To begin the project, I submitted a proposal.
Writing it turned out to be more difficult than I thought it’d be.
I don’t sit down and force myself to write. For some authors, the creativity needed to write a book is something they can turn on and off. Unfortunately, I can’t do that so I wait for inspiration to come to me. It sounds pompous, but it works. It always finds its way to my head just in time.
A proposal is similar to the Creative Brief as it also highlights topics like audience, primary goal of the website, etc, but a proposal is more the vague side. When something is a proposal, it means that what is being proposed may or may not come to fruition. It also means I’d never written one before.
Writing The Proposal
I struggle with vagueness. I need parameters to work with or something to start with. Sometimes, it’s easier when what you have to start with isn’t a blank page. So I probably took a half hour asking my professor questions. I was surprised at myself for how many questions I had. Usually, I never talk to the professor this much.
The Easy Part
The personal goal, communication goal, research technologies, and technologies came very easily. I knew I wanted to showcase my photos. I had told myself since I lost my previous photography portfolio after I left high school that I’d make a new website for myself once I had the skills. This website would reflect my preferred darker style and be proof that a good photographer does not need to be someone with expensive equipment.
The Harder Part
The other three topics: audience, proposed content, and scope, took a little more time. Personally, when it comes to a writing assignment, I get anxious when something feels like it has too little lines. I realized that a photography portfolio is quite straightforward. The people looking at it would most likely be there because they were directed there or they happened to stumble upon it.
Who would be directed there? Potential clients and/or employers would want to examine my work.
Who would stumble upon it? Other photographers who needed inspiration for photos or like me, their own portfolio.
I had momentarily forgotten what the scope of a website would be which is what led me to struggle. The scope is the work that needed to be done. Photos can be tedious. They need to be renamed, edited, sometimes resized, and categorized. I stated in the proposal that a large part of the work would be working with the photographs. I was certainly not wrong.
I played around with the idea of adding titles or some sort of caption for each of my photos. I had to name my photos in my previous portfolio, but back then I had less photos. This is where the words “and/or” become crucial because it meant, I had given myself some breathing room in the future.