DPP-Assignment Three; Feedback


Overall Comments
Well done for completing another assignment, Miriam. You are putting in lots of effort with your studies.

Feedback on the assignment

 
Elements to consider with your assignments:
This assignment is about the creative effects of working in monochrome. To achieve high quality images you should consider form, tonal contrast and texture.

Your assignment in connection with the above points

Theme Selection
You chose to work with a theme of Dublin at dusk for this assignment. This was an interesting choice for a theme for several reasons. The dusk lighting allowed you to give careful thought about light levels across the frame, and the various lamplight scenarios drew you naturally in the direction of creating strong thematically linked examples. However, I also note that you have been a little frustrated at the results, on occasion, finding that the windy weather hampered your attempts at achieving nice pin sharp pictures. As I understand it, you feel that you have visited the location on enough previous occasions not to re-shoot to make the necessary improvements. Perhaps this point isn’t entirely clear from your results. What is clear, though, is that in order to really explore your chosen theme on each occasion in great depth, and to work at your images until you are entirely pleased and comfortable with what you have done, will often require re-visiting your subject matter on more than one occasion. You will find that coming away from a situation, taking stock of your results (self-assessment) and then re-connecting with your subject matter is incredibly beneficial to you in terms of your photographic progression. Even when you find that you are pleased with your results there is much to be gained by going back to produce more of the same, or to fine tune images captured. I feel sure that what you have learned from this experience is that you need to choose your subject matter/ location with a view to re-visiting over a period of time.

 
Photographs

Image One:
You have captured this lamppost very nicely and the composition works for its simplicity. The tonal range is good with some lovely sharp detail over your subject area. You have worked hard to achieve the desired mood here, using appropriate techniques.

 
Image Two:
This picture is a little more complicated, in terms of composition. The eye is naturally drawn towards the light with the diagonal line of the tree accelerating this journey. But is there enough at the top of the frame to hold the eye?

 
Image Three:
I would like this picture better if it was cropped to square. This would give a little better balance of water, sky, tree, buildings etc, losing some of the darker tones at the top of the frame.

 
Image Four:
You have everything here for a good composition. However, from the angle of shooting the buildings appear to be leaning towards the water. Could you try rotating this picture a fraction to give them more of an upright position?


Image Five:
Again I would suggest that you think about cropping this to a square format. The bottom third of the image is not making any contribution to the success of the picture. If you half squint at this you should be able to see that the bottom is incredibly dark and thus having an impact on the tonal range.

 
Image Six:
This picture isn’t really working quite as well. Although we can see here that there are padlocks involved, you perhaps either need to be in a little closer to feature these in good detail, or further away to allow us to see the bigger picture. In this shot you also lose the nice strong light/ lamp detail of all of the previous examples.


Summary/ Pointers for the next assignment
Although working in monochrome pushed you out of your comfort zone a little it gave you an excellent opportunity to really analyse what is going on across the frame in terms of the structure of your imagery. I feel sure that you have benefitted greatly from this experience and will be able to carry these skills forward to future work, whether produced in colour or monochrome.


Learning Logs
You’ve added some quotes for this assignment and put in examples of photographers work, referring this back to your own work. This is really what you need to be doing with your research. A list of web sites, and books is good, but doesn’t show your level of engagement with or awareness of the content as effectively. Adding a few notes alongside each of these links etc, will really add some strength to your learning logs.

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