of Bulgaria, a country that was once one of the most successful countries within the Soviet bloc, and is now one of the least successful in the European Union.

This country is one of the most extreme examples of the effect of the fall of Soviet communism.

It is not all doom and gloom, despite the issues facing Bulgaria there is still a sense of community and the people, especially in the rural areas generally upkeep traditional methods of growing, harvesting, preserving and often trading food. Much of their lives revolve around living off the land and as such they are highly sustainable and environmentally friendly. They seem to be a lot more in touch with nature than us, their more westernised counterparts.

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Week 10

This week we discussed the format for the artist statement boards, this was the design teams job overall but since I was originally on this team and could be drafted in at any time I made a rough template for the artist statement boards.

This can be seen below.

During week 10 I also made sure that everyone knew the dimensions of the book and what I needed them to do with their images. Some people were still yet to shoot all of their photographs so I told the class to get them done and in the folder by the end of the Easter break, giving them 2 weeks.

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Exhibition plan - final photographs and order

Experimenting with half black and white half colour idea

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Handed plan for exhibition space (below) to venue team.

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After Easter

Week 11

After the Easter break most things were in motion regarding the responsibilities of each team and when things needed to be done by. I met all of these deadlines; contribution, artist biography, images for print, images for website and so on. It was decided that the social media and showreel images would be taken from the website folder rather than have people upload their work again. This was announced on the group chat so I continued to work on the book rather than submit images to these folders, safe in the knowledge I had already submitted my images to the Website folder.

I also began searching for frames for my prints. Everywhere I looked frames were costing ÂŁ15 and up for the 50x50cm size I wanted. I was pointed in the direction of Ikea by a tutor and this solved all issues. They had pretty much the exact thing I was looking for and for only ÂŁ7, without this I was looking at a cost of ÂŁ120 (not affordable) or more and most of the more expensive frames had flimsy plastic fronts where as the Ikea ones have glass fronts.

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Week 12

After a guest lecture the session was devoted to getting everything on track to meet the deadlines for the exhibition.

I spent this session predominantly focusing on telling everyone to get their images into the folder for the photo book because despite reminders there was roughly only around 6 people who had done this so far. I told them the specifications for images and pointed them in the direction of a word document I’d written and uploaded to Google Drive with the instructions in so they could have them there when they were doing their images. I also sent out a reminder email to the full class and posted a message in the course chat that told people images needed to be in the folder by the coming weekend and pointed them in the direction of the instructions document I’d made. I told people the latest date to get these in would be the 10th but I revised this date to the 7th in the email and message I sent to them. I explained that I would need time to lay the images out, resolve any issues and that the company stated delivery can take up to 9 working days (with quickest delivery option), of which by and including the 10th there was only 9 left of until the exhibition.

During this session I also reprocessed my images for the exhibition and added them to the Google Drive folder from which they would be printed. I made half of them in black and white too because I had been playing with the idea of having them half in black and white and half in colour. I uploaded these to the folder and asked that they be printed as well should there be extra time/materials.

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Book making evaluation

Everyone had been told for a while that pictures would need to be in the shared Google Drive folder for the photo book as early as possible because Blurb (the company we were ordering from) can take up to two weeks to make and deliver the book.

Blurb actually say to expect the book within 7-9 working days but as the upper end of that has the possibly to also contain two weekends, two weeks before the exhibition was the latest we decided as a group, to order by. The week before Easter I urged people to get their photographs in the folder and to submit a layout of how they wanted them to appear in the book. I asked people to do this in the promoting your work workshop but also in a group Facebook message and email in order that this information wasn’t missed.

In the Module handbook it states that the book should have been ordered in the week beginning 24/04/17. This was to allow time for the book to be reordered should there be any amendments needed, this book would have acted as the proof copy.

What actually happened was despite reminders the vast majority of students did not submit any photographs for the book until the weekend of the 6th of May and some days after that. The weekend was the last date I had agreed to accept photographs by because I needed to have time to design the book pages. I also needed to have the page numbers finalised before I could even begin designing the cover because the Blurb InDesign plug-in generates a template for the cover based on the page count as this decides the spine width.

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I thought about designing something with all of the student’s photographs for the cover but due to basically having to turn most of the book around in just over 3 days and not having most peoples work until so late on, this wasn’t an option. Despite this, I am happy with the design I made for the cover and the contents page using the exhibition title as it appears on the posters and other materials relating to the exhibition to keep it consistent. Having seen last year’s showcase book I actually thought that the cover looked a little bit messy with the grid of desaturated images as the background so I wanted to take a fresh approach and have it more minimal looking really anyway. I discussed this with some of the other students individually early on but most of them preferred the idea of having images on the cover in some way or another, so I designed a few layouts that incorporated images and had planned to use one of them. In the end however it was not possible to use any of them because the images and artist statements were coming in so late that I was working non-stop on getting the pages looking right. Even once I had done this I was getting messages telling me that people had submitted images three days after the last deadline so I needed to focus on now fitting these in without changing the page numbers, so the small amount of time I did have designing the cover was again cut short.

Originally I had wanted to use a font I had found called

BALLANS

but I wasn’t sure whether I should use the same font as had been used on the posters and other promotional materials to keep the book consistent with these. I consulted the other students on the matter and most were of the opinion I should use the same font, so I did. I used this font for the names within the book too because I felt it gave it a more packaged and coherent feel. Some students had suggested specific fonts for me to download and use on their pages so I apologised and explained that having all of the names and body copy fonts in the book consistent was a design feature, which nobody minded.

The font used for the book title and other exhibition materials is

BEBAS

Both fonts are available from dafont.com and are 100% free to use for commercial and other purposes.

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Ink spot and other imperfections When I received the book I noted several imperfections, I believed the largest of which, an ink spot on page 98 would warrant a reprint by the publisher so I sent them the email below .

A member of staff quickly replied with the email below (continues overleaf).

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I was very satisfied with this reply and chose the option to have a code so that I can amend the book before having it reprinted. The code was promptly sent over to me and it allows 90 days before it expires, so I have a good amount of time now perfect the book.

It turned out that due to the ink spot this book would be the proof copy. Imperfections thankfully are minor so the book was still a great addition to the exhibition, but in terms of the university keeping the book in archive I am almost glad there was an ink spot because now I can ensure the copy which is kept is a highly polished professional looking product.

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Below are some images I sent to the publisher to show the issues.

Other issues I plan to correct are:

• The title/contents page - The L in the word underline is obscured by the gutter more than I would like and to keep numbering consistent technically the first name should have a 4 next to it not 5.

• Page 29 - the text is slightly closer to the edge of the page than the previous page.

• Page 79 - Alexander, should just be Alex.

• Pages 86-87 - Student has been found to have plagiarised content, pages to be removed.

• Page 101 - Text is closer to image than on pages that follow.

• Page 142 - A late submission meant that some photographs are missing from this students section, pages 86-87 will be repurposed to correct this.

• Pages 162-163 - Slight overlap of images.

I didn’t credit myself in the original version either so I plan to add this somewhere. Something like, ‘Designed and produced by Roseanna Gyles’.

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I have included a PDF of the book pages as part of my submission but here are some images of the printed book for reference too.

I added a barcode in case the university wishes to purchase another copy of the book should it become damaged.

Because the logo here is so small it had to be resized perfectly in Photoshop to avoid distortion.

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Exhibition Day

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22/05/2017

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The Exhibition Day

I arrived at about 13:30 on the exhibition day in order that I could go to the print room in the university to have my business cards printed before the exhibition was due to open at 15:00. I managed to get there just in time to see the ‘Silver Snappers’, an elderly photography club which had inspired my previous semester project for the Creative Media Practice module of this course. I was delighted I had made it in time to see them and this was also a great start to the exhibition. Talking to them about my work was a nice way to ease into the day; one of the ladies also expressed an interest in buying a copy of my book, which I was exhibiting alongside my photographs.

After a short talk with the group I had to rush off and get my business cards printed. I was in the print room for around 14:00, this was a very confusing time. I rang the bell and the print room operative on duty came over promptly, I asked if I could have an A4 sheet printed double sided on a reasonably high GSM paper in colour. He said that he wouldn’t be able to do it initially for half an hour to an hour, advising that I come back at 15:00. He then asked what I wanted printing and if he could have a look at the file so I gave him it on a USB and told him it was business cards which I had already formatted and sized so that the back and front pages should line up perfectly. He wasn’t sure that they would, he asked, how are you going to know that they will line up correctly? So I told him I had built the template in InDesign and used the same template for both pages, so the images were in the exact same place on the PDF pages.

The images on the right are the A4 pages I gave the printer.

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He continued to say it was going to be really hard for me to cut the cards out and that usually when they do business cards they do less to a sheet and that these weren’t going to be the right size. I made them based on the standard credit card measurements (85x53mm) so I reassured him this would be fine and that if it was a little bit off it didn’t really matter too much. I also said that cutting out would be fine because I planned to use a guillotine. He agreed to do the job but then said that because it was business cards I would need to pay for at least 50, which he said would cost £5, then £3... I agreed but then he said that maybe he could just do one sheet instead. So he went off and came back with a proof copy (image overleaf).

The images were much larger than business cards and he had changed the layout. I said that they wouldn’t really work because of the size and asked if he could just use my layout because I had sized them to the correct size. He said okay and then went off to get another proof copy (image overleaf).

Again the layout had changed, the cards were at least the right size by this point and after having been there for almost half an hour I decided to just give the go-ahead to print. A couple of minutes later he returned with the print, 8 business cards printed double sided on a an A4 sheet of card. I had originally managed to fit 11 on an A4 sheet so I asked out of interest what was wrong with the design I had given him and he said some things that didn’t really make any sense, one of them was that the layout wouldn’t have worked with me only wanting one business card. I thought I had been quite clear I was just asking for a double sided A4 print, which happened to be business cards and we had been talking earlier about printing one sheet which is when he was saying he’d have to print more because they don’t print just print one sheet of business cards. He was even working out how many sheets he would have to print with my original layout of 11 to make up the minimum of 50 he was stating, that is where his pricing was coming from.

Either way I apologised for any confusion and explained again that I was not looking for just one business card to be printed, I was looking for him to print the A4 pages I had given him double sided on card, so that I would have 11. We had a vague laugh, he apologised too and then he printed another sheet with his layout and offered to cut them out with no charge for the hassle.

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The image on the left shows the first proof copy I received from the print room.

The image on the right shows the second proof copy. This time as can be seen the images were at least the size of business cards so I decided just to go with it rather than waste more time.

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Gantry layout

When I came to hang my photographs on the Sunday before the exhibition I realised that the gantry had been constructed in a way that meant that one of the spaces for my photographs was behind part of the thick metal frame. I had already planned to have 8 images and had them all framed and ready to hang by this point so I decided to hang them all anyway because you could still see the image if you peered round the metal frame and if not I was going to have to quickly rethink the set and get rid of one of them entirely. In reflection I should have possibly put a different photograph in this place because the picture of the corn I did put there was the photograph that I received the most compliments for. I had planned the order the photographs would go in but then due to the obstruction of the last one I rethought this and tried to pick the one I thought people would be least drawn to.

The floor plan above shows the planned layout for the gantry, as can be seen the area in question was supposed to be clear of gantry because it had been marked as an exhibition space.

The photograph on the right shows how the area looked head on; with the gantry obscuring the view of the photograph behind.

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F I N a l E X H I B I T E D I M A G E S 56

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In order to further strengthen viewer engagement with my work I decided to exhibit my book ‘Bulgarian Outskirts’ alongside my framed prints. The book was created as part of my production project and all of the exhibition prints are also featured within the book. Exhibiting the book gave the images more context for anyone who was intrigued by them or wanted more information than that which was in my artist statement. Allowing viewers to flick through the pages of the book also made the exhibit as a whole more interactive.

If I was to exhibit this work again however I would ensure I got a stand for the book as many times after the book was looked through it got put down flat on the shelf it was on rather than stood upright. This meant that I kept having to go over and stand it up again so that it didn’t go unseen by other viewers.

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Artist statement boards

The image below shows my finished artist statement board which was displayed next to my work at the exhibition. The text has been shortened to fit the board, I believe this was done by the design team at some point. As such, a section of my original artist statement is missing from this printed version. Although it would have been nice to have been told the artist statements needed to be cut down to fit the boards so that I could have done it myself and made sure I didn’t miss anything out which was important.

I think whoever was responsible has done a good job re-editing all of the statements and I understand there was also time constraints here.

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Finished double sided business cards displayed at the exhibition

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Reflections and Evaluations

Everyone who will be graduating managed to exhibit something and it was really great to see everyone’s work and to be a part of the showcase as a whole. Other courses don’t have the same kind of end of year show opportunity and I feel like that is something which overall, really helped moral, motivation and confidence of students on this course and developed skills which should help us succeed in industry.

The exhibition overall looked quite professional, most people’s work was nicely framed and organised and there was a nice variety of different types of photography and journalism. Having been to previous year’s exhibitions I think that the inclusion of different types of work has been something which until now was lacking. The nature of the course is the study of both photography and journalism so this exhibition felt much more relevant as an end of year showcase of the course, rather than just the photographic element of it.

Despite the success of the exhibition there are still some elements within the planning which could have been executed better so that the end result was more successful overall. Firstly, there have been a lot of missed opportunities; we had the opportunity to display the work for free in two separate other places (The Village Bookstore and The Old Red Bus Station) but this didn’t happen for one reason or another.

A much larger issue in my opinion was also that no industry people were invited; I couldn’t believe this when I found out on the day of the exhibition. I think this issue should really have been addressed sooner but then again the module was a little bit all over the place as things kept changing so it would be unfair to try and pass around blame for this oversight. From an employability point of view though, this exhibition could have been much more effective if we had invited some industry professionals.

The room was pretty small once all our stuff was in so during the evening when it got incredibly crowded it got incredibly hot too. This was a bit annoying when my friends came to see my work for example and we literally couldn’t get to it, it was so rammed and people were leaning on the shelves of the alcoves and using them to leave empty glasses and bottles in.

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Although the costs for me were heavily reduced by the printing arrangement I still had to buy 8 frames, an A2 cutting mat, a craft knife capable of cutting through thick card and a metal meter ruler. On top of this there was the £50 contribution we all had to make, although around £8 of this is due to be returned this still puts my costs at over £120.

After I had bought the frames I got an email saying that the university was going to buy frames, but that they would keep these afterwards. This was bad timing but I didn’t really mind because although I’m not sure what to do with my 8 50x50cm framed prints now, It would have been a bit of a shame to frame them for just one day and they would likely go into storage if I brought them back just as prints. Plus this way if the time comes, they are ready to exhibit again.

After I had been advised by a tutor to buy the cutting equipment because the university guillotines would just chew up the prints I found out that some of the other students were using the university cutting stuff and with good results. The cutting equipment I bought was in this sense an unneeded cost and I do have some of the things already back in Cumbria at my mam’s house. However, these things are all hardwearing and I’m sure I’ll get use of them again, especially if I plan to be a practicing professional photographer.

The photographs looked better with some natural lighting but during the daytime when this was available virtually no one seen the exhibition. The artificial lighting wasn’t ideal, it did work though, just certain areas were a bit spot light-esque whereas others were quite dark. The reflections (caused by the lights) on the glass fronts of my frames were also a little bit distracting.

The website is good but I would say the background video of James Graham would look a lot better if a tripod had been used so that only the flag was moving. As it is it’s quite obvious where the loop begins and ends. I had an idea for the video which was to have the shot showing the full building and then have the students walk past the building, possibly holding signs or signaling to the camera in some way. I suggested this idea but since I wasn’t on the website team it wasn’t my call and it would have also taken a lot more time and organisation.

Despite the issues everyone (students, family, friends and tutors) seemed to enjoy the exhibition and I was over the moon to be awarded the Aesthetica award for best photography! This will go on my CV and hopefully help me attract prospective employers within the field.

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