Have not heard from OCA regarding my complaint about the inconsistency of assessments. There was a video trying to assist with assessment posted last week by Jose Navarro but to be honest I found it more confusing. The idea was to give tips on presentation but I disagreed with some of the points (for example, Navarro suggested that submitting on glossy paper or submitting different sizes of image was not a good idea and I really cannot see that they should have any impact on the assessment) and most of it was about submitting printed images, which I shall not do.
Copied tutor on complaint and heard nothing from him since. I had some queries responded to last week as follows:
1) How important is technical competence in the assessment process? Is it more important than addressing the strict requirements of the assignment?
It's always important, but relative to level - e.g.: entry level - I also look of imagination, vision, understanding and communication.
2) Is there any other guidance you can give as to general approach?
Read widely, look at the work of other photographers. I also advise my students to look online for tutorials that can help improve their technical skills - shooting and post-production.
3) Specifically on Assignment 2, is it important to have all the images of the same subject, e.g. landscapes, or is it OK to use images of, say, street scenes too? The brief suggests a similar subject but this is a good example of where I might have, say, an excellent street scene image that I would like to use alongside a series of landscape images. Is this OK?
You need to work to your strengths, sometimes a unifying theme can be useful, at other times disparate subjects are better. So it's OK.
Important thing is that I can use images not from a unifying theme - can manage most images from Romania landscapes and castles but not all.
Some of the other blogs are good, other not so much. On the basis that better photographers are probably more inclined to publish their work don't let's get too distracted by the better images some of them produce. Notice that some of them are taking a long time to complete.
So a consolidation week - have managed two exercises this week and will shortly do a third so in good position. Have signed up with Derek Rigg for a day's course - if this goes well will consider asking him to mentor me through the process.
