Assignments 1-5

Assignment 5 - The Assignment
I received my tutor's feedback on my assignment and here are his comments.

Overall Comments

I am so pleased with this assignment. In itself it represents a splendid achievement of a personal goal; in tackling something that you had as an ambition but didn’t think you could realise on the course, but it also demonstrates the excellent progress that you have made since the first assignment.

Feedback on assignment

Well you’ve made my job difficult here; there’s not a lot to criticise.

I can easily follow your thought processes, methods and decisions; decisions which overall demonstrate informed analysis, both technically, and aesthetically, and with which I agree. The prep for the assignment and your presentation of your work flow is excellent.

Also the prints themselves are good, and well presented; with the generous borders, weighted to the bottom.

Artist

You absolutely chose the right image here. The composition works well; on the right its all inclined planes, in the easel and the art work.

The concentrated pose conveys something of the character and there’s even a little movement on the tip of the palette knife while the rest of her has a cool, crisp, clarity. Her head is perfectly positioned relative to the background, a couple of inches either way and she would have had something growing out of her head. The left hand side conveys the clutter of tools and materials that an artist needs and the lamps are almost like two pets watching her work.

A strong image to start and one I would have been happy to come away with if it had been my shoot.

Museum Curator

My final print

When I saw it posted on the OCA website I thought this was one I’d be able to pick you up on from a technical point of view. I had already made some adjustments to the file posted on the website, this was my edit...

Tutor's suggested manipulation

But I see in the print you’ve tackled the things that I’ve adjusted.

I think you’ve made an interesting composition but I would have pulled back slightly so that the head in the portrait didn’t crop down the edge of the frame.

He adds an extra dynamic to the composition and the meaning, looking over her shoulder like that, but having the edge crop through him irritatingly draws the eye too much. Otherwise it’s well handled in a technically difficult location.

Fossil Hunter
Although the one you chose wasn’t your initial preference in some ways I think it portrays character more effectively; the tilting forward and to the side pose with the laughing smile. The overall technical quality is very good; well balanced light contrast and nice and sharp.

Colin, the fossil hunter

I think you’ve learned a lot technically during this exercise. Doing a reccy really helps with visualisation and lighting; it makes you more relaxed on the shoot and so the subject is more relaxed and giving. You’ve also learned about controlling fill-in with the on-camera flash; about the only thing it’s good for once you’ve learned to use it judiciously.

The narrow bright strip down the left is slightly unfortunate, but in this case it doesn’t distract too much, it feels in keeping with the lighting but it might be interesting to try darkening it down quite a bit more to the brightness around the little wooden mannequin.

Harbour Master

This is an interesting experimental response to a problem; which has been well executed.

As part of a series it probably sticks out like a bit of a sore thumb, as it would having one or two in B&W for no particular reason, but in the context of the assignment I think it does no harm and demonstrates the flexibility of your response to problems.

However, I would say that since you’ve gone for the ‘joiner’ effect, rather than seamless panorama, I would prefer to see that on all the edges, not just at the top.

Town Mayor

An excellent result; given the time and technical pressures I think this has to be the shot of the assignment. Are you sure you’re not going to be the next Jane Bown? If I was paying you to make this photograph I would think I’d got my money’s worth.

The Mayor

You thought about all the factors, controlled them and executed perfectly with impeccable quality for a daylight session.

Photographic Historian

I think this image picks up on something quite fundamental to photographers and that’s their relationship to their cameras. There aren’t many things in life that you press to your face, with the exception of perhaps loved ones. It’s a close, and closed, relationship you have with your camera when you look through the viewfinder. This image makes a nod to that, it’s quite intimate.

My submission

For me it’s cropped just a touch too tight at the bottom and although I agree with your Photoshop adjustments in general I would have also used the mid tone contrast control, under ‘Show more options in the Shadows/Highlights control, to lighten and increase the contrast a touch in the lower part of the face. Something like this...

Tutor's suggestion

Notice how there is less emphasis on the knuckles now.

Shop Assistant

 

My submission

I thought your shelf stacking idea was actually a good one, avoiding it looking trite is a question of how you visualise it and there was interest in the way you composed the one that you worked on, but it does have its draw backs, as you say.

This is the best I could do with it in the time...

Tutor's suggestion

...so I think you made the right choice in the end.

It’s not the obvious thing to go for but I think it is the one that conveys most of her character, I can imagine her speaking to me and the sort of things that she might say. Having her at the door way gets over the mixed colour temperature light problem and the final result has a very good quality.

Winemaker

My cropped image

What a character, he reminds me a bit of Jack Hargreaves from early evening TV of the 60s and 70s. You coped very well with the technical challenges.  I wouldn’t mind seeing a bit more on the left, it’s cropped a bit too tight to the headshot of the man. I don’t think it would do any harm to see the whole of your original composition. It adds more quirky interest.

Tutor's manipulated image

He is portrayed as an impish man with his naughty nudes and love of drink.

Conclusion

This assignment is a triumphal summation of everything that you’ve learned and developed on the course; overcoming the shyness that everybody has at first about asking people to collaborate and then the planning, problem solving, execution, editing and presenting, putting the knowledge you’ve gained into practice.

I think you can feel very satisfied with the outcome. You’ve created a very solid base to progress your photography practice from in the direction you desire.

Well done!

- ooOoo -

Assignment 4 - A sense of place

Here's my tutor's report on assignment 4, warts and all. My main aim in photographing what I considered the essential charm of Lyme Regis was to show its unique and distinctive areas away from the main tourist attractions. Lyme is a fascinating place regardless of the tourist attractions and events which are mostly based around its links to fossils and the Jurassic Coast.

I was concerned with the lack of people in my pictures but I wanted to portray the quietness and soliture found out of season. Those discerning visitors who come out of season, i.e. not in July, August and early September, are here to see the town as it really is, with the townspeople going about their daily business.

Tutor Comments

Overall Comments

As always; a comprehensively researched and presented assignment that meets the brief.

Feedback on assignment

I like the idea of the map, I used a similar thing in a book I did for my MA.

Image 1

It’s a good establishing shot, well printed, that gives an atmospheric feel for the place and its architecture. The bird is the icing on the cake that gives an incentive to look in to the picture carefully.


Image 2

A strong image; very well spotted, optimally composed and again the bird is a gift. Is there a theme developing? Hahaha. ‘ }

The blue tinge to the snow is because it’s lit by open blue sky and shaded from the sun. The sky is blue because of the very high colour temperature of the light coming from it. You see the same effect in the shadows on a sunny summer’s day with no cloud.

I think it would have been interesting to see if you could pull a bit more detail and differentiation out of the shadows using the Shadow/Highlight control. But that’s only a possible refinement; it reads well enough as it is.

Image 3

Another strong image that you planned for really well and then you created an elegant moment from it. The figure is perfectly placed and ‘posed’. I’m enjoying the parallelism with the cannon and that whole little vignette, a picture within a picture.

I think this is one of the most accomplished images, and best bits of retouching, that you’ve produced on the course; very progressive. He just needs a hint of very soft drop shadow under his feet to locate him in the scene. When you are comping two elements together you need to ensure the sense of the light is the same in both, which you’ve done by taking the figure from the same location in similar lighting, then you have to consider the effect on the environment, in terms of shadows, that the object you are comping in will have.

In this case because it’s in shadow and it’s on snow that will be very little, but even a smidgen will have a strong effect on anchoring him into the scene.

Image 4

 

Nice splash of red there; the old time picture postcard photographer’s trick. Used enthusiastically in the past by Annie Leibovitz too.

The crop feels a bit tight on the right. I keep wanting to shove over a bit. Having taken that into account it’s a good scenario, interesting light and colour palette but it needs a bit more narrative possibility. A black dog sitting up on the beach looking at me, or a lost ball, some bit of punctum.

Perhaps this one has more to it...

There seems to be a touch more narrative possibility here; the tall lamp turning its back on the short one to commune with the sand bar.

Image 5

A sensitively chosen composition to create an interesting semi-abstract interpretation; making it almost sculptural with anthropomorphic under tones. A very good quality print too. I can see someone enjoying having a very large print of that on their wall. It also helps the rhythm of the series with the change of scale it creates.

Image 6
Again the splash of red; good light and potentially interesting but it’s a stage in need of its players.

The boat’s reflection is combining a bit awkwardly with the spikes and the boat cropping on the left hand edge is a bit distracting, a pace to the left and a slight clockwise rotation would have cured both.

Perhaps something more like this with some action happening in the bottom right hand corner.

Image 7

Again you’ve identified a good setting and composed it well and your idea to add something to it, in lieu of actually waiting for something to happen, was the right impulse. You just didn’t have the right material to add.

Something like a black cat crossing the path would have worked or someone emerging from the cottage on the left. Sometimes you have to be an angler and wait for something to bite. ‘ }. The file on the disc doesn’t appear to be critically sharp but the print looks ok, if a little moody in the shadows.

Here I’ve lightened the shadows with the Shadow/Highlight tool and increased the mid tone contrast a little...

 

Image 8

Yes I think you chose the best image here, there’s a poignancy to the frosty empty bench.

The back of the bench is rather getting lost in the background though. I think you could have used a wider angle lens and come in closer so that you were more over the top of it, separating it out from the background, perhaps with a vertical composition so that the bench was the foreground interest that led from the path to the church.

It’s a nice touch that we can metaphorically rest on the bench at the end of our walk.

Conclusion

As usual you’ve put a lot of thought and effort into realising the assignment and I note that you’re implementing suggestions I have made.

You’ve produced some strong images, particularly 2, 3, my alternative for 4, and 5. Your selection of subject, composition and post processing have all progressed so well done, keep it up!

Onwards to my final assignment - People & Place on Assignment. Click the link below to get to my final work.

- ooOoo -

Assignment 3 - Buildings in Use

Here's my tutor's comments on my portfolio, warts and all:

West Bay 1
It’s a striking image to open with.
In this instance I agree with you about cropping the dog and people out as they aren’t adding anything of particular interest, but with a different configuration of people and dog it would have added a lot of interest to the image. Say a dog on its own looking back at you.It might have been worth hanging around a bit, once you’d covered the original idea, to see if anything more interesting happened as an alternative.

I waited around here for quite a while to see what the dog did...

West Bay 2

You’ve almost got a cowboy theme going here; I remember in the previous assignment you had a fisherman that looked a bit like a Levi’s ad.

The relationship between the signage, the fire hydrant and the cowboy is working well compositionally but, as in the last case, the other figures aren’t really doing much for us. They are interfering with the other elements by pulling the eye to the edge of the frame for no reward. Also the whole thing seems to be running down to the left. If you look at the top of the fence it’s not level and it should be, irrespective of the vertical convergence you are getting.

My submission:

Of course you can use this consciously to create an air of instability in the image but if it’s not intentional then the camera should be level. I’ve corrected for it here with Filter/Distort/Lens Correction, and while I was in that filter, since I was there, I corrected the perspective distortion; which handily cleans up the cropping windows on the left which were a slight distraction. Then I cloned out the distracting people as a comparison to the original image.

Tutor suggestions:

Eype 1
A very classical rendering that describes the context of the building.
One comment I would make, and this is a general observation on students in general, including the landscape students, they often assume that the optimum conditions are a sunny day for this sort of architectural shot. It would be nice to see some investigation of different times and weather conditions.

Eype 3
This is a considerable improvement, by joining several images together you have effectively increased the resolution; disguising the camera’s short comings since the enlargement required for each individual section is much less.

The fact that you’ve made a ‘joiner’ with visible edges, in the style of David Hockney is appropriate since it’s an arts centre. This image is working really well; you’ve incorporated the technical shortcomings, in a technically difficult situation, into the aesthetic, thereby making a positive out of it.

Beach Huts 2
This is an effective composition and there’s some interesting detailing, ‘Hotel’ and the blue net, but I think the figures would benefit from a little more space to the bottom and the left. Since they’re the main focus of our interest they seem a bit cramped and peripheral.
I think I prefer zoom_0002 for the sense of presence and relation to one another that the figures and activities have; possibly cloning out the figures on the extreme right.

My submission:

Tutor's suggestion:

Beach Huts 3
Again graphically strong but this time with human narrative possibilities and no tricks.  The shot of the assignment so far, with your church joiner coming second.

 

 

Museum 2
Yes this is rather amusing the way one does a double take. Compositionally and technically it has been well handled; apart from the fact that 200 ISO seems to be very noisy on that camera.

Museum 3

An interesting subject in itself but it’s the leaf and little splashes of blue that make it an image. Well spotted.

Shelters 1

This has an almost Moroccan feel to it. The use of the figure gives it an extra twist that multiplies the interest and narrative possibility. I think the central positioning of the figure works well; making them symmetrical would have been too obvious.

Shelter 3

This was well spotted; the all action wedge of people ‘pointing’ toward the upturned table and parasol with the shadow coming in on the right pointing back in the opposite direction. It’s an interesting composition. You made a good job of moving the parasol; it’s a personal philosophical call on whether you consider that acceptable.

Personally it’s something I’d only do in very exceptional circumstances in my personal work. I prefer to work with what’s there and how it is, but you pays your money and makes your choice.

Again the iPhone is showing its limitations. Its short comings aren’t so distinctive as to be an ‘effect’. The whole feeling is rather crunchy with a dissatisfying lack of resolution and blown highlights.

Shelter 4

Leaving aside the aforementioned ethics, this was a good technical exercise that was well executed, apart from perhaps a jog of the mouse right at the end. The bench needed to be nudged over to the right a bit more. You can see a gap to the left of the hood and it overlaps it on the right.

In terms of whether it needs to be there I think it doesn’t. There’s a harmonious relationship in the triangle formed by the two sets of flowers and the pram, set in the context of the formally squared up architecture and the punctuation of the two notices.

When the notices are added in they also make up a square with the pram and the flowers.  The bench rather clutters the image, undermining these relationships. Also without the bench there’s more of a sense of abandonment.

Take away the bench and this is a contender for the most sophisticated image you’ve made on the course to date.

My submission:

Tutor's suggestion:

Conclusion

As I said in my email, your work as gone up a level; your visual awareness of potential subject matter and composition has become more sophisticated in tandem with your technical control. Don’t use the iPhone for assignments though; the quality isn’t good enough, and not in an interesting way. The images just look technically inferior to your other cameras. The joiner was acceptable because it used multiple frames.

Coming on to the images...

Shelter 4 without the bench is my top one, excellent, progressive visualisation with good technical handling and post production, apart from the alignment glitch.

Shelter 3, pace the iPhone, the same comments apply.

Closely followed by Beach Huts 3.

Eype Panorama

My choice for Beach Hut 2

Museum 2

Finally West Bay 2 which was a ‘nearly but not quite’ because of the confusing background behind the cowboy.

Keep refining the vision and control that you’ve developed with these. Good work and good progress, well done!

- ooOoo -

Assignment 2 - People and Activity

5.5.10: Assignment 2 asks me to plan and execute a set of images of people in some form or meaningful activity with a set of approximately 10 final selected images. Either concentrate on one person at different kinds of activity or different people at the same single activity or event. It asks to concentrate on 'telling moments' and on 'explaining the activity'.


I have decided to feature 'Harbourside Activities' as this gives me great scope for a wide range of subjects. The areas covered are sailing, fishing, crabbing, launching boats and kayaking. Here are a few of the images that I will submit to my tutor with full accompanying notes and criticisms.

 

Overall Comments

A very well presented assignment that meets the brief.

Feedback on assignment

First a response to your query; its good discipline to compose to the frame and only make minimal cropping refinements at the post production stage.

There are four main reasons for this:

It makes you think carefully about what you are doing and why you are doing it at the shooting stage, rather than just ‘hitting and hoping’ that you’ll be able to make a composition later.

You have to be constantly aware of everything that is happening in the frame right up to the edges. This prevents you developing tunnel vision for what you think is the actual subject and keeps you in control of the whole frame.

It means you are making use of the maximum quality available to you, rather than producing a radical crop that loses half your original pixels, making your 10MP camera into a 5MP camera.

Finally in a series it helps create a consistency of vision. If you have a range of wildly differing aspect ratios, especially coupled with a wide range of focal lengths, then you get a rather bilious kaleidoscope effect.

In a professional setting it’s slightly different, depending on the use the photography is being put to.

For example at one extreme I would often work with masks; say on cook-chill packaging for M&S. The designer would photocopy his design for the pack front, including the type in place, on to acetate which would then be laid over the ground glass screen of either a 5x4 or 10x8 camera and be sandwiched in place with a flat Fresnel lens; with a strip all around the masked area to allow for ‘bleed’ and slight adjustments up and down and from side to side. Then the elements, food on a plate, props and background would be composed to fit into the mask as near to the original design approved by the client as possible.

That’s a very rigorous controlled situation where you don’t compose to the full frame; you compose to what is require to allow the photograph to do its job.

At the other extreme for example I photographed a series about Texaco delivering diesel to an apple farm in Kent, on my Hasselblad, as part of their annual report.

Obviously we didn’t know exactly what we were going to shoot until we got there so the designer couldn’t produce masks.

In these cases I would compose to the frame, either square, or portrait/landscape A4 proportions that are permanently indicated on my focussing screen, but then pull back some to allow the designer some flexibility in laying out the images with the text in columns.

So even in these situations I’m making controlled decisions about the composition and then allowing enough bleed to make them flexible for their purpose; not just having the elements somewhere in the frame and leaving it up to the designer to try and find a composition.

This is the same as shooting for photo libraries; your composition is just as rigorous but you then allow some bleed to make the usage as flexible as possible to encourage sales.

Very often you’ll see your careful composition hacked to pieces but as long as you get paid what the hell?

You can express the purity of your vision in your self-authored work.

 

Harbour View

This is an effective introductory image.

With a series you should always start out with a strong image, it hooks the viewer and makes them want to turn the page to see more.

The second doesn’t have to be quite so attention grabbing but it should confirm to the viewer that they were right in their assessment that it was worth carrying on.

The third image can be quite ‘quiet’, a linking image that leads through to another stronger image.

It’s important to create a sense of dynamics and rhythm in a series of images, rather like music, you have loud passages and quiet passages, otherwise it literally becomes monotonous; of course you always finish with a flourish so that the viewer is left with the impression that it was a worthwhile and satisfying experience.

If you sequence the images in order of decreasing strength, according to your assessment, then the interest dribbles away and the viewer’s last impression is of your weakest image.

This also applies to ordering images in your portfolio; start with a strong image and finish with a strong image and vary the rest in between, thinking about how one image relates to the other in the sequence.

In this image you’ve used the initial exposure and post production creatively to create an unusual rendering; it almost feels like the beginning of a total eclipse.

With your assignment subject in particular I think it’s important to create different moods through lighting.

There’s a cultural expectation that the seaside should be all about sun and blue skies; happy memories. I even have this problem with landscape students lamenting that they couldn’t do the work because the sun wasn’t shining.

It’s as if the advice given on old Kodak film leaflets, to shoot with the sun over your left shoulder has become culturally ingrained.

To give a proper rounded portrait we need to be sampling all types of conditions; that means different times of day, preferably season, under differing weather conditions.

Compositionally I think you’re spot on here; the figures, are optimally placed and it might be ostensibly a landscape but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a ‘decisive moment’ and I think you’ve caught it; the figures poses mirroring one another while directing ‘his ‘n’ hers’ dogs.

I agree with you, this is the shot of the assignment.

The only quibble I have is the chimney exactly aligning with the horizon line and the roof almost. It draws the eye, giving the building more significance than is required or it deserves. Coming just a little higher, preferably, would have avoided that.

The quality of the ink jet prints through the assignment is very good with just the right amount of border. There’s a slight refinement I would make; the bottom border should be just a little deeper than the top border.

The ‘visual centre’ of a rectangle is just a little higher than the actual centre. If you add the top and bottom borders together then the top border should be approximately 45% of the total, leaving the bottom border 55%. So for example on this one you have 3cm borders top and bottom, adding them together makes 6cm; 45% of that is 2.7cm, leaving 3.3cm for the bottom.

Even at A4 size such small variations make the image sit noticeably more comfortably on the page.

Finally a point about getting horizon lines level, another useful way to do it in Photoshop is to use Filter/Distort/Lens Correction... Straighten tool. You can draw a line anywhere on the image and the image will be rotated to make that line horizontal or vertical.

I always use this to check that horizon lines are level. Of course if you do have to make a correction then you do have to re-crop, as you say, to lose the transparent areas created; one good reason to get them level in the first place.

There are other useful functions in this filter which I use often; correction for wide angle lens barrel distortion and perspective adjustments which are sometimes easier to work with using this filter than the crop perspective tool.

 

Out of the Water

And you’re following my advice already by making number two as strong shot too! ‘ }

A strong composition with a reward at the fulcrum of it. Technically very well handled; good shadow and highlight detail in a tricky lighting situation and a very clean print.

Would have possibly been improved by the sailor doing something a bit more interesting, or say someone’s shadow cast on the white board in the foreground.

Number two on the hit parade.

 

Ready for Work

Good to see that you’ve held enough density in the sky so that it doesn’t bleed into the border.

This one has potentially interesting elements but it doesn’t bring them together to invest them with significance, either through composition, or telling moment, in the way that the first image does especially.

In that one we are almost prompted to invent a back story for the couple ‘throwing shapes’ with their dogs; a lover’s tryst perhaps?

Here it’s more plainly descriptive, a man tying up his boat with some general activity going on.  Perhaps simplifying the composition by reducing the number of elements would have started to invest it with a more editorial point of view.

This is one of mine, from Brighton I seem to remember, with people walking on the sea wall...

It was shot on a Fuji low colour saturation negative film

http://www.clivewhite.com/HTML/Galleryhtml/seaside8.htm

Ostensibly it’s about the incongruity of the huge American car with the silver haired lady in the passenger seat. What’s the story there?

We can’t see the driver but judging by the hair she appears to be a younger female; a niece come to take her aunt for a drive?

There’s a dent in the front wing, you can imagine her wrestling the steering wheel when manoeuvring that car in Brighton streets; with her aunt giving her helpful advice. Hahahaha

Then we have the punctum, as Roland Barthes called it, of the typical Brit man at the seaside, a bit over weight but stripped to the waist to broil in the sun, unaccountably taking an interest in their parking meter. What’s that all about?

Just at that moment a man walking along the sea wall looks straight at me; it almost feels as if he’s smiling. He knows I’m taking the photograph and he’s saying ‘cheese’. Meanwhile the retired couple on the bench look out of the frame towards their future.

So we have various elements of narrative going on there all tied together in relation by the moment in time that the camera recorded.

The above is my interpretation, other viewers may bring different readings depending on their experience; rather in the same way that different readers of the same book take different things from it.

As regards all the compositional ‘rules’, such as thirds, golden sections and Gestalt compositional ideas, I think they are good ways to get beginners thinking consciously about composition and direct them away from putting what they are interested in slap in the middle of the frame. But as a working method I think it should be rapidly left behind to be replaced by an emotional recognition of what feels right.

The only time I’ve ever consciously thought of the rules was when I intentionally broke them with an inward mischievous grin. Hahahaha

No doubt if my compositions were subsequently analysed they could be made to fit the rules one way or another but that doesn’t mean it’s useful to give them any credence while I’m shooting.

One of the great things about photographing for your own enjoyment and self expression is the autonomy. That’s lost if a particular composition feels right to you but you reject it because of a ‘rule’ that someone has come up with through studying classical paintings.

 

Ready to Launch

It’s the same story with this one as you’ve cropped it but not how you shot it, so you should trust to the moment.

With the man included we have narrative possibilities; he’s stalking off out of frame into the rest of reality.

“Jeff come back, don’t be silly”

What’s the problem? “Oh, don’t ask.” Hahaha

It’s interesting that you should try to turn him around; conflict resolution? Hahaha.  The main problem with the composition is that the woman is disappearing against the tractor, especially as the bottom of her top aligns with the bottom of the tractor, she’s almost camouflaged.

 

Which Direction?

This one’s getting there, it’s simplified and there’s a unifying theme that no one seems to quite know what they are doing.

The teenagers are looking in all directions, not regarding one another. Only the girl is looking at the boat, the rowers of which seem to be in some difficulty in directing it. In fact you get the feeling they’re spinning and drifting; under orders from the sign? Hahaha

What doesn’t quite make it for me is the composition; we have three elements rotating around a black hole in the middle.

Once we’ve done an orbit our eye wants to settle, preferably in the middle at the balance point between the three elements, but there’s nothing there so we set off on another orbit and another orbit, never feeling properly fulfilled.

If the rowing boat came across by about 2” and down by a ¼“ that would probably cure it. You might try that and see if it feels better.

 

Launching

This is your standard ‘man pushes boat out’ shot. Very good quality print, crop wise I think you could lose a bit from the bottom and add it to the top.

 

Crabbing

For me this one would have been up there with the very best of the assignment; what’s a cowboy doing fishing in Lyme Regis?

A very strong simple composition; a few elements positioned optimally in the frame and connected together by similarity and visual movement; the cowboy hat pointing to the boat, the arc of the stone reinforcing the arc of his shoulders.

The big problem though is the lack of resolution. It looks like a section of a massive enlargement. Given the generally high quality of the other prints I’m surprised you don’t mention it in the text.  I tried to have a look at the original on the supplied DVD but that appears to be blank.

Also there’s another sliver of something creeping in on the right, that should be got rid of, it pulls the eye. With those two problems corrected I’d be hard pressed to decide between this one and the first one as shot of the assignment.

The first is the more classical Romantic view that would probably be more widely appreciated by the general audience but the second is contemporary and unexpected with narrative undertones that you wouldn’t expect to see in a series such as this; therefore it’s more progressive.

I’ve just convinced myself this is the best image! Hahahaha (As long as it has the print quality of the other images and the right crop is a sliver tighter.)

 

Canoeing

Yes this one is a bit something and nothing, perhaps because all the interest is contained within one thin horizontal sliver across the middle of the picture.

Perhaps coming much further around behind the boys on the rocks so that we could look out with them to the canoes would have filled the picture space more effectively.

As regards the Levels adjustment you can see from the original histogram that you are clearly underexposed. There are no pixels in the top 25% of the grey scale which is clearly wrong when you relate it to the actual subject.

To reiterate what you have already been doing...

The Auto command takes the first significant (when the chart starts to rise) pixel and the last significant pixel (when the chart falls to the axis) and makes them black 0 and white 255 respectively and redistributes the intermediate tones to spread between them.

That often optimises the tonal scale but sometimes it’s preferable to make the black and white point adjustments manually by visual inspection, if you are confident about the calibration of your display.

 

No Wind

It’s interesting that this is suffering the same technical problem as Crabbing and it’s basically the same composition but on a different day, spooky.

I would like to have seen something a bit more ‘telling’ about the moment, say for example one of the sailors looking back at you.

On the Horizon

There’s a pleasing feel to this one but compositionally it doesn’t quite come off for me. 

I keep wanting to shift the whole frame over by an inch; then I think it would work.

Of course you could crop that off but then I think the aspect ratio would be too square; with the subject being the horizon it needs to have a panoramic feel.

You could crop some sky off the top to reinstate the original aspect ratio but I think the balance between the blue and white of the sky pressing down on the purplish water and boats is optimal. It transmits the atmosphere.

The sky slightly concerns me in that the clouds are rather bright right to the top edge of the frame and it rather pulls the eye. It might be worth investigating toning them down a little in the top centimetre or so to contain them and the eye.

 

Back on Dry Land

Again this one is rather limited to the descriptive; it doesn’t appear to be a particularly telling moment. It’s some people watching a boat coming in to dock and it’s difficult to construct any more of an engaging narrative from it.

I would have moved your crop across to include the figure that is cropping on the periphery of the original shot. Then he supplies some punctum, being cropped on the edge makes him covert, then we have more narrative possibility.

We have a man furtively watching people watching a boat dock; adding ambiguity to the meaning of what was otherwise an easily read image, and, by being an active element that’s half cropped out, breaking ‘the rules’. Good.

It also usefully loses the dead space on the left, making the boat no longer centred in the composition and so challenging us to rationalise why it’s not; when ostensibly it’s meant to be the main subject matter.

Conclusion

You’ve put a lot of thought and effort into executing and presenting the assignment and in doing so have produced some progressive images; especially Harbour View, Out of the Water and Crabbing, with other’s coming close, Ready to Launch, Which Direction? and On the Horizon.

Apart from the two aberrations they all display good technical control from shooting through to printing.  In some cases I think your original framing is preferable to your subsequent crop. Let go off the rules now that you have absorbed them and trust more to your instinct.

Think about including peripheral content to richen the narrative possibilities of having a wider context rather than ruthlessly cropping it out and over simplifying the narrative.  The faster people can ‘read’ the image the quicker they’ll pass on to the next one and the less satisfaction they’ll gain from them.  To waylay them you need to challenge them to do a bit of work in decoding meaning.

The first image would be an easy read without the figures, “oh that’s lovely” (quickly mentally filing it under sun settee romantic sublime type pictures and moving on).

If the viewer is properly engaging with the image, rather than just feigning to be, then they will take time to study the figures in their context and put some interpretation on their findings.

ooOoo

Assignment 1 - People Aware

The assignment required that I draw on my experiences in completing the opening exercises to take one person as a subject and create between 5 and 7 different portraits. These should differ in type and style, and each be from a separate photographic session. Write an evaluation of my finished portraits and critically assess my finished work; identify and analyse the reasons for both successful and unsuccessful thechiques and consider where I need to strengthen your own skills and understanding and explain how I will achieve this.

I asked to take some head and shoulder pictures of my subject and also thought that some of her with her mother in their home would be good. In the end I decided to focus on Lucy alone with her jewellery and omit the extra distraction of her mother in the images.
The lighting was not good so I had to use my flash attachment which caused some problems, even when I bounced it off the ceiling rather than directed it straight at the subject.

The final image above came from the picture right, where I cropped it to remove most of the distracting background. What had seemed a good idea at the time was to feature the sun mirror in the background, but this has proved quite a distraction when you look at the image as a whole. In the final picture I have blurred the back ground in the hope that by it being blurred it wouldn’t be such a distraction. I also removed the candlestick which showed directly behind Lucy’s right shoulder in the final image as it seems to be a growth and adds nothing to the image.

Tutor Comment

Picture No 1
You’ve made a cogent analysis of the methodology you followed in creating the image.
It brings to mind these thoughts, in no particular order...


A person’s home environment can tell us as much about them as the look on their face. However, what many students seem to do on this assignment is to immediately associate the word portrait with ‘head and shoulders’ and proceed to crop in so tight on the opening image that it’s like a passport photograph.
I think you had the right idea with the original composition of this shot; there are many objects in the environment that add to the richness of explanation about the person. The only problem is that we have a mirror growing out of her head. This is the result of not taking control of the space. If you had previsualised her a couple of steps backward, with perhaps her right elbow resting on the mantelpiece, there would have been plenty of clear background behind her head between the mirror and the candle, with some of her treasured objects spread out along the mantelpiece to the left of her; picture right. So the methodology in this case would be... I’m already familiar with the interior and I think a composition of her against the mantelpiece, tellingly surrounded by some of her work, would make a good composition from this angle.

In this case no part of the uncropped image appears to be critically sharp, suggesting that you are rather front focussed. The shadows from your light are much harder than I’d expect if it was bounced off the ceiling. What governs the quality of the shadows is the size of the light source relative to the object you are lighting. Obviously with direct flash the light source is tiny compared to the subject for most things; consequently the shadows are very hard. Turning it away from the subject to point to the ceiling, so that no direct light from it falls on the subject, means part of the ceiling effectively becomes a much bigger light source relative to the subject so its light is softer.

The expression that you’ve captured is open and expressive of character.
It was a valiant attempt to ameliorate the distraction of the mirror in Photoshop but it would have been preferable to solve this problem before the shoot when you setup.

My Image No 2

Picture No. 2
I think you did choose the best shot of the sequence. I would have cropped it rather tighter though as I think your initial thoughts about the blown water were correct.
It is a shame that again its front focussed and having the spiky hair in focus rather emphasises that. However, although it captures our attention it does lead us up the line of the oar to the subject’s face and with the distractions further up the oar cropped out we do linger on the face rather than moving on from it. There’s a concentration in the face that extends our understanding of it.

Tutor suggested crop

Picture 3

My Image 3

I think you’ve chosen the best composition from this set, showing the detailed work and
concentration going in to making the jewellery but I would be more inclined to go with this version of it...

Tutor suggested Image 3

In the one you’ve chosen the face isn’t critically sharp, here it is. I’ve also sharpened it a bit. Digital images nearly always require a modicum of sharpening as the final stage in post-production. You’ve handled the technical challenges of the situation well and I was thrilled to see you intelligently adjusting the Levels to compensate for deficiencies in the originals.


Picture 4

My Image 4

This is a simple picture that well represents the enjoyment she gets from her craft. I’m not sure about cropping through the top of the head though. It tends to draw the attention away from the face to the soft light reflection in the top of her forehead, perhaps cropping tighter to the eye brow line, while still a little uncomfortable, would be better. This seems to direct the attention more to the face and the work....

Tutor suggested Image 4

Picture 5

My Image 5

I think you’re right that this is the weakest one. The colleague seems to be the main interest in the picture and also we’re excluded from what they are looking at. We’re being asked to look at this picture but rather rudely they won’t show us what they’re looking at.
I much prefer P2080202...

Tutor suggestion for Image 5

She’s looking thoughtful, almost pensive. The symmetry between her and the woman in the calendar, with the man almost looking out at her, creates narrative possibilities that make this the most telling image of the set from a narrative point of view, hinting at her internal life rather than portraying her activities.

Image 6

Image No 6

I think this is a very strong image, in a forensic evidential way. It doesn’t pull any punches; the light is coldly descriptive showing every bump, blemish and identifying mark. The unnaturally even turquoise background begins to suggest mug shot identification photography. I’m torn between that and it’s natural background which perhaps suggests that life is more complicated than a mug shot will admit to.
Thinking on it I prefer it au naturel, un-retouched, and proclaim it the image of the set by some margin. My only complaint would be that it’s cropped rather tight at the top.

 
Conclusion
The assignment requires that you draw on your experiences in completing the opening exercises to take one person as a subject and you’ve shown energy, commitment and engagement in the delivery of the assignment. Well done!

The assignment evidences some areas of good technical control, while other areas need some attention, particularly focussing, so pay particular attention to that when you are shooting. Also experiment with using your Speedlight bounced, mounted off camera.
In the analogue days we had to shoot Polaroids to finely judge the effect of flash lighting, nowadays we have instant digital previews and histogram support. Use those facilities to optimise your lighting before you begin shooting. Tripods aren’t just for situations where the shutter speed is too slow to hand hold; they are also used to maintain accurate framing while shooting. You identified diverse situations to create a rounded portrait of your subject of which two I think we’re particularly successful, 5 & 6, in that they convey sub textual character or interrogate.

I think you can be pleased with your efforts and I look forward to seeing your next assignment.