Assignment Two feedback

Received feedback. Been very busy recently on other things and this is first chance for several weeks to look at OCA work.

Generally favourable feedback:

"An impressive amount of work, demonstrating a thorough engagement with the course materials in the projects/exercises part of this module."

"Great choice of subject matter, providing plenty of opportunity for exploration."

 "Captured the human element within the landscape well in several shots...Use of footpaths as guides into the image/framing devices, works to good effect in several images, directing the viewer..."

Pleased with that - composition and subject-matter have always been strong points and pleased to see that creativity is acknowledged, as this has been a weakness in the past.
 
Some areas for development:

• The variety of focal length and angle 'compromises how well the images work together in depicting the journey'. This is a good point, there is a need for consistency; the story hangs together well but there needs to be more consistency of presentation; 
• Submit prints. I have got this far in 3.2 OCA modules without producing a single piece of paper; seems as if time has come. The comment about desaturated, overly processed is certainly true for two images as I considered desaturation worked better for them. It would be helpful to know which images are viewed as 'overly processed';
• Use of one black and white image - similar point to first above.

The comment about over processing is one that has come up before in my studies. There is a question about choice in this; 'overly processed' assumes there is an objective measure of how far one should go but I would argue that post processing is part of the production. Let's take the image taken below the M4:

I deliberately used the desaturation slider in Adobe Camera Raw to emphasise the drab, almost desolate scene. It might have made a decent black and white image but the sign and waste bin would have lost their primacy in the image. This is an artistic choice, and, crucially, in my view, an integral part of the presentation. It has been my view for a long time that post processing is just another part of the process of presenting an image, and there is an artistic (as opposed to merely 'photographic') element to post processing. I can put it no better than David Hockney in The Times 21 April 2015: 

"If you really think about it, the single photograph cannot be seen as the ultimate realist picture. Well, not now. Digital photography can free us from a chemically imposed perspective that has lasted for 180 years."

I was taken by a quote from Wells:

"There is a sort of fluid seesaw with topographic (or observational)  photography at one end and composited imagery that explicitly draws on personal experience at the other." (Wells, 2012 loc 4247)

Wells was not referring specifically to post processing, but the idea of 'composited imagery certainly implies so. She continues that imagery that 'purports to be grounded' nonetheless 'reflects the interests of the photographer' (ibid, loc 4247). Which is exactly my point: that the scene above is not an objective truth of an observation, but something that caught my eye - a sort of antidote to 'beautiful landscape captured by walking', a salient reminder that around the corner from beauty lies the sublimeness of something rather less so, and that coastal walking captures this as well as anything.

In other words, go out and use the tools. Having said this, I understand the point of maintaining reasonable uniformity of processing when presenting a sequence, and will keep this in mind for future.

Tutor wonders whose approach has inspired me in this module. I like Watkins' approach as discussed in Exercise 2.1; there is no escaping the idealism of the human element combined with the natural; I tried to combine that with almost the antithetic approach of Farley & Roberts in Exercise 2.6 when considering the steelworks as the main subject, yet contrasted with the scene just a few miles away near Porthcawl. If I have some slight disappointment in the Assignment, it is that this has been missed somewhat in the comments: there is a binary human element to the combination of images.

Tutor queries depth over personal development during module - I did cover this in Reflections. It is probably the case that this module increased my depth of learning rather then breadth.

Reference:

Wells, Liz (2012) Land Matters: Landscape Photography, Culture and Identity Kindle edition