Off-Press/Print Restraint

11 hours of hard labour in about a minute of high speed footage, ending with the pips of midnight on the radio! (I cut out all the swearing too)

After a healthy break of a couple of weeks, I’m now finding it hard to get back into routines, as I’m sure most people are.

One particular routine I had hoped to pick up was the plate-spinning exercise of social media alongside this project. Upon reflection I realise that posting 3-4 times a day to Twitter, once to Instagram, twice to Facebook and creating at least one post here each day all with new images and content, was a little ambitious- at least if I intended to get much else done in between!

Admittedly, I never posted on the weekends, where the rest of life was crammed. But I am still finding it hard to grasp how I managed to move things forward with the work itself? On the books so far the project is only in its 16th day, or 4th week if that makes sense. So I even timetabled the project around ‘posting days’.

Setting up camera and lighting for a shoot with a DSLR takes time, and only runs for 20 odd minutes before you need to press buttons again or change memory cards or batteries. This makes it quite a slow and sometimes frustrating way of working, when all you want to do is drink coffee, listen to loud music and carve away for an afternoon or even a whole day ‘in the zone’! This is certainly what prompted me to apply for funding for this project. I liked the idea that I was going to do this work anyway, why not get paid for it and generate an audience for it? But it is interesting how the project has had to adapt to the demands of (an often invisible) audience.

I’m thinking that for the next 4 weeks or so, I will try posting a lot less, perhaps more as summaries from particular activities, and see if the social media pick-up is the same…

Anyway, the project continues today, a new Fast Forward to follow shortly.