Final Assignment - The Art of Photography - Submission

I trawled through my own library of images seeking inspiration for this assignment. I came across a large number of images that I had taken on holiday whilst in France this September. Earlier in the year I had read a fictional book that used the pilgrims' journey from Le Puy en Velay in France to Santiago de Compostela in Spain as its factual basis.  Intrigued by this I decided to follow this path (albeit by car) in two stages - the first part in France in late 2010 and the Spanish part in early 2011. I had a vague idea of using the resulting set of images as a 'Travel' submission for my Associateship submission to the Royal Photographic Society. I had put this idea on the back burner when I decided to work for a Degree and improve my knowledge of photography. I had therefore filed the images as something I might return to in the future or as a simple reminder of a very enjoyable holiday.

On more careful reflection I realised that I had the makings of a submission for the final assignment. The journey met all the criteria of the assignment although there was a great deal of work to be done to select the images that best illustrated the story I wanted to tell. I had several attempts trying to create an interesting 'narrative'. My first one was very religious building orientated (architecture is a genre that I enjoy) and lacked variety. It was also difficult to conceptualise the images on a magazine page. I overcame this problem by creating a slide presentation using 'Keynote' on a Mac with each slide representing a page. I found this most useful.

Thought had to be given to how much narrative to include. There was a clear need to give some background information so that the images were seen in context but I felt that the important part was the reasoning behind my choice and why I had chosen the images that appeared in the final narrative.

My final choice was  a set of images that were varied, told different elements of the story but acted as a cohesive whole.

This assignment lay way outside anything that I had done before and therefore a considerable challenge. Although I had created a panel of images that had acted as a coherent whole the individual images had no direct connection one to the other. I await my tutors comments to see if I understood the purpose of the assignment. I have given myself plenty of time before assessment to submit a further effort.