Looking back on Assignment 4

Once again, my tutor's comments were very fair. I felt happy with most of the images I submitted, with one or two exceptions. I noted these in the written details I sent along with the assignment, and for the most part, my tutor agreed. The image that I was most doubtful about was this one:

... taken through the rain-splashed car windscreen, and processed using Photoshop's 'watercolor' filter. I feel uncomfortable with the use of such filters, and my tutor agreed, saying that he is not a fan of them either. Although it fits the water theme, it does not fit well with the other images I submitted, and I think I would have been better to replace it with something else.

My tutor also commented that, as my local beach faces east, sunrise would be a good time for me to photograph it. I agree wholeheartedly, but unfortunately this is not possible at the moment. I would be very unpopular if I asked someone to babysit my toddler at 5am whilst I raced off with my camera! This is a shame - I have enjoyed photographing here at sunrise previously, and have managed to get some dramatic shots from Swanage beach at this time.

My tastes in terms of HDR imagery are changing, and for the most part I now dislike HDR images that are very heavily and obviously processed. However, every now and again I go a bit mad with Photomatix and produce something surreal! My reason for mentioning this is that I have processed a sunrise photo from Swanage beach in such a way:

This received positive comments from non-photographer friends (see here). Compare this with the sunset image that I submitted for my assignment...

... and the feel is quite different! Perhaps an alternative approach I could (should?) have taken for this assignment would be to take photographs with a very similar subject, but to process them in wildly different ways.

Another thing I heave learnt from my feedback is that I should think more about how I title my images. For instance, I called one image 'Coil of Rope', but actually the rope was only a small part of the whole picture. I will be more careful when titling pictures for assignment 5.