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