Assessment Submission

This entry constitutes the submission of my The Art of Photography assignments for formal assessment.  My student number is 485885.  The links below are to pdf files, one for each assignment, stored within Google Documents.  Each pdf file contains all material relevant to the assignment it covers.

My learning log is patchy. The pdf  below is a scan of the learning log I maintained at the start of the course. There is further learning material that I entered in the closing stages of this course within this blog.

Assignment 1  http://tinyurl.com/64fmtyj
Assignment 2  http://tinyurl.com/6ck8opy
Assignment 3  http://tinyurl.com/6ddtogr
Assignment 4  http://tinyurl.com/6exzvj8
Assignment 5  http://tinyurl.com/5wzegwb
Learning Log  http://tinyurl.com/5v26lkb

Final Submission

I spent the last four days licking the final submission into shape, before emailing it to my tutor today.  This was spent in selecting photos, developing them in Lightoom and Photoshop to best effect and then trying out different layouts on black A5 pages.  I found that assembling several photos on a single page brought up some unexpected issues.  One was that, on a couple of pages, there was inconsistent white balance; leading to an unharmonious result.  I had to return to photo editing to harmonise them.  Another was that the various styles of editing that I'd used, done at different times, showed up, again needing further editing to put right.  So a learning point is to apply similar development settings to photos that are going to be viewed together.  Another learning point is not to flatten Photoshop files too soon in the interest of saving file space.  I had to edit some phos from scratch a second time because of doing this.  However, it was a good feeling to send off the final TAOP assigment, which I would estimate at about 20 man days of work overall in planning and execution.

On Location in France

After the wedding, I carried out a planned tour over 5 days of the key locations in France involved in launching the 1066 invasion.  These were Caen, Bayeux, Lillebonne, Jumieges, Dives-sur-mer and St Valery-sur-Somme.  Each location presented its own challenges and I had to take photos no matter what the weather was. I took some 500 photos overall, looking both for angles relevant to events of 1,000 years ago as well as good photos in their own right.  I was accompanied by my partner, so these days needed to be and were a holiday for her as well as being a photo opportunity for me. I find that it takes time and considerable thought to spot and capture strong and relevant images, so appreciated having a tolerant partner who is also a keen photographer.

Wedding in France

I attended a wedding in France today and, although thankfully not the official photographer, I had the couple's approval to take photos.  I concentrated on not duplicating what the official photographer did, but still finding images that brought out different aspects of the day.  I have since uploaded some 70 of the photos I took on to flickr for the couple to look at when they have the leisure.

Acrobat Pro

I installed Acrobat Pro today, with the intention of using it, in conjunction with Photoshop, to build my final assigment as a single pdf file.  I had already constructed three trial pages in Photoshop, each page consiting of several photos on a black A5 background, with header and footer material togetrher with photo captions.  Acrobat successful merged the Photoshop files together and allowed one to optimise the resultant pdf file for size.

Battle of Hastings Re-enactment

I attended English Heritage's annual re-enactment of the Battle of Hastings in order to obtain some relevant photos for the final TAOP assigment.  It was a pretty impressive scene, with hundreds of actors in period dress with period weapons doing a convincing job.  I took two cameras and four lenses, changing lenses at lunchtime.  One of the problems was finding places to stand that had a clear view through the large crowds without being too selfish about it.  In retrospect, I would take a powerful telephoto on a monopod to pick out key pieces of action, much of which took place several hundred yards away.  As it was, I felt I'd bagged an acceptable set of photos, some of which would be suitable for the final assignment.  The previous visit I'd made to the site a couple of weeks ago paid off, as I knew my way around.

RAW Double Exposure

I used the technique of double-exposing in RAW one of the photos I'd taken of Pevensey beach to get both sky, land and sea looking their best; then merging them in Photoshop.  It worked well, making the final image far more attractive.  I first came across this technique in one of Scott Kelby's books.  I feel that the ideal way to edit photos is to do so as a whole, without the use of masks, which is the way Dan Margulis generally does it.  But in practice I admit to using masks quite a bit to get the results I'm looking for, lacking his exceptional skills.