Project 3 is all about the discovery of a new place and the subsequent research, development and final outcomes based from this initial starting point. When I was looking for a uni course to join I wanted one that would give me the freedom to integrate travel into my work and this project was the perfect opportunity to do that. I wanted to travel somewhere far away (as opposed to somewhere a few miles away, for example) and played with the idea of visiting Europe. After a few days of thinking I was sure I wanted to go there for this project and do some photography. It was just a case now of looking at the costs, times and organisation of getting the trip from a fanciful idea into reality.

For this new project I had an opportunity to redesign my studio space. I have 2 boards this term and wanted to make full use of them both. For part of my research I looked into photographers and journalists whose work inspired me and instead of sticking them into a sketchbook, I put them all over my board for everyone to see. This also lets me work in an environment where I am literally surrounded by things that inspire me.

Here is the main work of the project - photography. For the trip I wanted to capture the essence of what travelling can be like - frightening, exhilarating, wonderous and great fun. The main problem I encountered while trying to get the shots I wanted was the terrible weather conditions. In most places I visited it was between -6 and -10°C so the cold was very much a factor which made doing anything outside ten times as hard as it should have been. It was so cold in some places that I had to spend and hour outside quickly followed by half an hour in a cafe warming up! On a side note, the cold killed my camera batteries really quick so I found myself recharging them in the most unusual places on the go.

The harsh weather conditions varied from mild blizzard to intense blizzard. Either way, it was pretty bad for my photography as the lighting was poor all through the trip and was changing between bright and dull so rapidly that most of my time was spent messing around with the white balance. Another issue from the overcast skies was the low light entering the lens, which meant I had to use a fairly high ISO (which made some photo's too noisy) and longer shutter speeds, resulting in a lot of really blurred photos. The first few days of the trip went quite badly as most of the photographs turned out quite awful. I soon got to grips with working in these conditions and soon enough I was able to get some really good shots.

Part of the project requires considerable research while in this new place, so I decided to run with the most successful part of the last project which was the use of a camcorder for documentation. This worked really well on the trip as I could keep it in my pocket and access it really quickly if I needed to record something. Pictures tell a thousand words, and moving pictures tell even more - the video diary was a really good way to show the trip and is even better when looked back on with hindsight as it refreshed a lot of events and memories that would otherwise have been easily missed.

Here are some of my project notes. They are sorted by their rough themes.

One of the key aspects of this project was going to be the use of primary research. I have used the Internet, books, magazines, movies...etc..for a very long time now and never really done any personal, primary research, so this was the perfect time to incorporate these new ideas. A member of Visual Studies, Tessa is a mature student who has travelled extensively (literally, nearly the whole world!) so I thought that interviewing her (albeit, very casually) would be a great way to learn from anothers experience and then compare it with my own. For this reason I chose to do the interview after I had been travelling, so I had some interesting stories of my own to tell as well as listen to hers.

The evening we had together was really good fun. We had a full, cooked meal and a glass (or three) of wine before sitting down to go through old photo albums from China and Russia to Canada and Bangladesh. it was great to hear her recount her life stories and reflecting back on the past was a great way to see the ideology of travelling in a new light.

As a Visual Studies student I know by now that taking just photographs isn't enough! In order to develop my ideas further I took inspiration from an Indian artist called Raghava KK. He painted for years, struggling to get his paintings to really come alive. Recently, he collaborated with some dancers who performed in front of his paintings (using them as a stage and pseudo-environment) and they started to come alive in a new way. I thought this was a great and innovative idea. The downside was that I had encountered this about 5 days away from the deadline. Try as I might, I was totally unable to arrange a collaboration with the STANLEY dance group this time as it was just too short notice.

I wanted to persue to idea anyway and booked all the equipment out I needed then bought some black and white clothes and facepaints and set to work becoming a part of my photographs. I picked the monochrome photo's purely because I didn't have enough money to afford multicoloured fabrics and facepaints - but this is something I could develop in the near future! I projected the photographs onto a white bckground then stood in front of them. I had so little time to do this that I didn't really end up with a performance at all. I was quite disappointed I couldn;t develop this idea more extensively but when I came to edit it into a short video clip I found the dialogue recorded was very natural and quite interesting, so I decided to keep it anyway. This work will be developed over Easter into a proper collaborative effort and recorded performance, so stay tuned for updates here!