Update 18 January

I have recently completed Assignment 4, received and commented on feedback, and have written Assignment 5, which will be posted shortly in order to meet the deadline for March assessment.

Having got so close to finishing, it seemed a shame to wait an additional four months for the July assessment, a period when I would gain little for Assignment 5 (having already worked on it for some time), so have concentrated on the two Assignments, rather at the expense of reading, limited to BJP only recently.

I am aware that the reading and review of others' work has been limited at the back end of this course. I will read more now that the Assignments are completed and have a few weeks before the assessment process in March.

There are few reasons for the limited reading:

1. Principally, time. I was training for the New York marathon during the autumn, a commitment that inevitably reduced time available for OCA work, so I decided to concentrate on exercises and Assignments. I shared the thoughts of my tutor that it is important to maintain momentum in my my work. Moving to working four days a week working has not helped, either;
2. I have found the suggested reading for this course to be less useful than it was for TAOP. This is purely a personal view but both books (the photograph as contemporary art and Context and Narrative) I have read (or nearly read) have, in my view, suffered from a sort of inductive taxonomic approach: they piece together work from a number of photographers under some general headings as chapters. Thus they tend to be descriptive rather than insightful, notwithstanding some illuminated commentary and featuring some interesting work. By contrast, BJP interviews or receives comments from most of the photographers it features, so you get more understanding and insight into the aims of their work;
3. I think I quickly understood the principal difference  between this course and TAOP: that it begins to develop the themes of context and narrative in photography, whereas TAOP is mainly about the technical sides (Light, Colour, Points etc). The reading therefore assisted less. Moreover, I can see that this theme will be a constant one from now on, giving me plenty of opportunity to read more and develop my work. P&P in this sense is an introductory course and perhaps it is best to concentrate on the exercises and assignments at this stage;
4. As implied in 3., I shall continue with OCA courses. I shall do Understanding Visual Culture next for reasons I shall set out in my final reflection. This should provide me with valuable background knowledge of the whole visual media experience and clearly will involve a lot more reading. Not only that, but I shall take the opportunity in the next few months before commencing UVC to read (complete in a couple of cases) some of the suggested texts and will post comments on a separate blog to be referenced when recommence OCA course.

I have found P&P to be an interesting and challenging course and have enjoyed doing most of the exercises and all the Assignments. This has been evident to tutor, judging from the comments. It is now virtually done; all that remains is to complete and submit Assignment 5 for feedback, and to complete the blog for assessment.