Tag Archives: Week 3

M2 Wk3: Strategies of Sharing

Posted on by

Activity: Making Zines

In keeping with many aspects of this module, school work and commitments have kept me from committing to this activity in the appropriate timeframe (or manner).  In the case of making zines, this precludes my ability to collaborate with colleagues or come close to meeting the deadline.  Necessity dictates that some of my coursework will have to follow, and hopefully, enhance the work that I have to produce in-school. Pleasingly, not all of my work is unrelated.

For a school trip to South Africa, it seemed appropriate to produced a guide book for the pupils. The design brief is to help limit the countless questions inevitably raised by the children prior to and during the trip.  An important part of the conceptual work is collaboration with those travelling: what are they unsure about?  What concerns might they have?  What information would it be helpful for them to know?  Consequently, they provided the questions that fuelled the majority of the content.

To that end, the zine takes the form of a guide book to support a school trip to South Africa in mid July.

Hard copies have already been produced in-house through Reprographics, using high quality 100gsm paper stock.  These have been distributed to the children, with plenty spares or the trip itself.

A flipbook version is linked below:

SA2018 - KZN (low res)

M2 Wk3: Strategies of Sharing

Posted on by

Week 3: Independent Reflection

This reflection seems out of chronological order, however, it contains feedback relating to a school trip only recently completed…

For this week’s activity, I have to accept that I was unable to commit to the precise guidelines of the task.  However, a zine (of sorts) was produced following appropriate collaboration.

Having worked in education for 25 years, I am well used to gleaning information from children and using that as the starting point for work.  In that respect, the ‘Making Zines’ activity was no different and I openly embraced the collaboration with the children.

How well the task was tackled was comparatively simple to ascertain:  during the South Africa trip there were still countless questions – such is the nature of children, but there were very few to which the response needed to be anything other than ‘have a look in the book’.  Of course, the reality was that I still gave the answers to any such questions.  Such a publication provided a useful reference for the children and gave reassurance to the parents that the trip was being managed by competent, experienced professionals.

The zine was produced using Microsoft Publisher – not an industry standard, but certainly an educational standard.  Producing high quality publications helps me directly in my teaching of desktop publishing, but also helps the children realise what can be achieved (as well as the high standards that I have).  In that respect, this collaborative work helps all involved parties.

The concept, design and realisation of this zine was done entirely in-school using normal educational procedures.  The welfare and protection of children is so entrenched within any such activity that there is no chance of ‘taking advantage’ of the subjects, thus there are no ethical concerns.

During Week 3, the only photographic work I carried out was at the Regional Athletics Championships.  With a sizable team to Manage, my photographs were rather few and far between, and sadly GDPR constraints dramatically limit what I can publish here.

M3 Wk3: The digital new possibilities

Posted on by

Week 3: Instagram

I would argue Instagram is currently the most effective social media platform for self promotion.  If you have not got an Instagram account already, then I would like you to set one up.

This week I want you to try and create and implement an Instagram strategy that you feel will help you reach future, potential clients (whether ad agencies, curators or potential collectors), and then develop your account so you have 30 followers over the course of a week.

Anna-Maria Pfab

As a long-term user of Instagram, the technical difficulties of setting up a ‘business’ account were minimal.  However, the process did flag up concerns about the safety of my works online.

To maximise the visual impact of posted images, I followed the recommended resolution: 1080px x 1080px.  In order to present some of my images uncropped, I have spread them across three posts… producing a 3.2mp image that could be grabbed and used in certain circumstances on a commercial basis.

In keeping with many social media sites, Instagram demonstrates very little care for its users and forces a licencing agreement (HERE) upon users that is at best questionable, and led to much discussion within the Falmouth Forum.

InstagramI was certainly neither keen nor enthusiastic to be ‘forced’ to jump into such a project without being given the appropriate time for planning as well as researching best practice.  However, when compared with the Week 3 Challenge, there were far fewer consequences to the potential for getting this wrong, so with much tentative care I progressed.

My initial account was set at ‘Private’, but after three days I changed that setting, realising that it was impractical to have a private business account!

 

M3 Wk3: The digital new possibilities

Posted on by

Week 3: Challenge – Image Virus

This week you will create an Image Virus.

Make an image that you feel is intriguing and appealing, and spread it around as many places as possible. Keep the credit anonymous. Photocopy the image and paste the copies on walls throughout your city (within reason – I don’t want you to get into trouble for fly posting), mail copies to everyone you know, post copies through letter boxes in your neighbourhood. On the back of the photocopy leave only an e-mail address and a hasthag. If anyone e-mails you, reply with only the image as an attachment. E-mail this image to everyone you know. Make a website for it, make it your status on social media – tweet it, post it, blog it. And get others to spread it around the internet; ask you friends to help. If the virus becomes widespread enough, you might find it returned to you, or used by others.
I obviously don’t want to get you into trouble – so please do this within reason.

The internet is a powerful space and will present you with many possibilities to spread your Image Virus. Track your Image Virus via any e-mails you receive, and with the hashtag. Do this for a few days, or even a few weeks, and then write 200 – 300 words on what happened and share your experience with your peers in the space below. Discuss what worked, and what did not work.

If you need a little inspiration – I once did something similar when I was studying and the results were as fascinating as astonishing.

Here is an overview of that project: http://spaceyideas.com/todonnalovebob/

Anna-Maria Pfab

I have thought long and hard about this challenge.  Working primarily in IT, my contact list, built up over 25+ years, has a significant bias toward those in the broad field of IT.  Junk mailing them with an image and the tag Image Virus is likely to achieve little more than to test their firewall.  I have tested this premis on our servers, within a walled garden (essentially a secure virtual environment designed for testing web-based matters). Our security blocked the message from being sent… even if ‘virus’ was not in the subject.

Moving away from the IT side of things, I question the positive influence of junk mailing potential clients or flyposting their neighbourhood.  Oxford City Council has fought against this proactively for many years (New powers used to tackle blight of flyposting) with fines of up to £2500 in addition to on-the-spot-fines.

For me to participate in this challenge, a rethink is required. When time allows, I will endeavour to turn to a more research-based ‘virus’.  Many years ago I was given a Kodak Junior No.1A, complete with 100’s of negatives.  A recent house move revealed them once again and I had the inclination and a little time to look further, revealing a fascinating story of life in India or perhaps Egypt in the early 1900’s.  I would love to know more, so perhaps using the Internet to spread these images may help.

The best I have achieved thus far is that the vehicles are Holt Tractors which were introduced to the army in 1913.

Kodack Junior 01Kodack Junior 02Kodack Junior 03

M3 Wk3: The digital new possibilities

Posted on by

Week 3: Independent Reflection

Instagram:

The account has taken shape quite well: dpplimited, but it strikes me as odd that there is no option to ‘invite’ followers within Instagram.

With hindsight, creating the account and adding 27 images prior to any tagging or attempts to attract custom may have been an error.  A drip-feed of those images would have made better sense.  I am also regretting the choice of a layout that requires posts three-at-a-time to be added – this makes the process of posting far more involved and not always as instant as I would like, since I have to wait until I have three appropriate images to add.    However, by the end of the week the account was being followed by at least 30 people.

I question the usefulness of Instagram as a business tool for my photography… Instagram predominates on mobile platforms, with images being viewed small-scale.  With only 10% of Instagram users being over 35, it seems probable that the vast majority on Instagram would be disinterested in stained glass windows.

Image Virus:

I have not yet ventured into the image virus foray, but stand by the variation of investigating I mooted, using the power of the World Wild Web to help the Kodak Junior No.1A images.