This blog will act as a learning log for the "Art of Photography" course which I'm studying. This course is the introductory module for the Open College of the Arts (OCA), Photography Degree course.

Monday, 2 September 2013

Assignment 3

I've received feedback for Assignment 3 from my tutor - https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/104013160/SBAOP3.pdf

The submission can be found in my Dropbox - https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/104013160/Assignment%203%20-%20Steven%20Briggs%20-%20510812.zip

My email response to my tutor is as follows:

"Hi David
Thank you for your feedback. I was a bit surprised by your feedback re the format (particularly the grey titles), of the submission as this is the same format as I used for previous assignments. Either way, I’ll try and make it clearer going forward.
Re the lamppost, I’d not spotted that it was out of focus until you pointed it out. I would have expected that the reflection was the thing to be focussed on rather the reflected object. I think that’s quite intriguing so I’m going to do some experimenting on that to try and get my head round it.
I completely take your point re the out of focus chair in the Cup photo. I spent quite a bit of time on the composition, but the out of focus chair is probably a bit distracting. I attended a talk with Peter Fraser a few months ago - http://stevenbriggs7.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/peter-fraser-red-eye-lecture.html and remember him talking about his desire to get edge-to-edge sharpness in his photographs in order to increase the sense of objectivity.
Re my blog I think the absence of articles over the last few months reflects the fact that I took a break from things, but I’ve had positive feedback form you previously for the blog, so I’m figuring I just need to return to the levels I was doing previously. The links you provide will be useful.
With regards to producing prints for future submissions, will that definitely be necessary? I’ve always preferred the idea of doing completely digital submissions. I’ve never really printed my photographs and so I’d be starting from scratch re experience in this area and I think it might become a bit of a distraction from me actually concentrating on the other areas which I find more interesting. If you do think it’s necessary to print, would you recommend buying a photo printer or paying to get them printed?
I’ve already got some way through the exercises for Part 4 and I’ve started to think about subject matter for the Assignment. I’m not sure which way to go though. In many respects I’d like to do landscape, but I think it could be difficult to find a suitable “single object”. It would also be interesting to do portraits of specific person, but I’m not sure I’ll be able to find a suitable volunteer. So I’m starting to think that finding an interesting object (on ebay or something), to photograph as still life could be the way to go. I’d appreciate any recommendations or thoughts you might have on this."

And his response to me:

"I shouldn’t worry too much over the grey titles and obviously I hadn’t found it a problem previously wither.  However, I do know that assessors view a lot of work each day during assessment so if I can make the slight slip when slowly working through an assignment, an assessor could certainly make it when trying to get through their days quota, and anything that might annoy or confuse an assessor is best avoided.

Prints aren’t required for assessment but I did note when sent to observe the assessment event in March that assessors grumbled more when having to view submissions online. It shouldn’t affect a grade at your level though.  One thing I should add is that this is a degree level course so at some point you will need to learn all about printing.  A lot of the learning comes from experience so I recommend starting to print as soon as you are running a fully colour manage workflow.  At first I would recommend outsourcing to a lab (a lot of students use http://www.digitalab.co.uk/ as the quality is good and their Fuji frontier prints are cheap).  If you then find yourself wanting to experiment you could investigate buying your own inkjet, but this is by no means necessary."

I've started with the Part 4 exercises and I'm looking forward to working toward the conclusion of this course and then onto the next."

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