For this session, we had two guest speakers; Anna White & Layla Sailor, who discussed their photographic practice since having graduated from university.
They both contributed a sincere and practical discussion of their ability to persevere through some of the more difficult aspects of profession and how their work has developed and progressed through experience and a professional attitude to all areas of their working practice.
It was useful to gain an insight into the creative process of other practitioners, the credibility of unpaid work and community projects but how to look out for potential exploitation.
One aspect I found particularly reassuring was hearing how Layla Sailor worked through some of her confident issues when approaching people. Although photographing portraits and being studio based, she would learn her practice through self portraiture.
Progressively she started to become more ambitious and confident in her approach with people. Now its a fairly natural process to her. I quite admired this and hoped I could progress further with some my own confidence issues with people.
I also found it quite enriching to hear Anna White’s discussion of becoming involved with hands-on projects involving local communities, much of which was unpaid work but she found a great deal of satisfaction in brightening people’s days with simple events or ‘pop-up’ studio’s in which she produced upbeat portraits of people.
To conclude, I found this session to be fairly productive when considering my professional practice after graduation and has encouraged me to start thinking about getting myself more involved, my final major projects offers a great deal opportunity to build upon this.
Professional Frameworks 3 