Funny

But the project is turning into what I originally envisaged.

Where do I go from here?

It’s quite a serious question. It’s a very serious question in fact. Never before did I need or realise the importance of some guidance. One thing I know for certain is that the photography (and the method in which it’s presented) that goes to making up my final project has to represent me 100%. This is why I have to keep pushing with the mobile phone work, despite it not being fully understood by either myself or anybody else. I’m also fully aware that I’m not in the least bit interested in contemporary ways of showing my work. Publishing, print, is where it’s at. I’m continuing to print up my work, which not only confirms my belief in traditional print publishing but that also serves as an extremely effective way of showing myself what it is I’m doing. You simply can’t measure your work when it’s online. So, move forwards with the mobile phone work and present it in print form. I’m still fascinated with the postcard format and want to produce my work in that format. I also need to decide whether to work on an entirely new project or whether to present the best of my mobile phone work since I started messing around with it two years ago. The day before yesterday I took a train to the Lithuanian coast with the idea of taking pictures that might contribute to a project representing what interests me about Lithuania. After checking out of my hotel yesterday I took my bag to the train station, left it in a locker and decide to get the first bus that came along, ride it to the end of the line and walk back into the city centre taking pictures as I went. Mildly successful, the experiment also confirmed something I think I’ve touched on here before, namely that the streets of Lithuania are as good as empty. It’s not a great place to drown in street photography. Partly because of this I’m more and more convinced that a retrospective of my mobile phone work, both in black and white and colour, is the way forwards. I’ve been collecting books of postcards and other ways of presenting groups of postcards and am now looking at doing a series of postcards taken in Lithuania, Poland, the UK, Albania, Greece and other places I’ve visited over the last two years and packed in an envelope-like contraption. I want to do this as manually as possible, and have been taking these presentation cardboard envelope packages apart to make some templates for creating my own packaging. I’ve also been thinking a lot about printing. A designer friend has been showing me the different ways printing acts on a photograph and I’m enjoying experimenting with this. I’m even thinking about getting some of my mobile phone pictures made into negatives to see how they print up. Slightly mad for sure, but I’m intrigued to see how they turn out. A carefully printed, hand-made pack of postcards representing the best of my work seems to me to be the way forward. I never asked to get so involved in these mobile phone pictures, but for some reason I’m addicted to playing with them. As always I just wish I had more time. It’s Sunday morning and not only is the light completely shit for taking pictures but I’ve got a whole load of other work to be getting on with. Oh to be rich and to have lots of time. This blog remains incoherent. I need to start talking to tutors and to keep moving forwards with my presentation and print experiments.