Wrestling with ideas

The welcome week is over. I have attended introductory webinars and alternated between feeling motivated and excited and asking, “Do I belong here?” Hopefully I belong.

I went out to a local town and, as is my way, took a small camera with me. I spent some time walking around the market and “seeing” what stood out. “Seeing” means more to someone studying this course than to others. It is not “looking” — it is more than that. I was drawn to the scene in the image above by two distinct elements. Firstly, the wrestling posters.

They could have been taken from earlier times. The ticket pricing would be the giveaway. I like “Dropkickingly Brilliant” and “Suitable for all ages” despite people being thrown all over the place. But there is something else here: the wider image sets the context for the type of event. This is not WWF in a major arena; this is a very local event. And I liked the arrangement of the crates. But perhaps the most interesting part of my thought process (and I attribute this to my recent reading) was that I could not fit the yellow trolley into the frame with my camera, so I switched to my iPhone and got a wider angle. Seeing vs. looking? Maybe, maybe not, but the thinking is there, and I will take that at this stage.

The second key element is the light. In the wider image, the bananas and onions (and the yellow trolley) are on stage, and the shaft of light adds value to the scene in my view. In the close-up (this is a crop of the camera image), it could be used to produce a presentable square image, and I will return to this at some point.

I am already wondering whether I will look back on this image in two years and shake my head. I hope not; the scene made me smile and think regardless.

The start of it all

September 1st

I have been considering pursuing a Masters in Photography for some time. Having studied Computer Science, Business Studies, and, most recently, Law, I felt drawn to an intellectual challenge in a field I enjoy. So, here I am, in the onboarding phase of an MA in Photography at Falmouth University. While working through the pre-reads, I found the recommendation to start a blog. This is the start of it all: the blog, the course, and what might be called the “journey”.

Having read some of the recommended books, I have a sense of how the course will help shape me as a photographer, not in a technical sense, but in a philosophical one. I imagine graduates of this course move from looking at pictures to seeing images; from taking snapshots to making photographs, from filling Lightroom with thousands of average images to curating a portfolio of meaningful pieces. Lofty ambitions for me, maybe?

I have always respected and enjoyed the work of some of the greats. I have books by Annie Leibovitz, Steve McCurry, Robert Frank, Martin Parr, and others. I have their prints on the wall. And I have zines created by artists who, while less well-known, appeal to my taste, such as Marc Wilson. I am hoping the course will help me appreciate these bodies of work more deeply. They are my inspiration and inform how I engage with photography, so by understanding more of why they made the images they did, there is a chance that inspiration is strengthened and my own work can become more relevant.