This learning outcome is about technical achievement and its application to a piece of work.

The most difficult assignment I did in terms of meeting  challenges was Assignment 4.

In assignment 4 I met several challenges:

• I had to persuade family and close friends to give me words that described my mother’s without simply retreating to ‘she was a lovely person’
• I then had to sort these words into themes without letting too much personal overlay change what was meant (see Assignment 4 – First images for details of this process).
• I had to find appropriate pictures of my mother that fitted part of her life and matched with the themes that came out of the words
• I had to set up small still life setups for each of the pictures
• These then needed to be photographed
  • Sun and shadows effected the image
  • I learnt to remove the glass to avoid undue reflections
  • Focus need to be precise to point up the still life and throw the background out of focus
• The titles needed to be appropriate (and in this case minimal).

Technical and development skills needed were:

• Developing the process and ideas
• Researching archival images and using a found image of my grandmother to focus my practice in a specific direction having initially considered several ways of developing this idea (see Assignment 4 – Initial Thoughts).
• Setting up the still life images, choosing pictures and frames together with items that enhanced them rather than overrode them
• Getting good final images
• Making appropriate choices about final choice of images, colour versus black and white, backgrounds identical, similar or very different (I went with similar).

I was pleased with the final outcome as I felt that it had extended my thinking about photography and in using research to help me develop ideas. I also had to experiment technically to fulfil my ideas and get images that told the story I was wanting to tell.