PART FIVE :NARRATIVE AND ILLUSTRATION

This is the final exercise and I truly want to give a good account of myself in this one. In this,  you are required to bring all that has been learnt into creating a narrative picture essay. This narrative is the major thrust in this exercise. Now I sat down to think of what I could do to clearly depict this. One scenario was to photograph a home activity for one day. The other is to go out to the market area and capture a trader or artisans activity for a full day. But either ways I want it to look great. I considered shooting in monochrome to see if it can make a difference.

The only way to catch up in photography is to practice regularly. Reading and following the works of other photographers is also very helpful. My tutor has been stressing that. I bought some books recently and have been reading them . In the process I discovered that my inability to source for these referenced books earlier has impacted on my learning. Not that I was not reading. I have been reading a lot, but some of these books in light would have been of immense help if I had read them earlier than now. Some of the books I am reading presently include the following:

1, Complete Digital Photography, Seventh edition by Ben Long.
2.Light Science & Magic, An introduction to Photographic Lighting, By Fil Hunter,Steven Biver and
   Paul Fuqua.
3.Flash Techniques for Macro and Close -up Photography, by Rod and Robin Deutcshman
4.Understanding Close-up Photography, By Bryan Peterson.

It is important to read as many books as possible because  authors tend to explain topics differently and a reader may end up not fully understanding the explanation of a topic in one book, but when he reads another book, the explanation sinks in immediately. A clear example in my case was when i was trying to take a picture with black background. Not until  I read flash techniques for Macro and close-up photography by  Rod and Robin Deutcshman did i fully understand the procedure.  To get a black background, you need to use your camera's smallest aperture, set it to the maximum flash sync speed which in this case was 1\250s and choose your lowest ISO. Then you manipulate the flash to subject distance and take the picture. The picture shown below was taken after I read this book and fully understood the technique.

Image 1:ISO 160,105MM,0EV,F/32, 1/250s

The above image is not what am expected to do in this exercise. I am only showing it to explain some of the things i have learnt in my journey through photography and why i should read widely.

Now back to this exercise. In Complete digital Photography by Ben Long (page 236), Narrative is defined as the process of telling a story. It goes further to explain that narrative is a fairly simple thing to understand when  you are writing or shooting video because there is a temporal component that you can control. Consequently its possible to convey a series of events that have a beginning, middle and end. But in photography, narrative can be a bit more ephemeral.

When trying to construct a photographic narrative, its important to think about what information is required to tell your story.THE viewer will project a lot of information into the scene. As a photographer , you can use the viewers automatic projections to build a story, as long as you give them enough clues to point them in the right direction. But we are advised not to expect that every single image can convey an entire narrative. If we do this, we will be more prone to wide shots that lack an obvious subject. Sometimes one can get a narrative shot, while at other times, one has to rely on good single images that build up a narrative. At still other times, narrative is simply not an issue. Some scenes are purely attractive for their visual qualities.

TUTUOR FEEDBACK

I submitted my work in November 2013 for the exercise on light. Unfortunately the tutor was not really impressed with the assignment. He however commended my learning log which he described as very good. He went on to say that its a bit of a mystery tone why there is such gap between my work on the learning log and interpretation of the brief.  This assessment got me thinking where am I going wrong?

So I sat down, re-printed all the assessments and reviewed them again by following all my entries in the learning log. I discovered that not proper attention is placed on the assignments as against entries in the learning log. This has to change moving forward. Like I told him, the degree is the motivation for my taking this course and i intend to forge ahead despite the odds. The last exercise is on narrative and illustration and i will give a good account of myself.