This piece of work was always going to be the biggest challenge for me. I haven’t written any kind of essay since leaving college in 1979. My tutor advised me to pick a topic with a small focus so I chose one photograph taken by Dorothea Lange entitled “Towards Los Angeles”.

I completed research into the photo and Dorothea Lange which led to Roy Stryker and the FSA. The research was primarily into the photograph.

When I got the initial feedback from my first effort and my tutor said I had produced a good blog post I felt deflated and went to read my post again. After doing so I agreed with my tutor and felt disappointed in my self. I revisited the work following the annotations my tutor had sent to me. On re-reading this I still felt I could do better. So I stayed up all night reading how to write an academic piece of work.

Also I realised I had to do more research into the background of the photo and also Roy Stryker. This research gave me the data to write an essay and the work I did reading the website of the “Royal Literary Fund” (2020) meant I could start again. My tutor was great going the extra mile allowing me to resubmit and re-reading and re-assessing this work.

In the first piece I wrote, the vocabulary was sloppy, not academic at all, in fact bloglike. Also I had only focussed on the photograph I needed to expand the work to look at the whole picture. The second piece was much better and although I realise I need to carry on the improvement I am happy with this second piece of work.

In previous course I had referenced the work I had read and was surprised to be told I had been doing it wrong. I read “Cite them right” (2005), a book by Pears and Shield which corrected my referencing to the Harvard method of reference.

I feel in the end I created a good piece of writing about a great photograph and its context. However more importantly I realised my inadequacies and have started the journey to putting things right. However I realise there are many more miles to put in to keep the improvement moving forward.

Work Cited

        Fidgety Lizard. “Royal Literary Fund.” Accademic. Royal Literary Fund, 2020. https://www.rlf.org.uk/resources/academic-writing/.

        Pears, Richard, and Graham Shields. Cite Them Right. 6th ed. Pear Tree Books, 2005.