Tutor's feedback on Assignment 4

Feedback on assignment

I like the thinking behind your book cover design and although I think it would possibly work in a commercial situation, I think that you would have done better had you done even more work on it to create that surreal image that you were aiming for.  In the end I think that you were wise to choose the CD cover as your preferred submission for this assignment.  You could do worse than give some more thought as to why this book cover is less than 100% successful. 

 

Combining a colour and a monochrome image takes a lot of thinking about to make it work.  Often a little de-saturation of the colours (not too much) is needed and perhaps in this case a slight over-sizing of the modern elements would help.  I am not sure about the blue colour and it is certainly better in the duller version seen on the word document than the rather brighter version in the jpeg but blue, pink and yellow is perhaps not the most sympathetic combination.  I don’t think I would have erased the creases but perhaps placed the image behind the Windolene and Marigolds as though it were in a frame (I wouldn’t have tried to simulate one in any way) on the table wioth them...or something like that.

 

 

For me the CD cover is much more successful.  I don’t think that there is any sort of ethical problem with manipulation in this which is a totally fictional and creative use of the imagery.  However there might be a different view if one were saying that the image was the actual truth...though I am not sure just how far I personally take this.  I do not assume that a photograph tell the actual and un-mediated fact, far less the truth.  Truth is almost always relative and mediated so as long as the image makes the point that the maker intends it to I have no problem with manipulations up to the point where the maker tells us one thing in the caption and shows us another in the image.  Given that an image is at best a copy and not the actuality it can never be real and in any case Post-modernist thinking questioned the nature of reality very effectively for me.  It is a tricky area but I do believe that many people, particularly those with a vested interest in Social Documentary photography, have unreal expectations of photography, its power to change things and its ability to capture actuality in a disinterested way.

I think that all you have done with this works well and the final result captures the atmosphere that you were aiming at.

I assume that the slight halo around the foreground figure is an artefact caused by the Magic Extractor, and I think that leaving it in has worked in your advantage.  If on the other hand you have added it (the halo that is) then I think it was very much the right thing to do as it adds another layer of unreality to an otherwise realistic image.  I think this is well done.

The reading I have suggested is all rather theoretical but I think the issues raised by this assignment and by your intentions for the next suggest that a good dose of theory will not be out of place!  Don’t worry if some of it (much of it?) seems rather obscure at first reading, just take from it what you can, things often don’t become clear till much later on, as you are making work at a later date and you may not always agree with the sentiments expressed on the readings either, the point is to expose you to ideas not to suggest that they are written in stone.

 

Learning Logs/Critical essays

I enjoy looking at your log and I am pleased to see that your trip to the antipodes has been a success.

I think that the navigation is better and the assessors will not have too much trouble finding what they are looking for.