Overall
Comments
Things are moving in the right
direction. I note that you are trying to
find themes to link your image making for the assignments and I whole heartedly
approve of this approach. I would
suggest that you think about the different ways you can do this, the possibilities
of more conceptual themes some of which I indicate in the annotations but to
reiterate, colour, mood, emotion, can be as much and sometimes more of a theme
than location or absolute content.
A creative interpretation of the
briefs, so long as the main aims are covered, is very much favoured by all us
tutors and the assessors where possible and can sometimes help you to develop
you own vision much more than taking a more literal approach to the briefs.
Feedback on
assignment
In very many
ways this has been a successful assignment.
The images you have come up with, particularly in part one, are all of a
good standard in just about every way and although you have not produced a set
of images on a single theme, as you intended at first, there are some themes
emerging here and you might like to sort them in different ways to see what
themes you can find.
I think that
you have covered much of the intentions of the brief and the following remarks
are intended to help you in the future rather than suggesting ways in which you
might re-work the current set...though if you feel it useful to re-work any of
them in light of these comments, re-shooting or whatever, do so and include the
results and your thoughts on them with the assignment when going for
assessment. Re visiting and re-working
assignments in light of tutorial input and future knowledge is always credited
by the assessors and, rather more importantly, a valuable learning
technique. Of course you should always
indicate what is re-worked and reflect on the results.
 |
| P540 amended |
P540 – you
comment that you are not really satisfied with the way your image captures the
intrigue of the Lanes. I thought about
the idea of a narrow and tall lane and cropped accordingly...what do you
think? Actually your image doesn’t miss
by much if at all.
Like the amended version....the narrower version does capture the feel of the Lanes better.
I see a post
on your blog concerned with shooting RAW vs jpeg. I am not sure what conclusions you came to
but equally I am not sure that you understand the difference so I hope this is
not simply telling you things that you already know!
Raw images are
simply the unprocessed information captured by the sensor, some information
such as selected white balance is passed on but the image is ‘as is’. All cameras, whatever the output, in fact
capture a raw image but if jpeg of tiff or whatever (not the proprietary raw
output though) output is chosen the camera applies post processing of a variety
of sorts depending on the settings chosen by the photographer before
compressing the image. The original,
unprocessed image cannot be obtained from the jpeg as the information and
pixels are deleted. Therefore it is
generally considered more sensible for the photographer to shoot and output raw
images and apply their own post processing rather than rely on some generic
answers dreamed up by the camera designers.
This allows for a variety of different post processing solutions to be
tried and at different times, leaving the options open. Obviously this assumes that the photographer
downloads and stores the raw images for posterity rather than deleting them
after initial post processing, rather in the same way that film photographers
will store the negatives for future reconsideration. It is inevitable that the raw image looks
different from and often much worse than, a jpeg of the exact same subject if
looked at before processing in a program like Lightroom, Camera Raw or the raw
conversion software that the camera manufacturer issues with the camera.
You should
answer the questions I ask in my annotation, or in the tutor report in your
learning blog. They are put there to
make you think about it and not so much for you to send me answers. If I want a direct answer I will say
something like “Let me know what you intend etc....” I want to encourage you, and all students, to
use their logs and blogs as a vehicle for this sort of thinking, musing and
exploration.
I am not
convinced that the module notes have entirely explained to you the way that a
light meter works so I will try to give a brief outline of what I think are the
important considerations. The problem
that a meter is trying to solve is, of course, what exposure we should give the
sensor, film or whatever. Given that all
subjects are different some sort of baseline needs to be establishes and in the
days of monochrome photography the solution was based on tonality and this
seems to work just as well in colour and digital as well as analogue. So what to do? Measuring the absolute amount
of light reflected from a particular subject is fine but complex and difficult
to interpret so it was decided to pick a reference colour and tone and this was
(to be a bit over technical) 18% reflectance neutral grey, usually referred to
as ‘mid-grey’ because although it only reflects 18% of the light falling on it
it looks about halfway between black and white to our eye (Logarithms and
things enter here!) So all light meters
assume that they are looking at mid-grey and suggest an exposure that will render
the subject as such. This means that if
you take a spot reading off a white surface the exposure will be too little to render it as white in
other words it will under expose it. As
it happens (well, this was a part of the decision to use mid-grey and the
particular sensitivity range of light sensitive materials in reality), an
average, naturally lit scene (the sort of thing that is most often photographed
in fact) averages to mid-grey (a tonal range of about 127:1 and so on) so
pointing a light meter in the general direction of the scene and taking in as
much as possible (and average reading) we tend to get an acceptable
result. However, we want to be able to
do more than get just an acceptable result and so all sorts of systems of
exposure estimation have been devised over the years and the one that has been
most often adopted and abused to be honest, is the Zone System of Ansel
Adams. This can be extremely
comprehensive and complex and the three volume series of book he wrote on the
subject of exposure (The Camera, The Negative and The Print) have become something of a holy text for some
photographers and go well beyond the current discussion. However there are a few gems to be extracted that
can help in explaining how to judge exposure in every day situations. His splitting of the scene into up to ten
tone ‘zones’ from pure white with no detail (pretty much the point of highlight
clipping in our day) to pure black with no detail (the point of shadow
clipping) is not a bad way of thinking about a subject. So if you look back on the way you took your
readings in the light of this information you might be able to be more specific
in understanding how you got the results that you did. And what you might have done to either make
your life easier or simply been more predictive of the results. It might help to make sense of some of my
comments and questions. I have included
a link to one of the many sites that discusses the Zone System in a supposedly
simply way, take a look and see what you make of it.
Explain in you
blog why you chose the particular points you did to measure and In the light of
the above, whether they were the best to achieve the results you were after.
You have used
the lighting to draw the eye to the elements in the image that you want the
viewer to concentrate on, the main point of interest, what Barthes (see
suggested reading) might have termed the punctum in many ways. This has been
successful and is a very worthwhile technique to use but you should also
consider using it in conjunction with, or on occasions to substitute it with differential
focus. By this I mean focusing
specifically on your main point of interest often throwing the other elements
more or less out of focus. With modern
small sensor cameras the depth of field is generally quite large so that the
point of absolute sharp focus may well not be that different from the rest of
the image but it can be enough to work almost subliminally and pull the eye
in. The depth of field is dependent on
focal length (the longer it is the shallower is the depth of field); the
aperture (the wider the aperture the shallower the depth of field) and the
point of focus (the nearer it is the shallower the depth of field) so even with
a crop factor of 1.5 or whatever we still have some control over it. Look at your images and discuss in your blog
if and how you could have used differential focus and/or depth of field control
to make your images even better.
I am pleased
to see that you seem to be using the histogram and so on to evaluate the
success or otherwise of the exposure but it can be all too easy to simply
concentrate on the info regarding clipping and ignore the rest of the placement
of tones. Quite often we are better to
let one or even both ends of the tonal range to block up in order to arrange
the important tones where we want them and it is important to get used to
looking at different colours in terms of tones, the spot meter setting can help
here. A yellow can look lighter than a
blue of the same tone!
Learning
Logs/Critical essays
Your blog is
coming along reasonably well. I an glad to see that you are recording your
visits and so on not just the exercises.
However I would like to see you using the blog more like a free ranging
journal, recording you thoughts, reflections, questions and so on about all
sorts of issues that inping on your study and photography.
Perhaps if you
think of it as having a sort of conversation with yourself about your
engagement with photography and the arts and life in general (it doesn’t have
to be Proust length!) you won’t go far wrong.
Happy to give this a go now that I have a feel for what is needed here..
Suggested
reading/viewing
Have decided to set up a different part of the log to keep all suggestions received together with any comments that I want to make about what I've read etc..
Barthes introduces us to some interesting ideas about the way our
attention is affected by photographs (amongst much else) in:
Barthes, R., 1993. Camera Lucida: Refections on Photography. London:
Vintage Classics.
Take a look at this site
for more information on applying
the Zone System to digital photography, it might be more information than you
think you need but information is never wasted.
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