Introduction

This post is essentially a restructure of my thoughts and comments made immediately after I received the tutor feedback.  In preparation for assessment, I’ve further expanded my reflection on this assignment, considering some of the areas where it could have been enhanced or developed further.  This includes any additional research carried out and any re-working that I have done to improve the way the photographs meet the original brief.  The overall learning points are also summarised in my final post “Reflecting on Expressing Your Vision” which can be found in my Learning Log.

Tutor Feedback

The feedback from Assignment 4 was very positive and during the video call with my tutor, we discussed how I found this assignment to be relatively straightforward being  predominantly technical.  I agreed that it was something that I had found comfortable, as most of my photography over the past few years had been to better my technical understanding of how to take good pictures.  What I wanted to do with this assignment was create a simple but effective narrative around lighting dark corners with artificial light connecting the series that way.   Adding the gradual increase in lighting intensity through the series was another way of connecting them, albeit again entirely technical.  I believed the connection to be subtle enough to be artistically interesting.  The main point of feedback that came from this assignment was that I needed to consider a more layered approach to connecting the series.  What I interpreted this to mean is to create connections through style, the interesting detail of the subject and less obvious aesthetic qualities that could be represented in each image.  In my assignment, the connections were those of artificial light as per the brief, the lighting of dark areas that reveal something about the subject and the fact that they were all shot in my home town.  I could have expanded further by focusing on an aspect of my home such as its Victorian grandeur, as with the gaslights in Photos 1 and 3, or the faded glamour, or mix of eras and styles as with the shopping arcade in Photo 8.   When added to the theme of the original response, these layers of connection could have moved me away from the technical domain and into the more creative space.

Although I didn’t elect to reshoot any of Assignment 4, following reflection on the feedback I did push myself to move away from the technical in Assignment 5.  The degrees of success can be seen in the post for that assignment.