Developing a Research Plan & Methodology

Each of you now has a concrete topic and shot list, so the research plan should look like an equivalent shot list but will result in harvesting of ideas and information rather than pictures.

To develop a Research Plan, it helps to know what the Table of Contents of your report should look like - that is, what are the specs of the final product.  Here I am suggesting a generic table of contents, and each of you can modify it or customise it to fit your particular topic and approach to the topic.

Section 1: Folio Development

1.1 Background

Here you will briefly describe what area you proposed to work in this semester and why. List your goals for the semester, year and where you see yourself as a professional photographer after graduation.  You might already have a business underway, or you might be still considering options and experimenting - its your own journey.

1.2 The Semester's Work

This section should be pretty much a straight copy from your blog entries, if you have been consistent in documenting every shoot. You can show how work progressed, have examples of failed shoots and reflect on feedback given by others. You can include scans of hand drawn lighting set ups, lists of items needed for shoots - basically a journal of how your work developed week by week.

1.3 Final Work

Here you have the final images that will be presented for assessment together with a critical reflection on how you think you went - and with the benefit of hindsight what you might have done differently. What do you think are the strengths and weaknesses of your work?  What skills do you feel sure about and what areas do you still feel unsure about?

A note on audience: as you write, you can envisage your readers to be us - you are not writing to the general public, or to your family or friends - so you can assume we know what you are on about and the basics of what you are trying to achieve.



Section 2: Context

This section is where you include your motivations, influences, or inspirations. Show examples of relevant work from other photographers and analyse how they relate to your work (ie, technique, concept etc.)  You might also want to talk about other motivators - stories, music, films or personal experiences that inform your work.  It is good to develop this section more like a paper rather than a list - to do so you have to work a bit at comparing and contrasting the various photographers that you have looked at and making connections between them.

I suggest that you develop a series of tags with subtopics so that every time you blog about a photographer or inspirational source you attach tags that will help you sort them later.


Section 3: Industry

In this section you will summarise the primary research you do in relation to (your specific) industry. This will be further developed next semester - so at this point it might mean you identify the most important photographers in your area (be specific, if you want to become a wedding photographer in Canberra concentrate on listing only Canberra photographers), the size of the industry - you can use a lot of the research that you do for Industry Placement or the work you did last semester in Judy's class - it all has to come together this year.
Also, include lessons or interesting information from all the visiting photographers like Alexia Sinclair.


So, the RESEARCH PLAN is basically a recipe to get through all this - and it is really up to you to develop it according to your own working methods and folio plans. You might have some days when you are not shooting or editing, and you can decide that each of those days you will write about one of your influences and blog it....

The task now is to think about your methodology and post a blog with a series of bullet points or ideas that show us your approach to the research.