Evernote and Photo Projects

Hey guys, this post might only apply to BA/MA photo students but I want to make it about my shift to an (almost) entirely paperless workflow for my assignments. Yup, probably the single most interesting blog post you'll ever read, ever.

A few of you already know about what I doing now and are trying it for yourselves but for those that wanted to know more, I'm currently using Evernote. Evernote is a cloud-based note taking and archiving tool. It's basically a faster, more efficient, less vulnerable and far smarter tool than your standard issue Daler Rowney sketchbook.

My problem before going paperless was simply time and motivation. For our photo projects in uni we have to keep a project journal (or 'Research and Development Book' as they call it) which involved a lot of hoarding, printing and sticking and handwriting in a sketchbook/moleskine/folder/whatever was at hand. From contextual research materials to production plans to lecture/tutorial notes and my own thoughts as they developed- there was basically a lot of time spent documenting and organising my work instead of actually working. On more demanding projects I found myself abandoning my conventional RDB simply because it was getting in the way. Ultimately the RDBs, to me at least, existed just so that the tutors at uni would have something tactile to grade. However they always insisted that these books became part of our workflow, a means to take things out of our head and onto paper so we could bring some sense to them or, at least, remember them later. So, with that in mind I tried all manner of paper notebooks and sketchbooks, from tiny little A5 books to post-it arrangements on my walls but in the end I just couldn't keep up with my thought process.

Hope Through Severance - Part 2

(If you missed part one of this post, here you go!)

The fact I had failed my last shoot despite all the work that had gone into it didn't sink in until about a week through the recovery work to organise the reshoot. I'm optimistic by nature, but sometimes you get knocked down and I guess I was able to block that for a while. I started questioning wether or not I was wasting so much time on what is effectively just a photograph and I found when you reduce what you do down to what it is, when you take the what, how and why of photography and strip away the how and why you aren't left with much. The reality was this was just a photography assignment, that this was just a  year 2, semester one project of a BA Hons Photography degree and there didn't seem to be much point. Though I forgot how I was doing this college assignment; how I was, if you look at it on it's most basic level, taking one of my most ambitious ideas I've ever had for a photograph and going for it. Something which, without the small nudge of genuine encouragement from a few people around me, I would have put aside as a ridiculous idea that, if at all, "I'll do when I'm 30. After a year long creative drought and after almost giving up on the course/medium altogether, I finally found something worth the effort, I found the adventure in it again.

Hope Through Severance - Part 1

The past four months has been absolutely nuts. I'm half way through the second year of my BA Hons Photography degree and I'm still trying to get over how much has changed since the start of this semester, even just photographically/artistically speaking. It was only about 6 months ago that I started thinking about giving up on the course and potentially even the medium, thinking it was only about observation and documentation. However this semester I got the chance to open the taps on the kind of work I've been suppressing for the best part of a year.

The concept behind this project is one which I care a lot about. Basically it revolves around ideas of potential and aspiration. Some would call it 'dreaming' but I feel dreaming holds a different meaning from what I'm trying to do but more on that in part two. At the time I starting pulling this project together, back during the summer break 2011, I was thinking alot about how those ideas applied to me at the time. It seemed that as you grew up through childhood and adolescence you always had those layers of protection, whether it would be parents or high school teachers or other sort of role models, but at some point you'll hit a stage were, if you want to get to were you want to be you have to cut away from those and step out on your own. So that's were this theme of 'Hope Through Severance' came from and this is how my brain translated those ideas visually: