#printedpage

Overall I am happy with the outcome of my extended project and the rigorous change within the books style and narrative. I now feel I have taken note of the various shortcomings within my initial project and created something I am proud of.

Regarding the lack of analysis of images, I made sure I wrote a thorough detailed evaluation of artists individual imagery such as Carl Warner and David Stuarts work, looking at the context of their work and highlighting what the various photographic elements employed within the work’s effectiveness, as well as relating it to my own ideas.

I also made sure to collect information from other sources for my layout and imagery, though I was unable to source photobooks due to working at home, I found that I could get inspiration from cookery books which would in fact create a more interesting and distinctive book than I had done before.

I am also please with my accomplishment of using inDesign whilst working from home, though this was more of a practical issue, I feel that the effort from travelling to a college in a different Borough allowed me to have more creative freedom and create my book in the best way I could, as well as keeping the quality of my images good.

Regarding the actual book, I feel that the biggest fault within my initial submission was the general simplistic narrative, this being something extremely important for a photobook, I created a more complex and sophisticated version of my original idea, threading in topics of memory, social norms and rituals into a food-photography based book, and cemented clarity of the theme through the introduction and subtitles on each page.

Another issue with the original submission was the simplistic repetitive imagery, though I wanted to keep some elements of the initial grainy 70s kitsch I experimented in style and atmosphere within each spread, hopefully making the finished project dynamic and displaying a wide breadth of idea generation.

If I were to do the printed page module again I would most likely approach the project from a documentary style as I feel that it is the most complimentary to the photobook format. Though at first I felt it would be interesting to look at the subject of food, the genre of food photography is very limited and it is definitely not a subject matter that shocks and sparks lively debate, however I feel I used that to my advantage through creating a child friendly and insincere recipe/photobook which I imagine more as a coffee table read than a traditional photobook.

With regard to the blog, I feel I have lacked with the documentation of inDesign, this is unfortunately due to my shortage of knowledge from inDesign initially, as though I attended the workshops am a slow learner when it comes to technology. Because of this, I did not know any of the correct terms to document and so wrote more about the general style I was going for.

Initially, my approach to the inDesign process was uncertain, due to many of the spreads having different numbers of images, it was difficult to make the pages look balanced and thought out. As such, I tried to make each element that could be uniform be so such as the font, font sizing, borders etc but placed the images in the appropriate style for what I felt suited the context best.

For example, on my Food and social media page, I wanted to create a piece which imitated the iPhone app Instagram, cutting off the top and bottom images as if it were mid-scroll.

For the more traditional and simple images like the Roast and the Baking pages, I kept them uniform, this complimented the flow of the book as a whole and also allowed there to be a few large impact images in the book.

The student food page was designed to be intentionally modern and a little bit less in form with the others, similar to the juxta-opposing images within it I wanted to show the disorganisation in the layout. 

My aim was to produce a photobook with a cohesive theme that developed with each consecutive image. Initially I simply wished to produce a collection of memorable foods however I didn’t feel the narrative was strong enough. I therefore chose to order the images chronologically in order to produce a time line journey through memory.

Research into sequencing and editing a photobook  using http://harveybenge.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/photobook-some-thoughts-on-editing-and.html led me to Gerry Badger and John Gossage as possibly the most influential figures in this field. John Gossage's The Pond was groundbreaking when first published in 1985, and remains one of our most important photobooks. Consisting of photographs taken around a pond in an unkempt wooded area at the edge of a city. The photographs do not depict the beauty of classical landscapes but rather subtly show the reality of the border between man and nature.

Gerry Badger alongside Martin Parr has produced a 2 volume history of the photobook and while not having the time to research these in full I was inspired by the following quote.

“Sequencing the photobook is not a science, it’s an art. It’s like making an abstract painting, a matter of intuitive trial and error. But remember that the intuition of a good artist is a most powerful, a most intelligent and a frequently underrated tool”

I was also influenced by Holly Constantines lecture notes as the language she uses (referring to recipes and ingredients )seems particularly relevant to my photobook. https://hollyconstantinephotography.wordpress.com/2013/02/22/sequencing-a-photobook-lecture/

Here it is suggested that,

1.Have to have the right ingredients

2.Need the recipe/ structure – sequence of events

3.Need to apply structure and sequence

Ingredients for photobook:

250 bad images

200 not so good images

75 great images

6 blank pages

80bpm rhythm

65 image captions

1 motif

1 front cover

1 back cover

Narrative structure

A great concept