Initial Thoughts

As per the instructions for this part of the course I read ahead to the Assignment and saw that the assignment builds on any of the three main exercises in this part.   At the time of reading I was not so sure which exercise I would choose to build on.

I decided to keep an open mind and actually had it in my head to shoot the whole assignment for every exercise.

Order of Things

In Parts 1 -3 I also read ahead to the assignment but then chose to put it to the back of my mind until I had completed all of the exercises.  Here though with the specific instruction to build on the exercises I knew that I needed to think of it all the way through.

This has an effect on the order of things.  Normally I would be writing initial thoughts after completing the exercises but before the assignment.  Here I am writing it after already shooting the exercises and photographs that could make up the assignment itself.

Which exercise to build on?

Thinking back, I enjoyed all three styles of shooting: daylight, artificial light and ex-nihilo.

In daylight, before carrying out this course I would have chosen timing to achieve the nicest aesthetic shots; and indeed Exercise 4.2 was very concerned about the colour and effect of the light.  I was fascinated to research the work of Mann and Schmidt in which they used light in very different ways but in both cases made deliberate design decisions based on what they wanted to express and achieve.  Schmidt in particular chose his timing for a particular light but then also used black and white – this was very surprising.

For artificial light and ex-nihilo, I enjoyed the exercises but didn’t find that they caught my interest to the same degree from a creative sense.

I have therefore chosen to base my assignment on the use of daylight and in particular explore the technique of Schmidt further in the use of light and also black and white to exclude other factors.