Critical Research Journal

I received my feedback from my Final Major Project Proposal, my project is still unclear with no distinct intent or outcome. Factors of concern are that I will be repeating myself and won’t be challenging. I also didn’t include enough practitioners that I have researched, which I agree as I guess I got distracted with my approach. I really need to make sure that I am hitting those learning outcomes as of course that is the criteria in which they are marked. I think I’m trying to over think things and complicate concepts, which strays from why I was drawn to these airfield sites and decommissioning side of things. Stella suggested that the next time we speak that I should write a paragraph convincing her of my intent in order to produce this body of work. I think that would be a good idea and I will do that for next week.

Still carrying out familiarization training on my camera, I loaded up 6 negatives successfully. Using the same method as last week so they are probably full of fingerprints. I didn’t shoot anything of interest but tried to include buildings to simulate my subject. 1 negative popped out again into the bellows but I think I just need to be careful when inserting the film slide back in. I processed them straight away and I was happy with exposure and focusing, levelling off could be a bit better though. I muddled through sticking them onto the leader to process through Colenta machine, which took up quite a bit of my image up. The leader issue really needs to be resolved before I address the type of film I’m going to use. 2 options are I engineer the plastic leader with a couple of slits to hold the negative in place working with the small amount of negative I have before encroaching on image. Hopefully having enough area in which to stick leader and film together but still runs the risk of fingerprints.  The second option would be to commandeer a film holder, cover up the exposure opening with the black slide as so to make it light tight. Feed the exposed negative into it (which will hopefully minimise fingerprints), leave a little of the negative hanging out and then turn the lights on to stick it to a leader. I guess it will act as a little lightbox so I can attach film to leader. This will be my best option I think and will try it at the weekend.

I also had a look at the website WartimeNI which says “WartimeNI tells the story of Northern Ireland during the Second World War. Learn about the people and places of Ulster during World War Two from 1939-1945.” (WartimeNI, 2019)

I emailed the contact, expressed my interest in stories and personal accounts from WW2 and gave a brief background into my project. They emailed straight back and I have arranged a meet with them at the weekend to discuss potential collaboration or might just turn into a discussion around ideas in this subject.

References

Edgar, S. (2019). WartimeNI – The sites and stories of WW2 Northern Ireland. [online] WartimeNI. Available at: https://wartimeni.com [Accessed 5 Mar. 2019].