Pavla's Portfolio
Research Methods
Which research methods did you use for the planning
and production of your portfolio?
How did this research inform the design of your own physical
portfolio and web site?
Workshops in the module at the beginning held by
Andre, Shirley and other visiting artists opened the doors for my initial
research. I checked each artist’s
physical portfolio images and websites referred from those workshop
lectures. I then browsed to see as
many as possible other people’s portfolio document and website, especially
those established artists’. This
gives me a good understanding of what options of physical portfolio and website
presentation are possible. Especially websites, there are a variety
of ways of presentation. Based on
this rich varieties of physical and Internet presentation, I started to
consider a few options for myself.
Another important research methods is the discussion with my cohort members. We discussed different ways of
presentation and commented pros and cons.
Michal even held website workshops for us. These formal and informal discussions and workshops make me
think more beyond the presentation such as audiences, context, etc. In general,
my research process is that at the beginning I expand my visual horizon by
seeing other people’s work and then engage and analyse other people’s
work. It helps me to find my
own way of presentation by finally narrowing down my options to a few.
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Production and Presentation Methods - Portfolio
Discuss how you developed strategies for the editing process
and structure of your portfolio.
How appropriate do you think your
strategies are for the design of the spreads, format (portrait/landscape) and
the container (box/folder) itself?
Editing is one of the keys to my portfolio
preparation. My ideal is to give a
concise but strong impression to the target viewers. The process is subtraction. I firstly mapped out all my
projects and images. The criteria are to select a few most
strong ones that reflect my style, interest and the self. The comments from previous tutors on
these projects are also considered.
So it is a balanced selection between my personal likings and others’
comments. I finalised with three projects in the portfolio: one very personal,
one idea based, and one more studio skill oriented, thinking to project a well
rounded photographer image to my target audience – the MA application judges.
My idea of presentation is to find a simplistic
way to present my photographic works rather than let the presentation to
distract the attention to my works.
A plain box suits this target.
As it is a box and the works inside is loose, the format of my work
could be flexible. This solves my
problem since my works are of both portrait and landscape format. Because sleeves reflect light, I have
not used them to protect my work.
Size of the prints are A3 and I think it is not too big to be cumbersome
and not too small to be viewed. I
also designed my text format for all text.
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Production and Presentation Methods - web site
Discuss the appropriateness and professional quality of the
presentation of your web site.
What methods did you use to enable users to navigate the
presentation of content?
What strategies did you use to make the layout and display
of images and text coherent?
There are so many ways of website presentation. Again, my idea is to find a way to
subtract all flashy ways of presentation and let my photo stand out in a frugal
way. Therefore I have been looking
for a minimal designed website presentation. Another thing I considered is the way of showing images. As my works are project based, the
connections and narratives interlinked with one to another image are critical.
If it is on the wall in gallery, it is easy for viewer to engage one image to
anther, as they are all on the wall together. Therefore, I was looking for a presentation similar to a
gallery wall. Indexhibit,
recommended by my fellow classmate Michal, seems work to my purposes. It is concise in structure and the
navigation of my works is lateral moving like a moving gallery wall. In addition to this, it is very easy to
maintain and update.
Then I had to consider the size of the image, the edit, and
texts. The size of the image has
to be not too small not to big. So
I did some survey on people’s browser and computer and then decided to go for
long side 700 pixels to suit most of browsers especially for new generation of
ipad and Mac as most of my target audiences are artists and art
enthusiasts. Edit is similar to
paper based portfolio but I am considering to put more projects on it. Currently I do not have many satisfied
projects, but I will do so in the future.
Text font and layout is vital for web presentation. I considered many different ways and
finalised with a contemporary font and colour to suit my photography. I also added my Chinese name as well. The Chinese background influenced my
thoughts and photographic practice greatly. I think my presentation form is coherent in general.
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Context
How suitable and appropriate is your choice of display in
relation to your intended audience or genre (fine art/editorial/commercial etc)?
Are your portfolio and web site intended for a different
audience, and if so what methods did you use to address this?
I am interested in and practice photography
to the fine art category. A simple
portfolio box serves this purpose with my key project works and my introduction
(artist’s statement and exhibition biography). It tells audience who I am, what I think, and what my
photography works are like. The works I chose are all something I feel strongly
and honest about myself and my interested areas. Therefore I think it should serve the purpose giving
audience a feel of my photographic works.
The website audience are similar to that of my physical portfolios. However I will also use it for
socialising reasons to my fellow classmates, artists, friends taking advantage
of internet ubiquitous availability.
Therefore I tried to put more information and more works in my
website. I do not have many works
I am satisfied so I will list more projects in the future. I do not want to put some mediocre
works I do not feel right. I also
put a blog link to my website so that people can know me better through my
blogs. More works and more
information are the ways to address the slightly different audiences I am
targeting my website comparing with those of my physical works.
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Evaluation of the experience
Reflect on your learning and skills gained from the
experience of creating your portfolio.
Evaluate the relevance of this experience in relation to
your own professional aspirations.
Photography is not at all simply pressing shutter obviously,
but is more of thinking, engaging, developing, planning etc. Postproduction such as retouching and
editing are key areas in photography.
I had undervalued presentation until I started to prepare the
portfolio. For each step of
preparation, there are hundreds of different alternatives, and I have to
consider many background information to develop the most suitable strategy for
the portfolio. The importance of
presentation is the most important learning curves in this process.
My professional aspiration is to become a photographic
artist. Presentation is
vital. I need to show works
through many different mediums such as gallery wall, book and Internet. A good photographer not only should be
original in idea generation and realisation but also, if not more important,
should have the ability to deliver the works through the best presentation
forms.
Based on this understanding, I have started to build up my
knowledge related to presentation in edit, printing, organising, design,
Internet and etc. Each area has
millions of details to learn and to understand. For example, there are hundreds of quality in paper, I need
to know most of the quality to decide what I should use. With a broad knowledge of ways of
different presentation, I also learn how to use all these forms to suit my
target audiences. The form and the
way have to serve this purpose.
This is of course in combination with the best ways to show my work
according to the content of each project.
In general, thorough knowledge, attentions to details, focus
of my target audience and my work content, and the understanding of
presentation importance are the keys I learnt from this portfolio preparation
process.
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Feedback and Response
Summarise the feedback you have received from your tutors
and peers about your portfolio and web site.
Discuss how useful this feedback is for the future
development of both.
The feedback I received from the tutors (Andre,
Shirley, Eileen, and Rachel) and my peers are basically positive. While this gives me a good level of
self-confidence, I appreciate more critical and negative feedback I have got,
which give me a new dimension to evaluate and look at my portfolio. These constructive feedbacks include
many details such as text font, layout, image size, image print border, and
etc. It is difficult for me, as
the author, to get detached from my work and presentation to get impartial
opinions. These third party
opinions help this situation greatly.
On top of this, especially due to tutor’s wide experience and knowledge,
most of the feedback guided my way of thinking and doing to a higher
level. Of course, at the end of
the day, it is me who decides all the details of the presentation, but the
feedback and discussions with the tutors and peers, especially those critical
and negative comments give me lots of fresh thinking. I am sure this will have a very positive impact for my
future development.
In conclusion, I realised I do not have enough
satisfied works to present.
However I managed to put three projects together anyway. I like Behind Curtains and Bye-bye
Yesterday, but not Silenced.
Nevertheless I put Silenced in, to demonstrate my technical side of
photography. I think with the
major project coming, I will replace at least this ‘Silenced’ project.
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