OUGD602 - External Collaboration

6B2.

As an external collaborative brief, I worked with a photographer currently studying at the University of Cumbria in producing a photography book of some of his work. This proved to be a challenging process since the photographer did not seem to know what they wanted and so did not offer much in the way of feedback throughout the process, whilst also being slow to reply to any questions and queries, as well as slow to hand over any additional information or resources I needed for the production of the book. In terms of the photography itself, due to the photographer not knowing what they wanted, they simply handed me over a folder full of mis-match images with varying and inconsistent sizes that made them difficult to work with in most formats as found through layout and format experimentation in the production of this book. In addition, I was not given any context to images, for instance, the meaning behind them or if any worked together as part of a series. For this reason, I chose images myself which I thought worked together as a series and worked around these images in creating an appropriate and specific theme and narrative for the book.

This experience taught me a lot in terms of collaboration in my future professional career, since most of these collaborations will be external, particularly when working with clients. There will be certain clients who probably don't know what they want to be produced and so it is therefore important to have a strong idea and pitch so that the client can almost be convinced into thinking that your idea is good and what they want.

In future, in an attempt to avoid problems such as these occurring again, I will create a terms agreement, outlining the time-plan for the brief, what will aim to be produced and what will happen if the client is late with feedback or the hand-over of content, since these issues made the photographer and the brief itself very challenging to work with. Since I had also been wanting to work on a photography publication for a while, I feel as though some of these challenges could have been avoided if I had not agreed to the brief so quickly. In addition to the terms agreement, in the future I shall make an initial questionnaire to go through with the clients or collaborator before agreeing to anything, just so that everything is clear before starting on work. This would therefore also mean that any warning signs as to whether or not they would be a challenging client to work with could be flagged up beforehand.