God I hate them.
But at least this time, as well as the dreaded peer review, we also had a chance to talk about our own work so we could tell people what it was all about. That is so important as everyone of course has a different opinion on exactly what your work means *deep meaningful thoughts*
I was mostly pleased with my first go at colour darkroom printing - it is so f’ing difficult I can’t say (try aligning paper in total darkness for a start), but I am glad I have another photographic skill. Printing from a negative onto photographic paper just has a ‘quality’ about it. I can’t define it, but it looks a class above digital printing (maybe when I’ve had a go on the massive digital printers at college I’ll compare the two). When you have that print in your hands after hours of test strips and buggering about with chemicals the sense of satisfaction is wonderful and real. I won’t go into retouching, it’s too painful to mention, just remember kids, dust is your enemy.
The Blythe people photo series looked great on the wall and everyone liked it - I got good to excellent (65-75%) mark in my peer review and we get our actual mark / the work back in mid-January after the lecturers can be arsed to deal with it.
I forgot to take my camera in, so I didn’t get the series in situ but I will re-photograph them all together when I get them back and put them up on my flickr. When I can scape together the postage I will send out the full size prints to those who took part…
Now one more essay (and another over Christmas) and I can relax.

January 7th, 2007 at 12:26 am
Happy New Year, Bobble, I hope all is well.
xx