The day before, the day before.

So far, I haven’t really spoken much about the second unit at University.  I had planned to, but for a variety of reasons it didn’t happen.  But this doesn’t mean I will not be talking about it.  As of this moment, I haven’t done a proper unveiling of my second unit work to the world, just to a few friends.  The reason I have kept it under wraps is that I am about to put the images from my second unit into a qualification panel for The BIPP Associate panel.

Now, you may be reading this and thinking, what is The BIPP, and why would I want to do an associate panel after getting a master's degree?

So, The BIPP, otherwise known as ‘The British Institute for Professional Photography’, is one of the major professional photography organisations in the UK, with the others being ‘The Master Photographer Association’, the ‘Association of Photographers’ (AOP) and The Society of Photography.  There are also the ‘The Guild of Photographers’ and ‘The Royal Photographic Association’, which are both for professionals and enthusiasts.

I have been a member of three of those organisations, the MPA, The Society of Photographers and the BIPP, gaining my Licentiate qualification with both the MPA and The Society of Photographers and whilst I could easily have got my BIPP Licentiate with the BIPP, I wanted to achieve something more.

With most photographic organisations, there are various professional qualifications that can be done.  The first is Licentiate, which is to show that your work is up to a certain technical and creative level to uphold a professional status.  To get any of the qualifications, you have to put together a panel of twenty images which meet a certain standard.  To be very honest, this is not too hard a qualification to get, and I have seen some great Licentiate panels and some which barely scrape past.  With the MPA, the maximum score was 140 points, judged on different criteria, with the minimum needing to pass being 80 points (I am using the MPA as they have a defined qualification system, whereas others go by judges' opinions).  I received 126, and that was for a panel, which I rushed in when COVID hit; I realised I would not be able to get the panel I wanted together and go for Associate qualification, so I put some images in which I wouldn’t have otherwise put in.

An Associate qualification is the next level of qualification, and the aim is to show a high professional level of technical and creative ability, with the panel of images hanging together as a cohesive panel of work.  This is a hard qualification to get, and I know many excellent photographers, well-known in the industry, who are qualified to Associate level.  This is the level I believe I should quite easily be able to achieve at the level of photography I am at.

Finally, you have a Fellowship qualification, which, for me, is the holy grail of qualifications and is generally accepted as being the hardest qualification in photography, with photographers spending years planning to put a Fellowship panel together.  The level of technical proficiency should be exceptional, showing a personalised style and creativity.  To get this qualification, everything has to be perfect, and any mistakes will be punished.

So, going back to before I started university, right back to when I conceived of the idea of going to university.  One of the major reasons was that I believed I could skip doing my Associate qualification and go for my Fellowship qualification if I really put the time and effort in.

Now, this isn’t just me thinking that I could do a Fellowship panel; over the last few years, I have spoken to various photographers whom I respect, some of whom are Fellows.  But if I were going to try and get my Fellowship, I would have to raise my photography up to another level.

As anyone who has read my blog will know, I have various neurodiversities, and the frustrating fact is they do have a major effect on who I am and what I am capable of.  This does not mean that I am unable to do something, but I will have to go about doing something in a very different way from most neurotypical people.

One of the issues is focusing and completing something.  Without a clear goal to focus on, for a variety of reasons, there is a good chance what I am aiming to achieve will not happen.  One of the reasons for me deciding to go to university to do my master’s degree was to allow me the focus to try and put together a project that would allow me to get my Fellowship qualification.

Now, I won’t go into details here, but early in the second unit, I realised that I was not going to be able to do my Fellowship qualification.  Whilst this was devastating, on a personal level, it did free me up in regards to doing my Master’s degree, and what I learnt from the project and the mistakes that I made was certainly more important than any qualification, in the long run.

So, moving on to after I finish my panel, I send the panel to my mentor (Organisations like you to have a mentor to help put together a panel).  Now, my mentor in the BIPP is a very well-respected Fellow who is a member of various organisations, who, whilst not knowing me personally, did know of me through the MPA and the level that I could achieve.

After sending my work through, I got a bit of a shock.  He said that I could easily achieve my Licentiate with the panel, with the main issue being bringing the panel together cohesively to be able to achieve my Associate qualification.  A part of this is because I wanted to really stretch myself when doing my Master’s degree, and educational and professional qualifications are very different.

 For my project, I used a variety of different forms of lighting, many of which are very different to each other.  I also chose ten different colours, had ten different models, and framed the images in very different ways.  So, it was very hard for my mentor to see how the panel would look as a whole.

But me being stubborn, said that I wanted to go for my Associate, and whilst I think my mentor was a little sceptical, he did think that it was possible, if I could explain to the judges what the panel was about. 

Fortunately, after doing various bits of work, I managed to put my panel together to my liking (or as close as I could); having shown what the final panel is going to look like, he now believes the panel stands a good chance of passing.  But with no guarantee.

So, now I sit here writing, the day before the day before, my panel goes in for judging.  Far more worried than I was when I was waiting to hear back about my Master’s qualification.

Tomorrow, I head up to Birmingham, staying in a hotel because I don’t want any issue with getting to the qualification on the Tuesday morning.  I have no idea, whether I will pass and I really do not know how I will take it if I fail, but I know that with this panel, through all the mistakes that I made, on Wednesday morning, a little chapter of my life will be over.