As my tutors report can be found on my blog, I won’t repeat what has already been written, but will however, reflect on some of these points further and mention topics that have not been included that I believe to be important for my development.
To be honest, only a short time from our discussion was spent talking about my assignment. However, from the feedback I did receive, I left the call feeling happy with the thoughts my tutor had on it. Overall, he appreciated the effort I put in – especially under the difficult circumstances – and thought the inclusion of a questionnaire was a clever way of gaining information about individuals’ and their communities, but also made the project more ‘personal’ – something I’ve been working hard on since assignment one. He also noted the variety between each of my images’, which I was pleased about, as this was an important part of the brief and something I worked hard on to achieve. We discussed the use of flash – again – and how by using it, my images would benefit greatly, if used in the right situations. For example, he felt that if I had used flash in image four and six, it would have acted as a fill light, highlighting the subjects’ and enhancing them within the image. We have discussed using flash before, so for the next assignment, I must use it if I think it will be beneficial.
My tutor made a very good point about my presentation of my posts on my blog. I currently do this in a very systematic way, for example my ‘initial thoughts and preparations’ are at the top, with my selection of images near the bottom. He explained for assessment purposes, I need to do this differently, and by having an ‘assessment’ tab perhaps, produce a short written explanation that supports each assignment, followed by the relevant images. This means if the assessors want to read such things as my main essay, or my ‘reflections’, they can do so by navigating through a separate tab.
We discussed the importance of why images should ‘sit well’ together within a set, and ways of achieving this. My tutor mentioned he makes prints of his photographs, as having physical copies in front of you, is very much different to reviewing them off a screen, for example. That got us talking about printers, and if it would be worth me investing in one. I’m still not sure, and think it might be cheaper, but perhaps not easier, to have an online printing company do this for me. I learnt about a process called ‘lightjet’ printing, which sounds interesting and something I will do further research on.
Iain Barbour - BA (Hons) Photography 