Prints for Format study visit

This weekend (15–17th March) I am on the OCA study visit to Format Festival in Derby, and on the Sunday there is a group crit session to which I plan to take my work-in-progress.

Process notes

I decided to take 10 images to the crit session. I think by Assignment 5 and/or SYP the full series might be more like 15 to 20 images (Assignment 3 had 21 pictures, though that was in a small book format) but as a work-in-progress snapshot I think 10 is a nice round number that gives a reasonable taste of the concept and execution.

I shortlisted 16 images that I printed out small and moved around on a tabletop until I had what I felt was a workable sequence. Printing small is an interesting technique I’ve previously used as it focuses the vision on basics of composition, colour blocking, form, light and shade. I generally want good figure-to-ground contrast in the images.

I got down from 16 to 10 reasonably easily, looking at a combination of factors such as colour palettes, vantage points and what I could describe as ‘gestural signification’ (i.e. the hand shape formed by the glove). I also knew which images I wanted to start and end with, so the remaining eight needed to fall in line between these two poles.

I did however then go back after the above shots were taken and swap out the third image, and reverse the order of the eighth and ninth.

Of the 10 images, I already had nine of them re-photographed in the projection format that I’ve been experimenting with of late, so I set up the projector and camera and photographed the 10th.

Then I worked on matching text fragments (short descriptions of things that I remember having forgotten) with images, as the text pairings are a key part of my communication intent. I returned to the Assignment 3 version which used 21 text-image pairings, and selected 10 that represented a reasonable mix to get the idea across. The way I did this was quite simply to write on the back of the small prints.

Then it was down to adding the text onto bordered versions of the images in Photoshop.

(click for bigger)

While I have decided – for now – on a text position (underneath image, on the bottom line of the border, I remain undecided on the typeface. I have narrowed it down to two, and have printed five of each. Typeface choice will therefore be one of the points on which I will be requesting feedback.

With both fonts I am aiming to assist my intended reading (i.e. that viewing these images has a sense more like remembering than simply looking); the handwriting font has more of a sense of me scribbling a ‘note to self’, while the ‘old newspaper’ font just has a kind of ‘past-ness’ to it that really appeals to me with this work.

Printing

It’s amazing how different the work can come across when it is printed out rather than on a digital screen. When work is printed, I think you can get a much better idea of which aspects or individual images ‘work’ (or not, as the case may be).

I’m pleased and relieved to say that I believe the current work looks good printed!

I’m printing at A3 as I really think they benefit from being viewed large so that one can see the difference in detail between the projected scene and the glove; I want there to be a kind of uncanny sense that the glove is somehow in a different dimension to the rest of the scene, and this works far better on paper than on screen.

OK, this is starting to feel more real.

Wish me luck!