Truest Friends is the title I have given my final project for my university degree. The project is all about celebrating dogs and their ever loyal companionship to us humans. I started out my final year journey wanting to create something that related to animals. Starting with a much broader scope, I looked into animal welfare, maltreatment and poaching. This got the ball rolling but it was far too big and broad a project to be able to feasibly do within the time I had. And so I narrowed down my options, then focusing on our beloved pets and their online pawprints. The aim was to look at how or if ‘pet influencers’ are exploited online for the financial gain of their owners. However, I quickly used this theme as a part of my extended essay instead. That left me with another switch in focus. This time I narrowed down the subject matter to dogs and solely dogs. The theme changed too. Instead of focusing on the maltreatment of our beloved dogs, I decided that I would rather focus on celebrating them for who and what they are, our truest friends. 

So this brings us back to the title of the blog. The project as mentioned is aimed at being a celebration of our dogs never ending love and unwavering companionship they have and give to us. I am doing this for just a couple of simple reasons. First because i believe while it is necessary to create awareness surrounding the mistreatment of animals, we often forget to focus on the positive aspects of their existence. And two, I just wanted to undertake a more positive project in general as, after a while, being deep in thought about complex artistic practice can be quite exhausting and we should never forget to have a break from that if we so need it.

Deciding to make a photobook.

Shortly after deciding on the theme of the project I decided that the final outcome would be in the form of a photobook. There are a few reasons for this:

1). The Sheer Amount of Images.

Noticing quickly that I was creating a large amount of images in only a few photoshoots, I knew that in order to effectively use alot of them well, I would need to form a photobook. There were just far too many great photos that deserved to make it into the final outcome that it would’ve been far too difficult to choose just a select few.

2). Physical Touch and Feel.

 A photobook also allows for a physical sense of touch and feel which works well with the dog imagery since usually all we want to do is touch or (more accurately) pet any dog we see.

3). Creative Aspects of Sequencing.

The enjoyment of sequencing a photobook for me comes from the sense of feeling creative in a hands on approach. Laying out all the hundereds of images on a table or floor, trying to whittle them down to one cohesive book. Once that book is complete, I feel an immense sense of pride in my work.


Choosing to Make Everything Black and White.

I decided early on that I was going to make all of my work in black and white after post production. The reasoning behind this is that I want to keep as much focus on the dogs as possible. The lack of colour tends to stop any background or colourful distractions from taking focus away from the subject when shooting in homes where clutter and/or decor can be unavoidable. Black and white imagery also puts more of an emphasis on form and texture which I felt was great for relating to the idea of petting dogs.

Creating the Book.

Starting out I wanted to make the book by hand. However, I eventually decided this was not going to be the case. One of my lecturers told me about some companies that make the book for you (I am using Blurb personally though there is certainly no sponsorship). I sequence and upload my images; they handle it from there. This gave me a chance to create a book that, by its cover, wouldn’t look out of place on a library shelf. A professional craft and print quality that would do my images justice and allow me to see my book in a way that it could very much be sold in the future if it happened to be published.

So, there we have it!

This was just a little overview and an attempt to give some insight into what my project is about and why I have made some of the decisions that went towards making it. There will be more detailed posts about some aspects of the project coming up so stay tuned for those!