OCA Thames Valley Group Workshop 23rd February 2013

I just got back from a workshop with 8 students from the OCA photography stream. The workshop was lead by OCA tutor Sharon Boothroyd. It was a very useful session. It’s always very stimulating looking at  other people’s work as well as getting feedback on my own.

We also spent some time talking about the transition through the OCA courses and planning the future work of the group. We agreed that we would get together every two months and that the agenda for each meeting should include reviews of photographic works from the members of the group and a discussion session on a topic to be agreed before each meeting.

For my own work Sharon suggested that I might have asked my subjects in  45 seconds… to hold the pose for longer than 45 seconds. She thought that this might have resulted in a more significant change to the poses in the diptychs. I am sure that this would have been the case but there was a logic to selecting 45 seconds,  i.e. emulating the exposure times for the Hill and Adamson calotype portraits. In any event I will not be able to repeat the work at this stage….I have exhausted my subjects and the deadline for submitting the assignment is fast approaching. This may have a bearing on whether this work forms part of my final submission for assessment – I will wait to see how Jesse responds.

I took the opportunity to make a group portrait. This one was taken with my Canon DSLR. I also made a portrait with my large format camera immediately before this one. It looks like that the gravitas which the large format camera creates was still there when this image was made …