Week 12 Blog Entry: w/c 7th December 2020 - Creative Enterprise

I started this week by looking into artists and techniques that resembled my own work, just to give it some context. I really struggled finding anything remotely close to what I had done, as there is very little out there in the way of neon Christmas colour schemes and Christmas light trails. I decided to look into some of the abstract techniques that had inspired my work rather than any specific artist or photographer.

The first technique I looked into was light trails. I found a blog that had examples of light trials and bokeh. These are two techniuqes that I really wanted to look into for my final outcomes, as I had plans for what I wanted to create with light trails, it was just a case of finding a way to make it happen. The examples I found here, were quite basic and seemed to follow the theme of Christmas based on the colour schemes of the photography. There was a mix of primary colours and neon colours, which was the theme of my own work and the choice I had to make based on the responses I got from my audience. I really liked the different effect each image produced. I noticed some of the imagery looked as though it was made using the camera shake technique, whilst others were created using special lighting that is designed specifically with light trails in mind. You can tell by how 'neat' the trails are. What I particularly liked about the blog was the variety of shapes I could see in each image. I think the different shapes added some interest to each image and makes the audience wonder how they were made. This is what I want people to think when they see some of my imagery and I was joping that would be a selling point for my cards.

Another bit of research I did was for some macro photography. One of my ideas was to have a more standard looking photo as a contrast to the two bokeh shots I did. This was an attempt at seeing which photo might sell best - a contemporary abstract image or a more traditional one. I struggled to find things that were similar to what I wanted to do for my own imagery, so I did see some imagery on Shutterstock which I thought looked close to the technique I wanted to use. I found a variety of images that were close-ups, like what I want to do for my own imagery. I didn't really see any that used a collection of baubles, but there were plenty of other images utilising the close-up technique. This showed off a lot of the detailing in most of the images I saw, but you were still able to see what the subject is and the use of particular colours makes the object synonomous with Christmas. This was interesting research and I'm glad to see that there are techniques out there that resemble the sorts of photography I do, even if there isn't necessarily an artist or photographer who does what I do, but I'm also glad that my work is different enough that it can't really be mistaken for anyone elses.

I made four sales on my cards this week. All four sales were on the packs of cards at £5 for a pack of three. I was really pleased when I made these sales, because I realise I had left it way too late to start selling things like Christmas cards and if I wanted to sell cards, they needed to be marketed in August. I'm looking into creating a business as of next year and one of the things I'm going to be considering is when do create Christmas products is making them a lot earlier than what I have done this year. I'm also hoping that the pandemic will be over, so that I can find more ways to sell my work. One of the ways I'm hoping to do this is by attending some craft fairs or car boot sales. This will hopefully be a fairly cheap way of getting my products to a large audience and seeing what sells and how much of it sells. This will hopefully establish me and get me known a little bit more, where I can give out business cards, with my web address on it and where people can find other products.

This week, I have also been finalising all of my work. I'm quite happy because I have managed to keep on top of a lot of my work, so all I needed to do was make sure that everything in my research file was in order and annotated. This will all be ready for hand-in in January.

Next week, I will be writing an evaluation which will summarise everything that I've done over the last number of months. I will then be presenting a PowerPoint version in front on my lecturer and a typed-up version will be posted on my blog as the thirteenth and final week of the blog.