This has been a pretty intense year.
In January I had photographic work hung at the Holy Art Gallery near Dalston Kingsland, which was a tentative foot in the water of the exhibition scene. This was followed up with a portfolio review of my architectural photography with Gareth Gardner, which, along with some gentle encouragement from Gabor Stark (a former tutor), led to a successful application to the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. This success further led to an application to the London Photo Show in November, and after some last-minute concerns regarding the venue, which Andrew Mason diligently sorted out, the exhibition went ahead.
It has been incredibly useful to see my work on the wall against other artists and photographers, to truly judge what I feel I am doing right, what I could be doing better and what I shouldn’t be doing at all, but truthfully, I don’t think I will be able to keep up this particular cadence of shows for next year. This is for two main reasons: firstly, cost, as I have yet to start selling prints to fund the exhibition submissions, and secondly, I’ll be back in part-time study next year to finish my professional architecture qualification.
Then there was the teaching that ran during Q1 this year, delivering training in parametric design skills to second year undergraduates at my alma mater. That was a stressful but rewarding experience for me, and critically, the feedback I received during and after the course was that the students (for the most part) were grappling with the programme. Where they weren’t, I made critical adjustments to endeavour to pick them back up. I have fed this into my own preparation for delivering this same module in Q1 next year, and I hope that the next cohort will be better off because of it.
A trip to Prague (quite a beautiful city) in June unfortunately led to me falling quite ill over the summer and early autumn. Despite being vaccinated as a child, I had apparently succumbed to whooping cough, which had been masked at first by a chest infection, leading to several additional complications, not least severe muscle strain and back problems but also a scare that I may done permanent damage to my larynx. Fortunately, all of these ailments cleared up, and the ENT visits confirmed that whatever had gone wrong with my larynx was only temporary. I was quite lucky here, as were my parents, as they thankfully only suffered from much milder symptoms.
Despite this, and after being loaded up on various pharmaceuticals, I managed to get around a number of events and locations during the Open City festival this year in London, with a couple of highlights seeing what former tutors of mine have been getting up to in practice.
Along with the architectural photography, I did still manage to keep on track with the teaching development over the summer (I definitely needed something to focus on), and treated myself to a weekend in Brugge (another beautiful old city) in October, where I did not, this time, fall ill.
Another lovely highlight of the year was the engagement party of two dear friends of mine in November, which also ended up as an impromptu event photography moment.
I would really love to continue focusing on my photography in what little free time I will have next year, especially as I’ve been playing more with high-speed composite photography along with long-exposure photography (with neutral density filters) and getting into filming. I’m under no illusions however, that between the main job, teaching and studying for my professional qualification, my plate will be pretty full. So, whilst I won’t say never to future exhibitions anywhere, it will be very dependent on the quality I feel that I am putting out, along with what time and money I can use to fund them.
All being well, I’ll be able to juggle what will be required of me next year! And on that note, off to start reading the Part 3 Handbook…