Amy Linkin-Chandler

Final Reflections : Learning about myself – Creative Process and Outcome

• I have learnt to navigate my own creative process. Using an investagtive approach to allow my self to flow and think through ideas. This has gone alongside my own journey navigating my focal epilepsy and own wellbeing as I learn to live with the seizures, and gain understanding of how my brain also navigates. Like the underground communication within nature they also go unseen and are often misunderstood or unknown. Whilst also relearning and adapting my creating process to see how it has evolved since level 5. In some ways my confidence has grown from Level 5, I have successfully completed 3 industry placements that have taught me new skills and allowed me to materialise my abilities that aren’t directly used within my work, but at the same time as a person my values have matured since then and my work has become a contrast between high contrast flash and expressive styling, with a growing appreciation for my surrealism my photography has shifted from a darker to more outdoor whimsical aesethetic.

Throughout my work and within my creative process I’ve continued to take an investigative approach, letting my ideas evolve gradually and exploring different paths and techniques. However, this has meant that within my creative process it has taken me a long time to reach a point where I am happy and have clear direction within my outcome. Meaning that It is becomes harder to manage my time in way a way that allows me execute my outcome in the way I imagine. Moving forward post graduating I’ll be able to adapt and evolve my creative process to be more efficient allowing me to endeavour into more in depth exploration of my concepts and outcomes.

I began my FMP by continuing my focus on nature and its powers by looking at symbols within nature, which magnetise and often act as natural landmarks for humans. Exploring how this effects how as humans we navigate nature and how spending time outdoors can also help us navigate life more clearly. Which brought me onto looking at trees and the underground mycorrhizal network, reading into Finding the Mother Tree by Suzanne Simard and How to read a tree by Tristan Gooley which helped understand the power of trees, how they can be written about emotively and illustrated in a print form.

A key turning point within my project however was finding the relationship between my photographic style and paintings.Spurred on by visiting the Peggy Guggenhiem Musuem in Venice. In which I was drawn to this following paitning untitled by Dali below and its similarities in colour palette and pose with a test shoot I had done.

From here I contiuned to explore the effect of a painterly process and how this goes hand in hand with communicating landscapes visual. This gave me a a clearer direction which opened my mind to looking back to my Research essay into Alice in Wonderland and Fashion Photography and how the book reflects the 18th Century attitude of a Bucolic idealised English Countrside.

From here I was able to maintain a focus on the theme of my photorgaphy sticking to landscape outdoor shot imagery, in an ethereal style and looking to pastoral literature and art for both visual and written inspiration for the text is my book outcome.

Graphic Design Inspiration

We Make Pictures In Order to Live Magazine :

I was drawn to jumbled style graphic design within this magazine as it looks almost like organised chaos and a mind map of images that works well as they are of high quailty.

Mental insight to photographers thought process through the staggered layout that leads the readers eye around the page almost like following a path. Fun way of forming a photographic narrative within graphic design and without text.