PHO3003 AS1 Personal Reflection – Nigel Fovargue – 20400868
Personal Development
The year began with me having a lack of confidence in my abilities, this is not a new thing for me I know I need, affirmation, about my work and achievements. I made the decision to organise the trip to Amsterdam to see the Unseen and Unbound exhibition. This trip helped me integrate with fellow students again following the summer break and enabled me to get ready for the new academic year. It helped me realise, with discussions with fellow students, that I had a valuable contribution to make to the course and my colleagues. This realisation made me think about the potential of becoming a part time lecturer or similar. I still have this as an option, but it will come at least after completing my master’s course because I am determined to make the most of the Masters with as little distraction as possible.
The project I have chosen has entailed me interacting with various departments and people within the university which has enabled me to become more confident with communicating especially with people perceived to be in authority. Although I may come across as being confident in this, since leaving positions of authority myself I have really struggled in this regard.
Photographic Society
We as a team started the year full of plans, ideas and drive to get the Photographic society an exciting society to be involved with. Unfortunately change of personnel in the Student Union, IT problems and room booking issues has meant that the initial drive has drained away from us.
It has taken at least 3 months for me to register as a member of the society I am President of, and a similar amount of time to be given a room for meetings. The drive has gone.
On reflection attempting to get the society off and running late in lvl 5 and early in lvl 6 has potentially been too much of a demand when working towards out final degree, obviously this has been greatly exacerbated with the problems encountered.
I believe we have found a good committee from lvl 5 and lvl 4 to make this more of a success next year and I hope it works out well for them as there is a great deal of interest from non-photography students at the university. The failure to get this properly off the ground is one of my regrets for this year.
Website and Branding Development
Following on from the website created in Adobe Portfolio for PHO2008 I have needed to produce a new website and identity. This has been driven by a few factors, including, potentially losing access to adobe portfolio, the need to separate Commercial and Art based work and the desire to have ecommerce on the website, which Adobe portfolio doesn’t provide. My decision to add a completely different identity to this website along the lines of Photogoth, Banksy, Monet Shot etc has been a hard one for me to do. I eventually decide on Art Rat Studio as a pseudonym for the website and domain name I think works but I am still unsure about how to link this. I need to be more confident in this identity. The name comes from my old nickname Rat and linking Art to it, studio to give it a potential broadening of the site if more contributors join or are employed. I think I have come to an initial compromise by adding “Art by Nigel Fovargue” to the Business card as a direct link to me.
On reflection having completed the website for art-rat.studio I am happy to have made this decision. The styling and colour palette chosen link well with my latest project with the orange / rust link. I was originally going to remove the Art section from the nrf.photography website but then decided to leave it and continue adding work to both sites. Instead, I have now decided that I will leave the original website as it is, in terms of the art based work, until art-rat is more established and other social media platforms are up and running. This is to avoid any potential lose of original contacts for that website. I will continue to use nrf.photography to display any new commercial work and have two fully functioning websites.
I have placed three works for sale on the art-rat.studio to enable it to function, the greatest difficulty I had was deciding on pricing, I am comfortable with the pricing set as it is high enough to potentially avoid any sales which at this time with finalising the educational year, but also if someone does purchase then it is financial viable to do the work.
My work for PHO4001 has been recontextualised as print sales on this website and hopefully will eventually sell. I believe this is the best way to publicise this work and initiate sales although more advertising is required to push out to a wider marketplace.
Portfolio
I have made several different decisions on producing portfolios, the first decision was partly driven by my application for the MA Fine Art application in which they required a pdf portfolio. I had little competed work for lvl 6 and therefore included work from lvl 5 but also work that should development of ideas. I think this was crucial in showing how I develop concepts from the initial ideas I have. This was a great success as it achieved the goal of getting an interview for the course. Although this does not work for advertising commercial work. Having taken in a physical portfolio for the MA interview again this is a specific portfolio for a specific function.
This lead me to creating a CV with an images page with images selected particularly for the commission applying for. This type of approach is one that has been learnt from lvl 5 from John and Eugene, when they taught us about producing “Treatments” this type of CV /Portfolio is great for specific applications but is perhaps less useful when generally advertising what you can do. I need to be more selective about what work is put on websites etc as currently there is a mix of work which could be confusing for any potential clients. On reflection I will create and prepare full portfolios and update as I produce newer more relevant work. I am extremely happy with the use of my websites as portfolios though and must make sure I continue to keep them updated.
Work Experience
My first work experiences of the year was before starting back for level 6 one doing product and headshots for Richmond College glass and pottery courses end of year show and the other Havenfest Event photography. These two styles of photography are what I really enjoy doing and with the feedback from these clients I am now confident of taking these projects on commercially. Obviously I have a lot to learn, especially with Headshots as I am still not comfortable with the interaction side of this work which is something I will continue to try and develop.
I have been contacted by a previous client to shoot some new products for their website, again a product shoot which seems to be something that I could develop going forward, I enjoy the attention to detail and putting into practice lessons learnt from Eugene during Lvl 5. These two areas of photography are the ones that I can potentially use as income sources to supplement my income during my Postgraduate studies alongside sales of artwork and other income streams. I think I am good at retaining clients once I have them which is proven by the return work from GCP, Haven (they have contacted me to shoot this years HavenFest) and Northampton Male Voice Choir, but I am still unsure or weak at initially finding these clients. I think these has been affected by not necessarily needing to get the work in as I have decided to go on to Postgraduate study and I don’t want to overwhelmed whist doing this. This may be an error but only time will tell.
On reflection one thing I have learnt is in connection with the collective, exhibition planning and installation for the 4001 module. I have really enjoyed doing this and perhaps curation will be something I investigate and develop during my master’s study. My experience in business for 30 years has been involved with problem solving and project management and this is something I enjoy doing which links in well with exhibition planning and implementation.
Career Development (MA application)
I made an early decision that I wished to continue my education and continue onto an MA and then if ability allowed a PhD. The decisions to make seemed to purely be on which course Photography or Fine Art and location. I found it difficult to move away from thoughts on moving away from Northampton so may not have been totally objective. Having investigated Falmouth online, ARU in Cambridge these were dismissed fairly early in the year, Falmouth because it is part time online and having experienced online education with Open University and OCA I know I prefer in person education and also it being over two years would potentially impact PhD entry due to finances. I am happy with my final decision to accept a place on the fine art MA in Northampton, because I know the place, people and processes, this will allow me to bypass the initial problems of working at a new establishment and learning these things. My work has developed into a fine art style practice which I wish to explore further. An additional consideration is the 20% discount for UON Graduates on the fees for this course.
I am extremely excited to be starting the MA in September and continuing with this path and career change.
