Feedback from Assignment 2

Received feedback from Assignment 2.

Sometimes, you do something and you have a feel as to whether a piece of work is good or not. It is often a function of how easy it was to do; how well it flows. I had an instinct that my Assignment would be well received; I thought it was a good idea; I enjoyed doing it; and the narrative flowed. My best work has tended to be when I work my day to day photography with the OCA course. This  Assignment was done while on holiday in Scotland; as said in the Assignment itself, the structure required of the Assignment, and the need to do some background research, fulfilled me as a photographer much more than taking random shots on the day.

Tutor agrees with subject matter: "You made a really great choice of subject...". Further, "The images that you have produced for this assignment are strong."

Pleased to see that tutor agrees that the narrative is strong and notes the flow. This was a result of having the idea in my head of how the story should be told, and using the images to demonstrate this, rather than fitting narrative around the images.

Tutor comments that the images of the girl and the woman eating are not so necessary, albeit acknowledging my justification. I understand the comment, and, to be honest, maybe was sufficiently taken with these images to work the narrative round them, an indication of the interaction between the narrative and the photography.

On technical point, tutor says she would like to see the information on camera settings used. I had asked previously whether settings information should be included in captions and received following response:

"To give you feedback on the technical aspects of your work, it useful to have settings to refer to. I don't see a need to necessarily put these in the blog though and not for the exercises. Now in this respect the AOP is more heavily centred around camera techniques and therefore these perhaps have more relevance than they will as you progress upwards."

I originally took this to mean that settings information is not required, but what is actually being said is that settings information does not need to be on captions. Will include as appended information in future.

Tutor says "On occasion the images on screen could be a tad sharper", adding whether a faster shutter speed and/or a monopod would have helped. Short answer is yes for both, although monopod would not have been usable for some of the shots. A better solution might have been to do have some further post processing. Having spent time on other Scotland images, I have refreshed my knowledge of Topaz products. Topaz Adjust and Topaz Detail both have excellent sharpening possibilities, boosting structure or adding sharpening. These work far better than the unsharp mask tool in Photoshop, and would have overcome the slight problem noted. Compare the before and after on the following two images:

per the blog

sharpened using Topaz Detail

per the blog

sharpened using Topaz Detail 2

The sharpened images are better, bringing out detail in the mountains as well as the subjects. TD2 does not work for all images but will use for most assignment images in future.

Overall conclusion is "well done..interesting collection of images...your analysis and supporting notes are very strong".  Pleased with this feedback.

Also good progress noted with learning log. Need of do some more work on this  over next few weeks.

Overall, have enjoyed this Chapter very much. I thought it would be interesting, as have taken a lot of people unaware shots in the past; I am not fazed by the prospect of photographing people when they do not know. The main learning outcome has been to understand the concept of narrative better (along with the reading that have noted elsewhere in the learning log)  but also some technical points about using wide angle and zoom lenses. I understand better the concept of having something to say via the medium of photography.