Parade of Excuses

I've been babbling about my most recent photography project awfully much lately. Today we had the assessment where everyone was to present their work and talk about the concepts and research supporting it. I don't know if it was just that our tutor was hyper-critical about everything or if everyone of us, indeed, had managed to produce pure bullshit. Either way I ended up being extremely disappointed to myself and my outcome. This is not only for the fact that I felt like bursting into tears in the middle of my presentation (and I apparently I wasn't the only one) because the tutor kept on bombarding me with irritating questions when he clearly should have seen how close to breaking point I already was, no - in all honesty I'm disappointed to the quality of my work and knowing that I would have had the skills to carry it out much better is all the more frustrating.
I took my sweet time bitching and moaning about all this earlier today.

Why was my work such crap then?

To explain this unexpected occurrence I have come up with a bunch of excuses totally relevant reasons.

1a. Wat? How does this work?

In this assignment we used medium analogue medium format cameras, which are about twice as big as the normal 35 mm's people commonly use. And I was completely inexperienced with the equipment.

This is the kind of camera I used

 

with a lens like this.

I fell in love with that camera+lens combination but trying to process 120 mm film is nothing but a pain in the bum. I screwed up so many rolls of film I don't even dare think about it. They're not the cheapest products in the universe, you know. So yeah, technical issues.

1b. Compatibility mess

This is kind of related to the technical issues but not quite.
So, at first I obviously didn't have a medium format camera of my own but then I kind of craved for one so very badly that I convinced my mum to pay me for one as a Christmas present. First of all, it took a week to find an affordable camera, make a bid and then receive it by post. By that time I'd already lost a couple of weeks or so, and was still practically nowhere with my project.
When I finally got the camera I still had to wait for more than a week before I was able to book a macro lens from the university.
Now, when I got the lens it so happened that it wasn't compatible with my camera. Luckily my course mate who's living in the same accommodation with me had the right kind of camera, borrowed from the uni as well, and so I was able use it.
At this point though, I only had less than two weeks to finish my project.

2. Rush, rush, rush

Time issues were there all the time, and yes I did have the same exact amount of time to carry this through as everyone else in my course, but not once in my photoshoots did I have time to really get into what I was doing since my models (myself included) were always on their way to somewhere else. I would probably have been loads more careful and thorough had I had several hours at a time rather than random short periods, during which I had to be aware of the time every minute. Also, the idea itself grew slowly in my mind throughout my experiments and test films and research. I find it really stressing to be expected to develop an awesome artistic idea and put it into practice in a limited, pretty short amount of time.
YOU JUST DON'T FORCE CREATIVITY! It hurts. D:

See? It's my dead creativity.

 But every other photo art student had to come up with awesome artistic ideas and carry them through in short time as well. Why did most of them manage it all just fine whilst you didn't?

3. Just packed mah bags and hopped on a plane

Oh yes, I'm despicably going to throw in the I'm-a-foreign-student-far-away-from-home card.
I'm not particularly homesick to be honest, and I get to speak Finnish with that dear piece of awesomeness living next door. Also, Skype is a way to keep in touch with folks at homeland.
What I'm saying that this Autumn and the year before have been quite insane ones what with all the effort of putting together one hell of an application, stressing about not getting in anywhere and then finally moving myself and my stuff over that tiny pool of water I believe is called the North Sea. Then switching my inbuilt language setting in full-time English, been thrown in the middle of arty British students and tutors and trying to cope with that. It's been amazing in many ways but not to acknowledge the infernal stress levels I'm sometimes faced with would be pretentious.

4. The mess they call "relationship"

It ended, alright. And I wasn't cool with it. And I'm still very much not cool with it. There, I said it. Out loud. And I certainly prefer avoiding discussing the subject in any mature or rational level. But shit happens and life tends to suck most of the time anyway.
And then you just have to manage, which mostly means living in some sort of a bubble of denial or something.

All I'm saying here is that I've been through some pretty exhausting stuff and I just really need a holiday to get my artsiness and drive back. These may sound like pathetic excuses but they're all relevant and true, and I'm nothing but a human for God's sake - not to mention an emotionally fucked up one. Fortunately I only have one teeny-tiny essay of 2500 words to produce during the Christmas holiday. Hooray!
No but really, it's not as consuming as being an artist and forcing yourself to get inspired about some stupid briefing you get (even when I tend to do exactly what I please regardless of the guidelines).

Now, sleep because I need to be on a lecture in seven hours and 45 minutes. Fuck my life.