Looking back on Assignment 3

Assignment 3 was the essay-based Critical Review. This was the first time I've written an essay for years, and to say that my skills in this area are 'rusty' is an understatement! Research was the first difficulty - beyond a basic Google search, I wasn't really sure where to start. I approached OCA about an ATHENS username, but unfortunately it wasn't forthcoming. However, I found some useful articles online which helped me to begin forming my own views about photographic manipulation.

I chose to concentrate specifically on the ethics of such practices - unfortunately (now that I see the feedback, this is immediately apparent to me!) my essay served to give more of an overview of the history of photographic manipulation, rather than looking in detail at ethical considerations.

In hindsight, I should have approached my tutor for my advice on researching the subject, and tried harder to find less well-known examples. I should also have reduced the amount of examples that I looked at, giving more information and enabling more debate on each one. As such, I feel that I have really missed the mark with this assignment. Although it has taught me new information, the depth of my essay was insufficient.


I've reached assignment 4 now, and was thinking of the way in which I might approach it. The brief is to produce eight landscape photographs fitting around a theme (I think I'll choose 'water'), and to approach the images in a number of ways - using different in-camera and post-processing techniques.

I've also looked ahead to part 5, and it looks to me as if it's a big jump up in terms of difficulty level! I'm looking forward to it, but some of the projects are going to be challenging. I'm a bit worried about the panorama - the course notes make mention of panoramas being covered in an earlier course. However, as I didn't do the OCA level 1 courses (I submitted an APEL portfolio instead), I don't have any experience of this area at all. It's going to be a matter of teaching myself, I think - which is fine, I enjoy a challenge. :)