Assignment three: response to feedback

My tutor feedback from Assignment 3 wasn’t quite as positive as that for the previous assignment; the main criticism seemed to be that the images, although fine individually don’t come together as one complete set. It’s a fair point, they don’t but I’ll try to explain how this came about:

·         Firstly, it didn’t cross my mind that there had to be an overall theme – naive I know but in assignments two, four and five, it specifies that a theme is required in the brief; however this wasn’t stated in this assignment. Having said that, I suppose I should have assumed; even if the subjects varied greatly, as a photographer it is expected that a certain style will emerge but this doesn’t show in this set.

·         The other issue was that the way I approached this subject was a little off the mark. I felt that setting out to complete an assignment in which so many combinations were necessary would be almost impossible without using set up situations. Instead, I spent a month or so, whenever I was out with my camera focussing my attention on the colours around me and capturing as I saw. I can now see that this has lead to a very disjointed set; however I still feel that I have learned more from this than a more coherent set of still life type shots. Maybe somewhere in the middle would have been the way to go.

However, even though this set is described as more efficient than creative, my tutor does say that I’ve got a decent intuitive command of colour so I’m pleased about that. As more of the technical aspects of photography become intuitive, I will be more able to concentrate on capturing the story and emotion behind my images. So what to do about it; I had a few options:

1.    Use the existing images but try to arrange them in a more cohesive way

2.    Use some of the images which work together and add more to try to create one consistent theme

3.    Find a middle ground and maybe use a few more of the images, creating a couple of separate  themes

I felt that more research was needed before deciding so I looked to the works of Eggleston, Haas and Maisel...
This research enabled me to reach a decision for this project; I decided to revisit my submission, selecting only the images which I felt were true to my developing style. Any images submitted purely as a result of fitting the criteria would be removed and replaced.

Finally, I had a plan!