In those previous courses I found other student's blogs invaluable as a guideline, especially to make sure I was aiming my own work at the same level or higher than others. I have my own blogs likewise can help other future students.
In this course, Documentary, I have several things that I'd like to gain from the course, and improve on what I did in earlier courses. Firstly, I want to build a much greater awareness of the history of photography, major players in the field, and what is happening today in photography. My previous courses were much more practical based than this one, thus I found it hard to dedicate time to reading books. This time I'm going to seriously ramp up the amount of reading I do; partly due to necessity because of the nature of the course, but mostly because I'm excited about building a physical (and mental) library of knowledge with a subject I find intensely interesting. I usually find 'art speak' very difficult to interpret, but hopefully practice is going to help with that.
I found choosing my level 2 course very difficult, as I wasn't sure on the exact direction I wanted to take. I came back full circle to my first instinct: Documentary; mainly I expect because I like to travel and document those travels. I also enjoy history, and creating a photo-documentary on the long history of the town I live in for example I think would be an exciting project. In my last photography course I touched a little on documenting an event (Birmingham's Frankfurt Christmas market), and a theme (street performers), both of which I found very enjoyable to do.
Finally, I give the name of my blog as a quote relevant to the discipline I am studying. This time I chose one by Richard Avedon:
'All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth.' - Richard Avedon
I think this is particularly pertinent to documentary photography. After all, the only truth you see is what the photographer has allowed you to see.
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