Tutor report

Overall Comments Joanna, thanks for your submission and for taking the time to assess your prints and re-order those you weren’t satisfied with. It would be worthwhile reflecting on this process and the issues you faced as a post in your learning log for future reference. You show a good understanding of the practical brief and assignment objectives, however sketches that interpret the colour movement and balance are missing. Refer back to the brief – paragraph 3, line 6. I’m sure they would be fine to just include in your assignment blog post. You can go back in and edit previous posts via your wordpress dashboard. On the whole this is a positive submission, which shows you are developing your practical understanding of picture-making, looking for colour relationships and bringing forward learned techniques from previous assignments. I also see improvement in the depth of your accompanying notes which are thorough and detail your practical situations and thought processes. Although you are clearly putting in a lot of effort into both your exercises and assignments, and you have taken on board practical guidance, your learning log doesn’t evidence of any recent progress in terms of mid-assignment research or reflection, which I recommend giving some attention to. It will not only help you improve how your work meets assessment criteria but also help you push your photography in terms of styling, seeing new situations and developing your creative ideas. Feedback on assignment Flowers are a reliable subject when it comes to visualising and capturing colour, they are naturally attractive and come in such a broad and vibrant spectrum of colours. Although on the whole these are well shot, I like it when you attempt to break away from this topic to try to see and create colour relationships through constructed images, food and landscape. In fact image 1A & 1B are both quite effective, technically and in their framing (particularly use of perspective lines in 1B) I feel that 1b may have benefited from a higher aperture to achieve wider depth of field, perhaps if you need to, look at upping the ISO to 400 and see what effect it gives you in both aperture and in the

Student name Joanna Taylor Student number 512512

Course/Module Photography  1:    The  Art  of  Photography

Assignment number 3: Colour

colours. I feel that waiting for the helicopter to enter that space in the center of the frame and within the blue was a making the most of that opportunity and to the final image’s benefit - as it just wouldn’t have stood out as much against the rock and means that it is clearly showing the vast scale of the valley. You decided to print both of these images, which I feel was a good decision. You are right, 1A’s print is actually a lot more successful than the on screen version and I feel that you balanced it well as you don’t lose the line of the glass in the print, yet the colours are strong and standout against the background. The brighter the white space, the clearer the colours contrast against it and each other, especially with such fine detail as you have here. The image works well enlarged for print, allowing you to really see the fine marbling and pattern in the colours. Just as an aside; I wonder if you thought about other options for this shoot, and why you opted for this type of glass – it might have been exciting to consider using a larger clear vessel holding the water and perhaps going in macro/super close up so you can’t see the container. 1C is also effective in your lighting, sharpness and contrast – the veins of the leaf of the strawberry are defined and delicate, there’s a cleanness in the whites and all of this along with the shallow depth of field accentuates their form, texture and colour. You make a good observational notes about backdrops – these do take practice and checking to get right and most often it’s almost impossible to get them completely blemish free in shooting. Make sure your backdrops are as clean as possible, don’t rely on shallow depth of field to disguise any marks, as you probably now know, they will appear as blotches or strange markings when your images are enlarged – if you can’t get rid of dust etc in the set up – you could use photoshop if you have access to it, to use the healing brush tool on small blemish areas – I recommend finding a range of online tutorials about this if you are going to attempt it. If looking to develop your work with objects and set ups against backdrops for later assignments or exercises, if possible, it could be worth setting aside some space at home and constructing a mini-studio that can be kept up whilst you take a few test shots, upload, check over and then you can always re-position, clean up and reshoot if necessary. I quite like the way that the bold blue background reappears within your edit, from the sky in the valley, through to 3A and 3D. I feel these are your best use of blue. I’m not sure if 3B: Blue and Yellow was one of the images you had re-printed, but it really hasn’t translated from onscreen to print as well as the others. The central yellow detail is masked due to the lack of contrast in the yellows – which is not the case with your online version. I’d consider replacing this image in your final submission. Perhaps with a bit of brightening for print, image 3D could be worth looking at as it is a similar composition. It is a shame, as I think your idea of springtime and shooting close up in a natural outdoors scenario is really good and worthwhile. Just one other pointer, be wary of camera shake and your sharpness in macro conditions, make sure your camera is set up for such extreme close-ups – I can see that the central stamen is sharp, but it is such a small element within quite a dark area of the flower, that I wonder if the petals were just as sharp/in focus it could have had more impact? I do appreciate though, that it is difficult when dealing with flowers that have such physical depth, quite opposite to a flower like a

gerbera in 3D. Take a look at the software you are using to prepare your digital image files for print, if they have colour correction functions or retouching tools, they can be quite useful. If you don’t have full Adobe Photoshop, then Photoshop Elements and Lightroom are very popular for digital image making as you can edit an image’s colour balance and finer quality adjustments. Be sure to make notes for your own reference of any resources or tutorials you watch or read and their most useful points. You can always link to videos and sites in your wordpress posts. In 2C, it is good to see you experimenting with ideas of the portrait, technical image editing and your focus is sharp on the face paint and the eye, which become the main features. However, you don’t link to or explain the images that were your inspiration – I would advise creating a new post that looks closer at these examples and influences, what you particularly think they achieve and then link to that post in your assignment notes for that picture. Keep an eye on your ISO settings – I’m sure Part Four: Light will get you testing these out more. You opt for ISO 100 in most of your images here, and in some I wonder if trying out different options and having a tripod with you for landscapes especially, might see some interesting developments. Learning Logs or Blogs/Critical essays Your learning log is coming along nicely, building up a bank of notes and images that record your exercises and progress through the module. The structure is fine with the recent developments, although there’s still no section on research and reflection: one way to approach your blog is to treat it as if it were an actual online sketchbook. It would be great to see you using it as a space to record your ideas development for your assignment shoots – this could include posts that show your notes brainstorming different ideas; researching practical techniques that are best suited and into other photographs of the subjects you are choosing or genres of photography that you like or are drawn to. You can also upload posts, which show you working through your edit for selection…these could include image galleries of smaller files which show your wider edit and where you note down your decisions for choosing certain shots over others. After having a good look around your log, I feel like I need to provide similar feedback to A2 regarding your research and reflection – rather than rephrase those pointers, I think its best if you also refer back to your A2 feedback that looks at suggestions for building on your research. Do let me know if you are struggling with this or anything is unclear. Referencing any sources – As mentioned in the introduction to TAoP, it is important to start getting into a routine of stating where you found any diagrams, videos or quotes. This is vital in terms of best practice, future levels of the course and upholding basic copyright regulations. I realise that your image of the colour wheel comes from the module handbook, but it is still important to say where any images that aren’t of your own making, are taken from. The OCA resources site of

your student web portal has a downloadable guide to the Harvard System of Referencing. Suggested reading/viewing It is easy to forget to record any research you are doing, especially as it is not included in each of the practical assignments. It is also difficult to structure research as it comes from your interests, which can change regularly depending on your chosen subject and also means finding quiet time to read and reflect on material and images you are seeing. I really do think it will benefit your coursework and practice, if you start to jot down your inspiration and influences and take time to select one or two books, websites or magazines that have been suggested both in the module reading list and previous A1 and A2 reports. Pointers for the next assignment I realise that this feedback has mainly focused on your written work, however this is because I feel your practical work is remaining largely consistent. (Although please note the pointers in my feedback above.) Be sure to look ahead to the assignment criteria and see if you can develop ideas and subjects you might want to explore through your exercises and assignment shoots. Not all your ideas will work out, but experimenting is part of the fun and will help you refine your existing skills and develop new ones. You make sound observations for areas of improvement in your images, like the small marks or blemishes in your backgrounds - perhaps take some time to review this, make notes on what to pay closer attention to or avoid the next time you take on a similar scenario. You are progressing well Joanna and I realise you haven’t been well recently, so take your time and try to breakdown areas that you want to improve into smaller exercises or tasks – especially with research. You’ll be surprised, with just a little attention and dedicated time, how quickly you can start to build up this aspect of your course work. We’ve been asked to remind students to be sure not to use images from your archive for each of your assessed assignments. You can by all means tailor your exercises for that assignment to try out and produce images for your submission, but please don’t include old images either from previous assignments, other course modules or old files from before you started with OCA. This is known as self-plagiarizing and the OCA takes this very seriously. I’m happy to discuss this in more detail if you’re unsure about it and there should be more information about this on your student portal. Its great to see you’ve already started exercises for A4, I hope it’s going well and I look forward to both seeing the results there and additional research. Tutor name: Helen Warburton Date 05.05.2014 Next assignment due 28.04.2014