Feedback on assignment 1 TAOP

My thoughts on the feedback
Overall quite happy with the feedback from tutor. Not all images holds high quality, and Roy points them out. That makes me feel certain that my tutor will use time to analyze my assignments properly. That will hopefully make me struggle to progress


Tutors feedback

Overall Comments

This is a good start to the course with a comprehensive set of images that clearly meet the criteria in the assignment.

You have submitted 12 prints and a blog which is straightforward, well presented and straightforward to navigate.

Your prints are very well made. There is detail in the shadow areas as well as the highlights and you have successfully avoided clipping the exposures in the highlight areas. Both the colour and black and white prints show an awareness of contrast control and levels with a very well balanced tonal range running through all of them. Whilst I do appreciate that we are not assessing you on your printing for this assignment, you appear to have a good grip of the technical considerations of printing techniques and printing profiles. Well done.

Some concepts work better than others – generally I have looked at the images first without seeing the titles so that I have to guess the concept. Have you shown this work to other people to get them to do the same? It is always worth showing your work to someone who will give you honest feedback so you can get some insight into how well you are communicating your ideas.

Feedback on assignment

Transparent and opaque:

Excellent use of lighting to illustrate a straightforward concept.

Sweet and sour:

Not as successful as the above image in that it does not convey the idea of sweet and sour. Would it have been better to use a more obvious example of the sweet perhaps? Sugar is the most obvious example but you could have experimented with peoples faces or situations to communicate this more effectively. Also you do not explain why you have lowered the colour tone in these images – would it have been more successful to have used the colours more effectively?

Rough and smooth

Works well as an idea and fairly straightforward to read. Would it have been better to not have shadows on the ‘smooth’ image?

Straight and curved

Less successful as a concept as the ‘curved’ image is more about graffiti – it would have been worth exploring curvature in architecture.

Many and few

A good use of colour but as a concept the ‘many’ probably needs more pencils to carry the message.

Heavy and light

Excellent control of lighting with a clear message. Possibly needs a very small increase in contrast to strengthen the images.

Light and dark

Work well as a pair. To improve them you could use extra lighting for the ‘high key’ image behind the boy. This would light the backdrop separately to uplift the image. (I can explain the lighting set up if would like me to).

Still and moving

Works fairly well as a pair – perhaps it could be improved by seeing car as a blur in the moving image. Good use of lighting on the car but you would need to see how you can control the highlight on the front side.

Firefighter

Good use of depth of field and contrast control. Well done. I like the way the focus is controlled on the man’s hand. As an photograph that demonstrates contrast in one image this works very well.

Learning logs/critical essays

Generally a good start. Your description and comments need to be slightly more comprehensive. Try to include exactly how you would improve each image. I will email you a document that lists the details that you need to include in an evaluation.