Assignment 1 Tutor feedback

Feedback arrived last week, a lot to think about and certainly the comments provided by the tutor will serve as a great push to take the documentary approach more seriously. Unfortunately I feel I must agree with the negative comments. Perhaps my slapdash approach was a result of slightly misunderstanding the topic? I feel like I was unable to produce the honest account of my involvement (or the lack of it) with the local community and therefore I ended up generalising the whole experience. I hope that I may be able to re-select the photographs with this new understanding brought on by the comments, but should this not be a possible I will reshoot this project at a later date concentrating this time on day-to-day activities of Animal Welfare Society.

Just to clarify a couple things:
1. My initial description of the sale stating that people fight for second hand bargains during the Jumble was only meant to describe my previous experience with the sale, this particular Saturday involved my deeper involvement with the event and therefore I wanted to capture this very different, more inside experience.
2. I have a habit of including the logo and my signature on the blog, as the photographs can be simply downloaded off the blog page. I would have obviously submitted the photographs to the tutor without such protection and I shall do that with all future assignments.
3. As per Robert’s comments, I was originally considering to picture the journey of the cake all throughout the day. It seems that perhaps I do have the right ideas, but dismiss them at the last minute.
4. There were no animals present at the Jumble Sale. Animal Welfare Society is an organization concentrating on domestic animals and involves mainly the services of the vet and the kennels, it is run from the town centre and the event of the Jumble Sale is meant to assist in raising funds for them.

It seems that I still have a very graphic approach to taking photographs, perhaps I haven’t yet adjusted myself to thinking in documentary terms. I shall now focus on narrowing my ideas and concentrating on more specific concepts. I am very grateful for this feedback, this is perhaps what I needed to get myself to focus a little more.

Ass 1 - printing

Well, I have finally decided on the final 10 photographs for the assignment, they have all been converted to b&w and fully edited. Unfortunately, just in time for printing, I have run out of black ink. I have decided to print them at home on my beautiful Pictorico Pro Hi-Gloss white film, but now a few days will need to be added to get the ink  delivered from Amazon. Perhaps it is a bit risky to print them at home, but I do want to give it a chance, hopefully I will be able to print them without any major shift in colour. I usually struggle with green, but a test image printed just now came back more towards the magenta, but this could be down to the lack of the black ink. Anyway I shall give it a go, but if I cannot produce anything satisfactory, I will look into getting the prints done in a lab (although this can be also a very hit and miss!). Here is an interesting technique of fixing a monochrome tint in Photoshop found on http://www.northlight-images.co.uk, I shall give it a go next week.

Fixing a monochrome tint when printing B/W in colour
An approximate fix in Photoshop can be made with a test print, a grey card and a photo of the print.

Photograph your test print and the grey card in even light of the type you want to view the print in.

Process the raw file taking great care to set the white balance from the grey card

Add a curves adjustment layer to the image

Add a 'Vibrance' adjustment layer to the image (you can use hue/saturation, but the vibrance controls are smoother)

Turn up the vibrance/saturation until the tint is clearly visible in your print. If you have set grey balance correctly, the grey card will still look grey - if not, go back to your raw file and try again.

Go to the curves adjustment layer, select the grey point eye-dropper and click on a mid grey part of your test image in the photo.

The test image should now look neutral and the grey card will take on a tint - you may need to click elsewhere on the image to get the best overall correction.

Assignment 1 - first select

I have managed to cut down the set to 27 images, attached below. Completely unedited, straight from the camera, so please excuse the roughness of the selection.

AAWS Jumble Sale - Assignment 1

Well, today was a very exhausting day! I photographed the Alderney Animal Welfare Society Jumble Sale for my first assignment. I am not yet sure how exactly I will cut the set down from well over 200 usable photographs to 10, but I shall think hard before I make any decisions. I was originally considering to portray the journey of my cake from my house all the way to it being eaten, but it seems like such a waste of great photographs from the day. I think the simplicity in the approach will be the best possible option for this assignment. I shall reduce the set tomorrow and work it from then towards the final selection.