Shoot 14 | Pete and Joe

As the journey continues and having recently gone through the lengthy process of making work, editing the photographs then editing the audio files into something manageable. I am now at the next wave of participants which involves the process of of calling for participants, planning and organising the making of new work around my full time job. Having organised the shoot with ‘Pete’ below. I was conscious of the prospect of being in his company for some time. This turned out to be the case and will be another lengthy editing process in the future. At this stage my thoughts go back to my research on Michelle Sank’s book ‘The Water’s Edge’ where she comments that the interview process and the photographic event were kept separate and conducted by different people. This at present is a huge luxury compared to the process that I’m engaged with in having to conduct interviews and photograph in the same sitting.

The work from this shoot I consider far from my best work. Over the lockdown period, Pete set himself the project of building his own pub in his back garden. Pete himself is a very sociable individual who has been affected by the pandemic.

When making this work I found myself working in an extremely tight space with beams across the roof. This made working with on camera flash difficult and in this case impacted on the realisation of my intentions. I do have an image that I think is ok but not really worthy of a submission. As a result of the interview Pete spoke at length about his failed marriage and how it affected him. However he also spoke of his connection with his children and the most powerful aspect was when he told me that every time he drops his teenage children off somewhere he tells them he loves them before giving them a kiss goodbye.

This image perhaps being the strongest and visually, I feel that it is an authentic representation of what emerged from the interview however I’m not happy with the crop on the knee joints as I would have liked to have a vantage point slightly below the knee. However I did work hard to make this photograph and my summative assumption about this shoot is that I worked hard to ultimately fail. At this point I’m led toWebb, A and Norris Webb, R (2014) cite Arbus

‘It’s important to take bad pictures. It’s the bad ones that have to do with what you’ve never done before. They can make you recognise something you hadn’t seen in a way that you will make you recognise it when you see it again’

Comments made by the Webb’s illustrate how I’m feeling at the moment regarding this shoot. Although not happy with the final outcome. I’m not disappointed I was able to understand the difficulties I faced and to some extent address them.