Planning & Refining

Making your ideas work

The planning and refining stage is where you further explore the possibilities of your ideas. Now you’re narrowing down key ideas and pushing how they can better respond to the theme or purpose of your series. Consider your audience and intention and ensure that your ideas match with this. Think about how you can turn this idea from theory in to practise. What will you need to make it work?

Extending your ideas

You have put together a mood board and done research on your chosen topic. You now must extend these ideas to best understand what you will capture in your own images. You might try one of the following processes

Coggle Mindmap

Word Cloud

Lists, lists, lists!

There are lots of consideration in turning your ideas from theory in to practise and lots of things you will need. Consider making lists for any of the following:

Equipment and / or props you will need
Photos you must take
Locations you will require
People who will model for you
Safety considerations
Editing techniques you must learn

Rigg Rigg Pinterest (n.d.) 'Contact Sheet Annotation' URL.

Practise Photos

You may be learning a new editing technique, shooting ideas for your final photos to get feedback or practising a lighting set up. Whatever you're creating, you should be shooting lots of photos (like a hundred or more). Start taking photos to help you develop your ideas!

Contact sheets

Now would be a good time to start your contact sheets. Remember to annotate them for a higher grade. Annotations should be short but also useful. Analyse what about your set ups and techniques is working and what isn't. What needs to improve? Make sure you capture all of this evidence of your learning!

Refine Your Idea

Refinement is where you modify the concept you selected in response to feedback and evaluation. This is when the production of the final images is undertaken. It is very important that you document how you produce the final series, including:

any adjustments to your images
step-by-step production process
any challenges, failures and solutions
One of the ways you can refine ideas is to complete a PMI chart. PMI stands for Plus, Minus and Interesting.

Refining ideas allows you to make your series the best t can be – it’s the opportunity to get the details right!

For Your Portfolio

Tertiary Minimum 4 Pages, Accredited Minimum 2 Pages

C Level (ish)

Create a Mindmap, Brainstorm or some way of demonstrating the ideas for your final images that uses words
Provide evidence of idea refinement by annotating 2-3 of your practise images

B Level (ish)

Complete steps above
Include contact sheets
Complete a PMI table to demonstrate how you have refined your ideas

A Level (ish)

Complete the above steps
Extend your ideas with additional research related to your project practise & include APA references
Demonstrate how you have come across challenges and used problem solving