Documenting digital creative practice

This paper is grounded in the author’s experience of documenting his own digital high dynamic range landscape photography and visual effects practices, and, the advantages, value, limitations and impact this has on the creative practice and vice versa. Documenting of digital creative practices is becoming increasingly important for creative businesses, practitioners, researchers and academics. For photographers, filmmakers, animators and visual effects artists, it is means of demonstrating innovative approaches to engage the public and prospective clients. For academics and researchers involved in practice-led research, documenting practice provides material for reflection and case studies as well as a means of evidencing the research journey and key decisions taken along the way. This paper will explore and compare different means, methods and approaches to documenting digital camera acquisition, processing and postproduction workflows depending on the audience consumption and usage – i.e. self, private or public, and utility i.e. self-reflective practice, communication of insights, evidencing and cataloguing research and creating case studies. A range of approaches from hand written notes, photography to a number of different video documentation approaches will be discussed and evaluated in terms of ease of documentation, situational constraints, impact on the creative practice, ease of storage, and, dissemination. The paper will further explore how the notions of the observer effect and the uncertainty principle may come into play when documenting creative practice; recording oneself can result in the practitioner(s) becoming self-conscious, whilst putting more effort into recording and documenting the practice can take focus away from the actual creative activity being undertaken. Documenting practice, therefore, becomes a balancing act between the self, the practice, the situation, and the audience