I am thrilled with this feedback and will address some of the points made by my tutor within this feedback now that the main body of work is over.
I am delighted that my tutor felt this assignment is a good end to this module. I will admit, it has been difficult along the way but I do feel that I have progressed since last years other level 2 module. The last module was particularly difficult for me and I appeared to struggle with the jump from level 1 to level 2. Thankfully, my tutors for both level 2 modules have been fantastic in helping me along the way and offering me guidance to help me to progress through the course.
My tutor offered a lot of considerations regarding working as a music photographer in the future. But as much as I love music photography and this is definitely the genre I would work within, should I plan a career in photography, I don't have any plans to start a career yet. I have a young family and so its not something that I am thinking about anytime in the near future.
My tutor said that I didn't mention money in my submission notes. But this is a subject that I covered extensively in the previous exercise Develop a publishing plan and I didn't feel I needed to readdress this in my assignment submission. As stated in that exercise, most of the independent music websites are exactly what my tutor later goes on to suggest that I do; a blog or website set up by someone who loves music and wants to review gigs and cds and tell music news to other music lovers. But running a blog and covering all the gigs, music releases and news is difficult and possibly too much for a single person, so therefore they 'intern' or advertise for other people to help (or contribute) but obviously they don't make any money from it, so they cant pay their contributors but instead can get the free cds or free gig access in return for them contributing their time, reviews and photos, etc, to their site. Unless you actually work for a recognised publication(s), it's unlikely you will get paid for doing this. The other aspect is that they will expect full exclusivity and most sites I have worked with, or researched, ask that the photos can only go online on their site for the first two weeks and even after that MUST have their 'tag' on it connecting them back to their website. So this is why money isn't brought into the equation at this time and wont be until I get to the level where I can work for a recognised, big name website/publication.
But as with the next pointer from my tutor, the main fact is getting my name out there and I am always working at doing that when I produce photos of gigs. One of the bands in this submission extensively shared my photos from this gig and each one had my name watermarked on it so I had a lot of feedback from other fans and band members. This is something that I fully intend on continuing through social media such as Facebook and Instagram.
This brought my tutor to the fact that I had submitted prints to him for this assignment. My main reason for doing this is purely because the notes tell us to. When we first get our introductory email from our tutor, we are asked to send prints for each assignment from assignment 2 onwards, so I felt I needed to send them to him for this reason. But also, as I had submitted prints as a magazine mock up for assignment 3, I did want to show prints to show progression, had these photos been printed in a publication as opposed to in online format. I feel that there was definite progression and my tutor agreed that they were fine pictorially and technically so I took that as a successful choice. But I do not intend to submit prints for the final assessment of this assignment. I agree with my tutor when he says they are unnecessary. As I submit for assessment online, and with the changes made to the criteria for submitting digitally for assessment, I would much prefer the assessors to use the links to the websites as a submission because that was the brief of the assignment, to be used in an online publication, so I feel it important for them to see the images in the format they were intended.
Then my feedback goes on to explore more about social media and to be honest, these photos were shared on my Facebook account the following day from the gig so that is something that I do and I always share to the band pages too to try to get my name noticed. However, as I have already stated in the previously noted exercise and above, if you do officially contribute to an online website, you are not allowed to put them anywhere online until they have been on their site for at least two weeks, so it really depends on whether I continue to establish myself as me or whether I get experience working with a website. Either way, my name is getting out there in some shape or form.
I do follow a lot of people who do this for a living. Some are established and work for bands and established publications, others work for independent sites. Most of them are photographers I have mentioned within this learning log. But starting my own music blog is something that I really don't have the time to do right about now. And not something that I want to do at this moment in time either. We have to remember that photography is just a hobby for me at the moment and I'm not sure I ever would pursue this type of career. But if I was to, then this is definitely the route I would go down.
The feedback then goes on to discuss a short video slideshow that I had attached to my tutors email. It was the first one I had ever attempted and so I am happy for the feedback, should I ever use one again.
There is no further assignment so I got a bit confused as to what I was meant to have completed by mid November but I have taken it to mean to get my blog and printed submissions ready and finalised. I have sent my tutor an email outlining my concerns and so I hope to hear back from him soon.
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