Looking for light Jane Bown

Came across reference in the Guardian ( 27 April 2014 ) to a documentary about Jane Bown who worked as a photographer for the Observer. Mark Kermode's review can be found at  http://goo.gl/BROzS

I hadn't heard of Bown but I discovered that she was a portrait photographer of some renown and legend. Thought I'd check the film out as her work is in monochrome , an area of photography which I am increasingly drawn to. Her photographs are presented without aural accompaniment - as Kermode says, ' allowed ( indeed demanding) to speak for themselves'.

As you might guess, I also discovered that cinemas were not queuing up for this film, certainly not in the south east outside London. However, I'm told there will be a DVD coming out soon ..and I will be buying it!

Reflection check

Now that I've completed Part 5 of this course, I'm taking the opportunity again to look back  and reflect how I have progressed against the assessment criteria.


Demonstration of technical and visual skills

This last part of the course gave me the opportunity to practise much of what I had  learnt before from day one of the course. I can see that my technical skills have developed significantly over the last year; skills relating to using my camera i.e getting to grips with such  as highlight clipping, noise, white balance etc. which have improved the quality of the images that I am now taking. Looking back over the last five assignments can  see examples of how these skills have developed.
I enjoy processing my images far more than before which comes down to an increased confidence in using the software. Purchasing Lightroom early on was a good decision though getting to grips with it added an extra level of challenge! I believe I see a substantial improvement in my design and compositional skills since day one...it would  be interesting to see what others thought.

Quality of Outcome

Producing a photo book for my personal project was a first for me and I am looking forward to a critique of this as my own feeling is that it could be made better in terms of presentation of images and quality of captions. Some advice here as to how this might be achieved would be welcome.The prints that I produced on smooth pearl photographic paper looked better to me. 

I spent some time trying to articulate the idea behind my project and how and why I chose the final interpretations which I hope makes clear what was intended to anyone coming to this piece of work. I am more used to doing this as a matter of course now than earlier in the year.

Demonstration of Creativity

I think my concept for this project was imaginative. The stage at which I decided to explore the idea of conjuring  up memories through new photographic images  demonstrates a degree of creative thinking; this before I realised through research that there was a huge body of work relating to memory and photography.
If I am honest the end result was not as creative nor imaginative as I had hoped although if asked to explain why,I would have some difficulty in explaining. I need to perhaps 'sleep' on this for a while to see if I can explain this to myself let alone others. 

Is it a 'cop out' to say it probably takes an outsider view though to judge whether my project really does meet this assessment criteria?  
Context

As I have progressed through this course, I have noticed that research has become an increasingly more important part of my work. Certainly the last two assignments have demonstrated this and Assignment 5 did spur me on to read around the subject of memory and photographic traces. And I very much enjoyed this.

Lastly, my learning log is becoming more a work diary now and I hope that my entries are coming over as more thoughtful and considered. I believe that I am getting to grips with the concept and practice of reflective learning ..it is not yet instinctive but I feel I am moving steadily in the right direction.