Reflections After Assignment 5 for DPP - Personal project

My reflections after the fifth, final assignment for Digital Photographic Practice were mostly positive. I felt, valuably I came away with much technical and conceptual ideas for my photography, which I could implement in future projects.

   For me my technical skills were fine in terms of exposing correctly and my post-processing made the images I produced stronger. However, sometimes I felt images could be sharper or the depth-of-field was too shallow because I wasn't able to use a tripod in many of the situations. Visually though, I thought I exercised good compositional skills and paid attention to smaller details like facial expression, which made a big difference in my opinion.

   Overall, I felt the content of my work backed up the strength of my ideas quite well and I managed to incorporate what I'd learnt through Digital Photographic Practice nicely. Also I got across these ideas within the writing in my blog well so it was transparent to the reader what I was trying to do with each photograph/exercise.

   Creativity was a major strength in my fifth assignment in my opinion. I developed an idea and carried out the idea quite accurately to my original intentions; adapting certain parts until I was happy with the outcome. I thought from my various influences and consequential ideas I developed quite an uncommon style of photograph for the fifth assignment.

   My influences were a bit more limited than I would have liked but almost every one proved to be useful. I thought I communicated well in my blog how the influences affected my concepts. I tried to be clear about the various ideas I was juggling with for the assignment and how they developed.

Reflections After Assignment 4 for DPP - Real or fake?

I found this part of the course - Real or fake? to be thought-provoking in that it made me think outside the box, where I really began to question what made a photograph work, or even what a photograph should consist of. I found I had to really think about my ideas and then analyse them while I was carrying them out in order for the photographs to work well.

   The exercises were completed thoroughly, I felt and since each exercise grew in the amount of manipulation of each image, I challenged realistic rendition more and more. This increase in manipulation prepared me well for the assignment - not only in a practical sense, where I learnt a lot more about correcting and altering. As well as this, I was questioning my ethical limits and ascertaining where the assignment would fit for me amongst these questions of manipulation.

   I thought I created some well-composed images during the exercises and they built up nicely to the assignment where in my opinion my creativity was really apparent. My communication of my ethics was good all through 'Real or fake?', which I thought was crucial seeing as it would have implications for future projects and this assignment.

   I tried to keep the basics right for the exercises leading up to the assignment, as well as the assignment, while embellishing them wherever I felt I could. In the assignment and last exercise in particular I felt I was creative in how I went about making the final photograph for the assignment.

   I did carry out some research; although most was practical and only a little based upon concepts in photographic theory. If I was honest I would say this area could be improved on for the next assignment as I had been reading lots of material. In terms of critical thinking I had been reading books, one of which I had referred to in the assignment post, which helped make coherent my reasoning for including certain objects in the scene.

   Overall, I felt I met most of the criteria successfully but I realised that research was a key area to which I should pay more attention. However, I was pleased with the final photograph for the assignment and felt the exercise leading up to it was integrated well.

Reflections After Assignment 3 for DPP - Monochrome

I found black-and-white to be challenging but fun to work with. I felt as I approached the assignment that my technical skills, including recognition of how and why to use black-and-white, were growing. I found I could appreciate how important lighting was in black-and-white and how to further enhance this in post-processing.

   I felt this was reflected in the way I approached Assignment 3 and the exercises leading up to it: for example with 'Colours into tones 2' I was able to produce a portrait with close reproduction to one of my key inspirations for the assignment.

   I was then able to present this and other exercises well in my blog, where I had, on, several occasions, referenced other posts in my own blog, so that navigation around the blog was enhanced.

   Creativity was something I felt I could improve on from Assignment 2 and I found through researching other artists more, my creativity advanced. I was discovering a lot about the medium through deliberately shooting in black-and-white before the shot and processing in black-and-white after the shot. This and the research into other photographers/artists gave me a few more ideas.

   I then was able to put these ideas into practice; especially for the assignment where I came up with some, in my opinion, interesting black-and-white photographs, which were to a large extent, a culmination of research and experimentation with the medium of black-and-white. So through research I gained ideas and with the ideas I was able to be more creative.

   If I was to be critical of myself concerning Assignment 3 and the work leading up to it, it would be that I could have communicated more the areas I could improve in concerning the work, within my blog, so that it was clear to myself and any readers, anything I wasn't too pleased with.

Reflections After Assignment 2 for DPP - Seeing like your camera

Reflections After Assignment 2 for DPP - Seeing like your camera:


I tried to use my familiarity with my camera as well as the skills I'd learnt along the way towards the second assignment in order to produce aesthetically pleasing shots (because of their composition, lighting and sometimes colour.

   However, also, at the same time I was conscious of the need for creativity, which I tried to implement wherever possible. This meant coming up with ideas and then attempting to integrate them into my workflow. For example, using minimal dynamic range counter intuitively in a camera I'd found to have plenty, was an idea I thought up and applied to a situation (High Contrast Street Photography) as stringently as I could.

   I was overall pleased with my communication of ideas through my blog; there was for me, some transparency with regards to my ideas and how they were reflected in my photographs produced. This was aided by fairly coherent presentation, although there was probably room for improvement navigating around the blog.

   Lastly, I felt I could research more using specific techniques similar to mine, so I had more ideas of how to go about approaching a specific area of photography. For example, I found the 'Zone System' to be a bit of a revelation for landscape photography as can be seen in my Reflection upon Reflections set of photographs.

Reflections after Assignment 1 for DPP - Workflow

Reflections after Assignment 1 for DPP - Workflow:


Overall I learnt a lot about workflow in this first assignment and the work leading up to it. I would admit I was a bit 'rusty' in a couple of aspects regarding my visual skills like awareness and observation at the beginning of the exercises leading up to the assignment. I thought my photographic skills eventually grew in strength and by channelling my efforts and ideas into a particular theme for the assignment I was able to create a clearly defined project.

   I was pleased with the eventual presentation of work in terms of all the exercises being completed and the logical manner it was laid out. I also managed to stick to the majority of my devised workflows, which were detailed and so, in my opinion, showed discernment.

   I was satisfied that I was fairly creative in two important aspects. These were the photo-taking stage as well as the processing of the images after they had been taken. I was a bit unsure about how I would cope with being creative with the processing stage as my skills inside of Photohop were limited. However, I discovered looking at the strengths of the image before processing and hence processing mindful of these strengths gave me some impetus.

   I could improve on the amount of research I carried out but I was reading a lot of magazines, which were inspiring. I thought my reflection after each project was good, especially regarding the changes or improvements to the workflows.