Recommended websites.

In my feedback for assignment four my tutor gave me two websites to take a look at. The first was www.dg28.com, a site by Neil Turner who is a UK based editorial and commercial photographer with over 20 years experience. I was to mainly look at the education section of the site which gave me a large quantity of posts showing various techniques. My tutor suggested I look at "studio light/flash outdoors to complement natural/ambient light" which would be relevant to the comments that he made.

While I took a look at the majority if not all of the techniques I could see I was particularly drawn to 'adding to the ambient light' - using the flash to supplement the ambient light without replacing it, 'why we use lights' - the difference between with and without flash on a cloudy day, and 'back on the beach' - proving that you do not need brilliant sunshine for an image (too bright, gives unattractive shadows etc) instead and overcast day makes for much more interesting lighting.

Another I was given was http://strobist.blogspot.com. The Lighting 101 section was useful and I particularly liked the analogy that was given that lighting was like cooking, "you work with one ingredient at a time, and adjust to taste". I love how this has been put and it actually does make sense to me. A lot of the posts to start with are all based around the equipment involved, as well as the cost. I did skip through these a bit to get to the more 'technique' based posts. I have to say that I was drawn to the post on hard light. I found it interesting as often hard light is seem as 'bad' and we tend to focus on diffusing shadows, hard lighting really worked well with the image shown. Another post that caught my eye was untitled 'don't let good light ruin a photo', particularly the line "don't just walk in with your lighting technique set in stone". We should all be able to adapt easily to circumstances beyond our control,such as lighting, and still be able to produce an interesting and attractive image.

Assignment 4 - feedback.

I have just realised that I have not posted anything in nearly 3 weeks! In that time I have been on three courses for work, two of which have been in my own time - and I also have an assignment to complete on the most recent course. This is something that may take me a while to complete and is eating into my amount of free time. I have however just treated myself to an ipad which I am hoping will allow me to update my blog on the go, particularly when I am out shooting.

I have just this second received a letter for the OCA about applying for formal assessment as I am "either working on or have now completed your penultimate course assignment". I cannot believe how quickly this has come round, and in many ways still think of myself as very much a beginner. Reaching this point makes me feel as though I should be much further ahead in terms of knowledge and technique.

Anyway, back to the subject of this post - assignment 4. I think I felt at the time that I was progressing well. My tutor felt that I should of built a story around the shoes, and to be honest I had considered this but felt that I was straying from what I should of been doing. I have now realised that I should of taken the risk and just done it instead of worrying what is 'right' or wrong.

I did do one thing that I am particularly annoyed with myself about and that is not re size the images. I think that I just became so focused on the assignment that I am always in such a rush to get it on the webserver (the bit that generally goes wrong) that it completely slipped my mind. The webserver was set up for me at the beginning of this course as I have no idea how you go about something like that. Unfortunately when it came to me putting my assignment on the webserver something had gone wrong and a whole new one had to be set up. I am hoping that when it comes to posting the next assignment, I have no problems.

Regarding the actual assignment I must really concentrate on a running theme and "try to tell a story with the images rather than just photograph exactly for the assignment". I think that in a way I have taken a bit of a backward step from assignment 3 as I seemed to of gone from starting to develop more creativity with the assignments to taking the brief too literally.

I must definitely show more of the processes I have gone through to reach my final images so with the final assignment I need to be much more through and take my time to show how my ideas and thoughts have developed.

I feel before the next assignment I must again go through all of the work I have done so far so that previous lessons can be combined to produced my final assignment.

I must also talk about why I have selected certain images , particularly if I have shot more than the required number.

I still keep shooting with the ISO way too high generally because I have not checked the setting before shooting. I also keep doing this with the f number so I shall be researching this further so that I can make better selections. I still need to state why I have made technical decisions regarding settings. I must also go through focal length again. My tutor has also provided me with links to other sites that will be particularly useful.

I feel that from this assignment I can take all of what has been said and use it to hopefully produce an assignment that can show how much I have learnt through the whole of The Art of Photography and take away skills and techniques that will provide a good base for future work.