Progressing With Digital Photography Overview

Progressing With Digital Photography consists of five areas of study, five assignments and 30 projects. The five topic areas are; Full colour control, Image combination, Photo-realistic retouching, Degrees of alteration and New world images. For some of the projects a CD of images are provided to help me complete the tasks set. Looking at the project and tutorial plan it will be interesting to note if on average they take the amount of recommended time. With the last course I probably spent the required amount of time to complete the course but some of the tasks took longer than anticipated with others taking less. I dare say that will also be the case with PwDP.

Time management has never really been an issue for me, the problems only occur when the weather interferes with images I want to shoot outside or people pull out of planned sessions due to unforeseen circumstances. I normally build in some kind of contingency plan for this. Keeping a logbook was also not a problem, instead of writing my entries up after the exercises I found it practical and easier to do both at the same time, I'd write up what I had to do, complete the exercise upload my results to my log along with any random thoughts I had along the way. Sticking things into my physical log was also done asap so I didn't lose all the bits of paper. Jotting the notes sometimes were done afterwards. What I have noticed along the way is that I don't always remember to add labels to my posts and that was a pain going back over them making sure they had the labels I wanted! *Note to self* REMEMBER LABELS! and possibly with level 2 requiring a higher level of critical thinking referencing my notes will be a must.

I am looking forward to thinking about the "check box" of criteria when commencing each assignment and am hoping that by thinking about creativity I don't actually "kill" the creative process. Am having quite an interesting conversation with a fellow flickr user with regards to art/creativity/study and he mentioned Jiddu Krishnamurti so I had a look at the website he quoted from. Several of the quotes I felt I could relate to straight away; Krishnamurti stated:

• Creativeness comes into being when there is constant awareness of the ways of the mind, and of the hindrances it has built for itself.
• It is only when the mind does not seek stimuli in any form, whether outward or inward, that it can be completely quiet, free, and only in that freedom is there creation.
• When there is creativeness, when we have that creative feeling, there is no struggle, there is absence of struggle, which means that the self, the 'me', with all its prejudices, its conditioning, is not there. In that state when the self is not, there is creativeness; and that creative feeling, that creative state, we try to express in action - through music, painting, or what you will. Then the struggle begins - the desire for recognition, and so on.

Interesting ideas....

When Joe makes contact I need to establish how he likes student work to be submitted and make sure I have everything I need to proceed with the course i.e. ink, paper, folders, DVD's etc and set up some new pages/labels for PwDP. One question I think I'll be asking straight away is about the portfolio...would this online blog be sufficient as the final portfolio of work or does physical one have to kept? Am guessing it could be a mixture of the two? All images produced for assignments to be printed but project work can be uploaded? Some of the materials folders don't seem to reflect the change in the move towards accepting electronic submission? Will find out in due course.