Results

Result letter has arrived and its another pass!

Result

The OCA seem to have dropped the grading letters (A, B, C etc) and now grade in terms of a 'Higher Education university grading' which placed me as a 2:2.

Marks (out of 20) were:

• Skills 14
• Knowledge 12
• Invention 10
• Communication 10
• Judgement 10

Tutor comments included:

You've demonstrated a solid grounding in your approach and technique that will provide a sound foundation from which to develop your personal 'voice'. This is the task you need to set yourself; moving from the picture as descriptor to the image as metaphor.

The decision not to submit prints does not appear to have had any significant impact.

Next

I expect this to my last post to this blog for People and Place. In fact I am nearly finished with my following course which was DPP, just the final assignment to be done and that will finish all of Level 1/HE4. If you want to follow it my DPP blog can be found here:
http://ocaphotodpp.blogspot.com/

I will start a new blog for my final Level 2/HE5 course, as I have already completed Landscape this is likely to be Progressing with Digital Photography, PWDP, look out for this in the next few months.

Meanwhile you can also follow me in the usual places:

• http://astbury.blogspot.com/
• http://www.facebook.com/AstburyPhotography

Submission

AH371404015GB

These letters, the Royal Mail track and trace ID, denote that my submission is in the post to the OCA for the March 2011 Assessment. I guess it will be about 5 months until I hear anything on my result so I will try to forget about it now and press on with finishing DPP.

Getting ready for assessment

My course completion certificate has now arrived, always nice to see.

I have applied for the March 2011 assessment, this requires work to be submitted in the window 15th Jan to 15th Feb. Meanwhile I have all the assignments printed and filed ready, just pondering on whether to include any prints or not.

Course reading roundup

As I come to the end of this course I felt I should just provide a round-up on where I reached with my various books and reading. Of course the reality is that there is an almost continuous stream of books and which blog I discuss them on becomes a bit arbitrary, especially as I make the transition from one course to the next. So here is the state of play:

Read and Reviewed

You will find several books already reviewed on this blog and the posts for these can be accessed by using the label Book. Of these I think the stand-out title from the standard reading list is "Train Your Gaze" by Roz Angier and I would recommend this book to other students of this course.
Also The Americans by Robert Frank is perhaps one that should be on the shelf as a reference, but in my view much more engaging was Dream Street by W Eugene Smith, a real 'must-have'.

Read but not Reviewed

During my AOP studies I read On Photography by Susan Sontag and to some extent Camera Lucida by Roland Barthes treads similar ground as it considers the nature of photographs and photography, and

"develops the twin concepts of studium and punctum: studium denoting the cultural, linguistic, and political interpretation of a photograph, punctum denoting the wounding, personally touching detail which establishes a direct relationship with the object or person within it".

(quote taken from Wikipedia)


I also enjoyed Street Photography by Clive Scott which features photographers such as Atget, Bresson and Lartigue. However this is a hard read, providing a very thorough analysis and makes reference to many other artists and photographers work. I feel this is a book I would need to read again as I wasn't able to assimilate the full content on a first reading, for this reason I have no posted a full review.

Reading Now

I have just started into Vanity Fair Portraits by the NPG (National Portrait Gallery).

This book contains some stunning images, a real inspiration. You can find more details and order this book by the NPG shop.

[Update 2010-11-13: Review posted on DPP blog, http://ocaphotodpp.blogspot.com/2010/11/book-review-npg-vanity-fair-portraits.html]

Reading Next

My tutor recommended I look at Capa and after some dialogue on which title to start with this title was suggested as perhaps giving the best overview of his work:

I have this ordered and so I am looking forward to this being delivered shortly.

[Update 2010-11-18: Review posted on DPP blog, http://ocaphotodpp.blogspot.com/2010/11/book-review-robert-capa-definitive.html]

There are always a number of titles I would like, for example Grim Street by Mark Cohen, anything featuring Larry Sultan etc...

Further book reviews will now be posted to my next blog, for the DPP course.

Coming next

I have enrolled for Digital Photographic Practice (DPP) and started a new blog which will be dedicated to that:

http://ocaphotodpp.blogspot.com/

Ongoing training - Winter Weddings

In addition to my OCA studies I also invest from time to time in other more specialised training courses, typically with a more commercial content. This week I attended a course on "Winter Weddings & All About Flash" by Mark Cleghorn.

Topics Included:

• Creative On Camera Flash
• Inside Out
• Big Flash – Small Flash
• Creative Colour Balance
• Continuos Lighting
• Shooting at Night
• Making The Most Of The Natural Light
• Coping With The Weather
• Exposure
• Dragging Shutters
• Party Pics
• The Event

The course proved very informative and gave me plenty of ideas. Delegates were provided with a copy of the book "The Pocket Guide to Bride and Groom posing" which is a handy little 'memory jogger' that can be quickly referred to for inspiration.

As short term follow ups I am looking to get some LED based continuous light sources to use for certain low light situations. I also plan to add another Speedlite with TTL capability to my set.

Longer term I would like to get something like the Quantum QFlash system, which is heavy duty with fast refresh rates and bare bulb which can be used with a parabolic reflector and a range of other modifiers. However at around £800 for a single Trio unit this is an expensive option requiring careful consideration.

Assignment 5: Revisited

This post is to follow up on my original post for the fifth and final assignment, People and place, on assignment, as a chance to reflect upon tutor feedback and to explore some ideas that have been thrown up.

Individual Image Comments

The original submission for this assignment included 14 images and the tutor commented on all of them but here I will just select a few of the more significant comments.

1. Drivers' briefing

From OCA P and P Assignment 5

"This is a good image to open your sequence because it deals with the administrative preparations before the event. The impact of the image is much enhanced by the expression of the clerk of the event as he appears to greet one of the participants with his hand outstretched giving the impression of a friendly greeting. I experimented on the image using Photoshop Image>Adjustments> Highlights and Shadows to reduce the highlights by 50% to put more detail n the clerk’s face."

I have made a slight curve adjustment edit (in Lightroom) to selectively reduce the exposure on the clerk's face and here is the slightly modified version:

3. Starting lights

From OCA P and P Assignment 5

"In my opinion the figure of the course marshal and the starting lights is the essence of this image and I do not consider that the curb makes a positive contribution."

At the time I was taking close ups behind the start line and so only had the 24-105 lens to hand when this opportunity presented itself at some distance. As a result I had already needed to make a significant crop to this image and wanted to ensure I had enough pixels for a qood quality print when making my assessment submission. The original was 5616x3744, the crop submitted was 3308x2646 and here is a revised version with an even tighter crop at 2649x2119:

9. Poised to record

From OCA P and P Assignment 5

"In my opinion this image would have been improved if the two photographers were not looking into camera but more involved in their task. It seems to give a rather static impression."

I agree, however the position required to take this shot meant being on the track and so had to be done at a safe moment hence the togs are less engaged at that moment, though the public have cameras up for some reason. I was able to get a view of some other togs in action on a different part of the track by shooting from the opposite side, here is one of the alternative shots that were considered:

10. Motorbike and sidecar in action

From OCA P and P Assignment 5

"The attitude of the figures of the driver and his passenger create a great impression of intense concentration on a right-hand bend. There is a trace of motion blur but I think that the shutter speed was too short."

Yes, agreed that the shutter speed was too short, see further comments under Conclusions below. I was tempted to go with a completely different shot of the motorbike and sidecar, without pan and very close:

14. Back to the paddock

From OCA P and P Assignment 5

"Is the driver’s tongue really that size?"

I can only say yes. He stuck his tongue out and I clicked the shutter, that bit of the images has not had any special editing.

Conclusions

Areas for improvement:

"I have examined your learning log and find it to be well-arranged and complete with evidence of your studies and the essay which accompanies your gives a good account of your on site problems and how you arranged to deal with them. Your conclusions are very frank show that you have picked up on those aspects of your technique which need to be addressed."

I had a couple of further thoughts on reducing shutter speed to improve the pans. Firstly I could have dropped from ISO100 to ISO50. ISO50 is not a true native ISO for the camera and not a setting I usually use but in this case it would have been a very simple option to apply. Secondly I could have stopped down the shutter as the depth of field effect ceases to matter much for backgrounds that are blurred by motion anyway.

From the tutor on a positive note:

"Your images are all of high quality both in composition, exposure and focusing. The latter of that group can often prove difficult to maintain consistently accurate results at motor sport events."