Reflection and thoughts

 Update 27/4/10

I finally get a breathing space from work to update my blog and the internet is playing up. Argghhh! On the plus side I have completed a few more exercises and just need to get them uploaded. Have also arranged a client for the final assignment but have agreed to leave things until I finish college in June, so I can give it my full attention.

Finding it very difficult to make time to read and look at photography on the web. So frustrating as there is so much out there to learn from. Planning to visit the Diane Arbus exhibition at the Dean Gallery, Edinburgh at the end of May.


Update 5/12/09

I hate making yet more excuses for not doing coursework but November really has not been my month. My mother has been in hospital and my college workload increases every day. It's dark at night, i'm tired and have no energy to take or edit photographs. Something will have to change as I am really missing not creating pictures and feeling very guilty about my current lack of committment to the course.

On the plus side I have been listening to various photography podcasts, such as '7 Photography Questions' and 'Photography 101', which are informative and inspiring. It will soon be the holidays and I am determined to move forward - and to complete assignment 2, which is waiting patiently for me to finish editing and to write about. I am thinking about the images a wish to create, researching techniques and examples and I have borrowed a prime lens from college, hoping to experiment with depth of field for the formal portrait exercises.

I intend visiting the 2009 BP Portrait award exibition in Edinburgh, as seeing the 2008 exhibition in London alongside the work of Annie Leibovitz, was a major influence in my decision to start studying with the OCA. Here's to a much more productive few months ahead. . .


It's almost the end of September and although I have been taking pictures for the exercises, I am aware that I have not been giving the course due time and attention. I now have a lot of work to do to get my blog up to date. Resolved to set aside dedicated time each week from now on. It's proving more difficult than I expected to co-ordinate people and places at suitable times or weather conditions. I also appear to have somewhat camera shy acquaintances and my initial list of possible sitters has rapidly dwindled.

I have approached 2 hillwalking friends who have agreed to sit for me early October and have planned several constructed portraits of my husband, David, working towards Assignment 1.