Photo by Holly Webb

 

In reflecting this week, I have thought a lot about my project as there have been some significant developments.

I started off by finalising both my pitches. I researched publications that would be good to pitch to, and started to apply the knowledge we had learnt in our seminar about pitching to a magazine or newspaper. To read my publication research and both pitches, see here.

After finalising both my ideas and writing my pitches for them, there were some developments in the progress of my first idea which has lead me to change what my project is going to be on.

I received another response this week from the Lord Mayor’s office, however it did not seem to progress my idea any further. To read the evidence of this, click here.

Because of this, I didn’t want to leave my project to the last minute and so I decided to instead start work on my second idea despite desperately wanting to do my feature on the Lord Mayor. It is a shame that the idea didn’t manage to come through, however my back-up plan is also something that I am excited and passionate about.

My second idea is about the climbing community in Sheffield. I am going to look at the effect climbing has on people’s social life, mental wellbeing and fitness and also talk to people about why they started climbing. To read my pitch for this idea, click here.

 

In reflection of my work and everything that has happened this week, I believe that I have done well in using my initiative to progress my project as much as possible.

What I did well:

• I think that although I really wanted to do the story about the Lord Mayor, I’ve made the right decision to stop work on it and pursue something else. Although it is annoying, I understand that I had no control over making the story come about, and I know that in the future this will no doubt be an issue I will have to deal with again
• In my further research for my second idea, I am glad I looked into another artist as inspiration as it has given me a lot more ideas for my project. I initially didn’t really like black and white photography that much, but now after researching the work of Vivian Maier, I have decided that I want a lot of my images for my project to be in black and white
• I think that my pitches are both well-written and relevant to the publications I pitched to, and I am proud of the research I carried out on the publications. I think that when the project is finished, I will actually pitch my idea to the magazine I looked at

Improvements:

• I think next week I should actually go out and start practising getting some shots, I think that while I did some good writing and made some good progress on my project this week, I didn’t actually go out and use my camera
• I also think I am going to buy the Writers and Artists Yearbook soon so that when I next have an idea and am going to pitch it to a publication, I will be able to easily find a relevant magazine or newspaper instead of looking online like I had been doing for this week

 

My Project:

This week was a big turning point in my preparation for my project. Although I am disappointed that my first idea has not been successful, I can now properly start work on my climbing idea and start to put that together.

I am going to start going out and taking practise shots in a public place to start getting my candid photography up to scratch, and I am also going to start contacting potential sources that I can speak to. I am excited to start work on this idea now that I have made the final decision on what my project is going to be on.

 

Aims for this week:

• take more photos (JPEG and RAW)
• practise candid photography
• do more portraiture – ask siblings etc. to be my subject, to experiment more with aperture and camera settings
• play around with post-production software with these images, and start to edit a few photos in black and white
• write to-do list post for my project and start organising the next steps I’m going to take