Assignment 4 - Tutor Report

Overall Comments

You have some interesting images that show your developing creativity and readiness to experiment. While it’s good to adapt the brief to suit your own ends, it’s important to do so with an argued rationale.

While you are stretching the brief you don’t include in your notes/log why. The notion behind the assignment is to use lighting to bring out particular aspects of an object. While you have described how you have used lighting to do this in some of your images, in others you have used post production methodology to achieve particular effects. You don’t give any reason for this in your notes or log.

For example, you include the image “monochrome” but go into your rationale for using a black and white in any detail referring only to making a stark image. Your post production work seem to be occupying a greater precedence of your thoughts than the lighting.

You are keen to produce images that are inventive and explorative and have done so which is positive. But you don’t always categorise these in terms of the categories in the brief or go into detail of why you find these images interesting in terms of what the different lighting or post production techniques have achieved. It’s this aspect that you need to work on.

Feedback on assignment

In your “night light” you use a combination of candle light and light from the TV to produce an inventive combination of warm and cool light. But apart from “highlighting the rough edge of the wicker” you don’t discuss why you have used this particular effect; is it to emphasise texture, colour of the wicker, or another aspect? You have a narrow depth of field and have focused such that a large part of the wicker in the foreground is out of focus. This is a strong and interesting image but it doesn’t seem to illustrate one of the specified attributes in the brief or another of your own.

Another strong image is “course texture” It does bring out the texture well; again it has the narrow depth of field with the front of the wicker drifting out focus. To bring out texture focus is obviously important and I feel that the image would have been better if you have stopped down more to have more of the object sharp. You have used iso to give a feeling of “grain” while this can affect the “feel” of the image, the issue is how to use lighting to accentuate texture. This is usually achieved by strong directional side lighting. You don’t discuss the lighting used or the rationale behind it.

I like the framing of the wicker - the fact that you have avoided the “standard” central placing of the whole object in the frame.

Your other texture image which, by focusing on the cut ends of the wicker strands gives a different and interesting view. This demonstrates your thinking around the subject and coming up with a creative result. It is one that augments the feeling of texture by giving the close up view of the cut ends. The natural outdoors lighting gives an even overall light. Did you consider using more of a point source light? Pointing this to give a glancing light could have accentuated and darkened the spaces between the individual strands thereby strengthening the texture.

I’ve already commented on your monochrome image which does show up the overall shape well. Your post production changes bleaches out the detail of the individual strands and is an interesting alternative to the more usual silhouette lighting - but is using post production techniques rather than lighting. This image looks as if it uses very similar if not identical lighting to the side lighting colour image. So I’m not clear what your rationale is for including both these images.

Your form image uses natural daylight outside which gives an even overall lighting and this given the nature of the wicker (made up of the overall heart shape by a series of interwoven strands) allows a good appreciation of its form. You mention warming up the image by altering the white balance setting - what about using natural evening or morning light which tends to be warmer? You did in your “diagonal morning light” but have converted this to black and white. The glancing diagonal light with its light streaks makes for a an overall interesting image. It shows both shape and form but also picks out the texture where the streak falls across the wicker. It’s these sort of discussions that would be worth considering and addressing at least in your log.

Your shape image uses backlighting and forms a semi silhouette. You are still able to see detail in the individual strands and so perhaps had some degree of top lighting. If you had used only the back light exposing for  the light you could have produced more of complete silhouette. Would the concentration on the overall “heart shape” been worth considering as you already have images showing detail of the strands? See my altered image.

Lastly your colour image: again it’s good to see you being inventive and using your pink scarf as a way to influence the colour of the light. Also your camera angle to give the floating feeling. It’s good to see the selective focus in this image; this time it works well with the front focused and gradually drifting out towards the back. The concentration on the front can be accentuated by darkening the amount of light towards the back giving more of a graduated effect. I would suggest considering increasing the contrast as the wicker itself looks a little flat. This coupled with increasing the saturation brings out the warm tones fringing the wicker. See a suggestion which includes artificially darkening the back of the image: