Topic 3 - Authorship and Collaboration - Reflection

How have you allowed the input of others to shape your photographic practice? 

The majority of my photography has taken place as a solo endeavour. When I have been with other people taking photographs, I have taken on board their feedback on my images. This feedback has primarily been based on something visual rather than technical. This hasn’t always been something that I have continued using once trying.

What is your attitude towards drawing on the ideas of other people, or their work?

I think that one way to learn and improve it to look at what other people have looked at to done, then using it as inspiration rather than copying exactly. As a self-taught photographer a lot of my photographic practice has come from me looking at what other photographers have done and using it as inspiration. For example my version of the David Hockney Joiner photographs. I used his work as inspiration but completed different subjects.

 

Where do you see the line between ‘collaboration’ and ‘plagiarism’?

This can be quite a difficult one to decipher sometimes. My view of plagiarism comes from my studies where you are not allowed to use/say someone else’s work is yours and you must reference everything. If using another person’s work as a collaborative piece of work, like the images Ian and myself completed using images from Autotrader.co.uk then I think they need to be clear as to where they came from and that they are clearly part of a piece of larger work not just an image on its own. Keeping the background on the images I felt helped to show it was a collaboration and not me plagiarising someone else’s photographs. It is also how the images are displayed or shown to a wider audience making sure the context is available for the viewer.