Feeling a bit down …

I’ve had to think very long and hard about writing this blog post because I definitely have some conflicting feelings about my T189 results.

The OES (Overall Examinable Component) mark I received for the ECA was 70/100 which was rather disappointing because I was really hoping to get a mark between 75 and 85. From feedback received on OpenStudio and on Flickr, I got the impression that my images were good and some were very good so only to get ‘Achieved’ for the visual and technical marks on my ECA panel was a bit of a let-down

I know I didn’t master some of the more involved techniques in Elements 5 and that seems to have impacted on my Technical Awareness mark but I simply didn’t have the extra hours required to invest in such a complex program on top of the course work and the time for photo assignments. I also use a trackball due to RSI which is hardly an ideal tool for delicate image editing and I didn’t have spare cash to buy a graphics tablet

So here are my marks:

Part 1a – Visual Awareness – Achieved
Your images showed a satisfactory level of visual awareness. Your panel of images had one or two images with good visual impact and showed some evidence of imagination and creativity. Some of your images communicated their intention clearly and made use of ideas taught in the course about framing, lighting, and decisive moments. About half of the images in your panel could be improved upon and the best way to develop your visual awareness is to keep taking pictures and looking at them critically.

Part 1b – Technical Awareness – Achieved
Your panel of images demonstrates a reasonable level of technical skill. Several of your images are appropriately exposed and sharp, and demonstrate your control of the camera. If you have edited your images then your mark may reflect problems with the colour, pixelation, or other digital artefacts. A common problem for beginners to photography is the over-saturation and over-sharpening of images. The technical standard that you have reached is satisfactory and with practice your technical skill will improve. You may find it helpful to review the course and think about how your images could be improved from a technical point of view.

Part 2 – Written Component – Well Achieved
Your answers to the written component of the ECA show a sound understanding of photographic techniques and aesthetic considerations. You have written appropriately about your images and used some of the terms introduced in the course, and demonstrated a developing understanding.

Since my next course is about to start and my course materials will probably be arriving tomorrow, I’m going to put T189 away for now and just continue snapping away with my little compact camera. I’m not even sure if it’s worth investing in a new camera so I may put that idea on the back burner for a while. I did enjoy T189 and I did enjoy taking photographs for the assignments and ECA, I did get a pass after all and it’s not a bad one, but somehow I feel rather flat and disillusioned today … sorry, but that is honestly how I feel right now. Maybe I’ll feel better tomorrow – it is my birthday after all

Goodnight folks.

Moving onwards and upwards

Today, we got up at the unearthly hour of 5.15am on the final leg of our journey home, having delivered daughter safely to college up in Leicestershire over the weekend, and arrived back safely just before lunch. Hubby fired up the computer to do some printing and then I downloaded all the (mostly) junk emails before checking in on my OU First Class desktop. I have to admit that it came as a bit of a shock when I double clicked on T189 Feedback which sported a red flag only to be told that I’m not allowed to perform that function

So I dashed over to my StudentHome page to see if any results were there … it appeared not. I’m not exactly sure when the T189 results will be released but it’s possible that the OU is being extra-scrupulous with the marking since it is the first presentation of the course and they want to set an effective benchmark for future presentations. However, on checking a little later, I found the following announcement on my T189 course details page:

Your course result should be available by Thursday 13 September 2007

So it’s not long to wait now for students of the first presentation of T189!

I confess I’ve not taken that many photographs this summer, apart from ones of our daughter, so I really need to get going again now that autumn is here. There’s that faint bonfire-smoky tang to the air that heralds the ’season of mists and mellow fruitfulness’ and the spiders are out in force, spinning their webs across anything available. It also heralds the fast approaching excitement of my next course – A215: Creative Writing, a sixty point Level Two course, and a fascinating challenge.

So good luck to all T189-ers for fantastic results

When it’s all over …

… it’s not unusual to feel slightly down and loose-endish. I’ve come to expect this at the end of a course so I wasn’t surprised when today’s rather gloomy and damp weather seemed to mirror my mood. Sometimes there’s this odd aimlessness which follows the final exam or submission of an ECA and it might take a day or so to adjust to ‘normal living’ again

Many students will already have decided to continue with their Open University studies and might even have registered for their next course. Some, like me, might be taking the summer off because of family and work responsibilities with a view to possibly signing up again in the autumn. Others might just have done one single course and don’t intend to do any more. That’s one of the great things about being an OU student

One of the best things about studying with the Open University is the amazing sense of camaraderie and mutual inter-student help that marks many of the course conferences. Admittedly, some courses have very quiet conferences but some, like T189, are characterised by lively exchanges and extensive information sharing. Many strong friendships can be forged that transcend the course itself. So it’s hardly surprising that some students are now posting messages of thanks which include rather plaintive questions about how long the course conferences will be accessible on First Class. The usual time is six to eight weeks after the course finishes but I’ve noticed that the T189 conferences have become noticeably quieter towards the end of this week.

So I decided to create a message board which past T189 students can use after our course conferences are closed. It’s not restricted to those who have already studied T189 – everyone is welcome whether they’ve signed up for the second presentation in October or are thinking of taking the course at some time in the more distant future.

I’ve tried to cover all topics and I’ve added a Suggestion Box forum so that anything I’ve overlooked can be pointed out, discussed and (hopefully) implemented. There’s also an Informal Course Feedback forum where students who have taken part in the first time presentation (which wasn’t entirely trouble free …) can offer their suggestions for improvements and additions to the course team for future presentations. Please be courteous and constructive in your comments – this is not a place for disputes.

T189 Digital Photography Unofficial Forum

There are lots of free message board systems out there but I opted for Yuku which, although still in beta, does offer a lot of options. I’ve deliberately made the board open to everyone so you don’t have to register for a Yuku account to read and participate. Hopefully it will be easy to use …

Note that this is an UNOFFICIAL board which is not affiliated to the Open University in any way. Any views expressed within the forums are those of the original poster. Please treat others with respect and courtesy.

See you there

Success, frustrations and ideas

I’m writing this offline using Notepad because it’s been a MOST frustrating day. Since midmorning today, my ISP (Tiscali) has been repeatedly timing out, dropping my internet connection, suddenly dying but apparently not being disconnected, and returning ‘Remote server did not respond’ messages. I confess I muttered more thana few mild imprecations at the distant server (images of Dastardly and Muttley float into my mind here … ) The thought of these problems continuing through the weekend was not a pleasant prospect. I even resorted to my reserve 56k dialup connection to visit Tiscali’s homepage (oh, it’s so painfully slow after broadband …  ) and check on server status. This morning it admitted rather grudgingly to only 80% efficiency on its internet connection but by this evening it was claiming 100% …. yeah, right!

So, with only 72 hours until the T189 ECA deadline, I decided I had no choice but to get my skates on. Cue a frantic afternoon juggling images in slideshows, editing and polishing the written answers, converting my Works word processor document into the requisite .doc format which can be read by the Assessors, spellchecking and proofreading, formatting and zipping ……. finally, at exactly 21.23 this evening, I managed to submit the T189 End of Course Assessment. It took me two reboots and many attempts to connect but eventually Tiscali obliged by squeezing out ten minutes online for me … before dying again I printed out a hardcopy of the written part of the ECA then also backed the whole lot up to a CD AND Goliath, our external hard disk, just because I’m paranoid.

One unfortunate student reported on the T189 conferences this week that her laptop had been stolen and she hadn’t backed up for three weeks So she’d lost the bulk of the work she’d done on her ECA together with all those irreplaceable images taken over these three important weeks of the course. It is a painful but salutory lesson – not only to suffer the indignity and trauma of someone breaking into your house but also the loss of property that holds data far more valuable than the thieves could have imagined. Fortunately it looks like she will get an extension for submitting her ECA due to exceptional circumstances. She’s also had her laptop replaced and is now gearing up to tackle the final stretch.

Now I can’t get a squeak out of Tiscali so I’m giving up until later…..

Just one final quick footnote: I’ve just registered the domain name www.t189digitalphotography.co.uk and I was thinking of creating a simple ‘portal’ website where information, links, useful resources, websites, blogs etc can be collected together for the purpose of helping future T189 students. I also thought a message board might be a good idea so T189 -07E students can keep in touch and give help and advice to folks thinking of taking the course. What do you think? Any ideas … suggestions … brickbats …. I need some feedback here

Back!

It’s now just gone 9pm and I’ve been up since 5.30am so apologies if this post seems to be a bit disjointed. I don’t think or write very well when my brain needs sleep …

I confess that I am faintly dismayed by the number of students on the OU T189 conferences and also on Flickr who are celebrating having sent their ECA After seven years of OU study, I thought I was pretty much immune to the feelings of panic, indecision and anxiety that seem to invade the consciousness of a student nearing the submission date for an ECA when surrounded by students who have already completed it.

So I’m sternly telling myself that I took my draft ECA away with me on my laptop and gained valuable insight and feedback from various family members as we travelled upcountry and back down again. The deadline isn’t until midday on Monday 16th so I still have plenty of time. Creating the slideshow in Acrobat format wasn’t difficult and I’ve done a fair amount of zipping and despatching of zipped files through the OU’s electronic TMA (tutor marked assignment) system so neither of those pose any problems. Writing has always come pretty easily to me and 200 words x 3 isn’t exactly taxing. But still there’s this still small voice inside telling me that I’m behind everyone else …

Part of the problem is the conflicting feedback that I’ve been getting on OpenStudio and on Flickr. One image may be a ‘hit’ on Flickr but a ‘miss’ on OpenStudio AND vice versa. This brings all sorts of doubts and anxieties bubbling to the surface and it’s induced a sort of paralysis over the final choice of ten for the panel. I thought I had it pretty much sussed out but now I’m not quite so sure. I was planning to drop the Ripe Golden Pear in Sunshine which, although nice, hadn’t received much feedback and replace it with the rather more dramatic Evening Storm Cloud.

But now the pear has gathered some very favourable comments on OpenStudio and I’ve been thrown into indecision

The other “not sure” has been the dramatic blood red amaryllis close-up (image on a previous post) which was raved over on Flickr, gathering several ‘awards’, but managed only one single comment on OpenStudio. Talk about conflicting views! I was wondering whether to replace it with another moody grey evening sea image (probably one of the week 4 images either Porthloo at Dusk or Steely Sky) … but would that be too much sea in my panel? Would the poor assessor have to reach for the Kwells to stave off seasickness?

As you can tell, I’m both tired and confused. I think I need to sleep on it and return refreshed to the fray later this week….

Flummoxed …

I just popped in to check on my blog one last time before I shut down the computer and finish off the packing ready to go away this evening and I was … well … I think ‘gutted’ might not be too strong a word … when I read a comment made in response to my previous post. I’ll paste the comment and my reply just to make sure they don’t get overlooked.

Your pictures are very very good. Loved the waves crashing on the stones, especially. But what I really want to say is, that I’m very glad I happened upon your blog, because I did consider doing T189, but now I’m really pleased I didn’t, because I’d be so embarrassed by the inadequacy of my photos, if your standard is anything to go by!

Comment by nomdeplume — July 7, 2007 @ 10:00 am

Oh No! nomdeplume, I’m writing this blog in the hope that people will be inspired to take the course, so it’s really upsetting and disappointing to read that you’re PLEASED you didn’t do T189 because you feel your photos are inadequate

Surely the whole point of taking a course like this is to improve your photography and creative skills? If you start from a high point, where do you go from there? Better to start from not-so-good photographs and end up with brilliant photographs.

I don’t think I would have managed to produce the ten ECA images if I hadn’t done the course. Part of T189 is learning how to correct and enhance your images using Elements 5 – it’s astonishing what you can do to rescue a so-so image. If you saw my ten images before I edited them, you wouldn’t be quite so embarassed – trust me!

It’s a striking fact that lots of students are now posting delighted comments on our conferences about how much they have improved and how much the standard of photography has rocketed between weeks 1 and 9. That’s what we all hoped for when we signed up for the course!

Please think again and consider signing up for T189 – I PROMISE you won’t regret it …

Almost crunch time!

Trust me, it’s a challenging process trying to whittle down your T189 portfolio to just ten images to submit for the ECA!

I selected about fifty images that I thought had potential, trawled OpenStudio and Flickr to glean further inspiration then narrowed the choice down to about twenty. We aren’t compelled to submit ten images using completely different techniques but I felt it was probably best to select ten that illustrated various important aspects of digital photography.

My problem was a portrait image. As I’ve mentioned before, my family runs a mile if I point a camera at them so I had to resort to an archive image. Christmas proved a particularly good source of images because people are generally relaxed and happy, less likely to bolt at the sight of a camera. I narrowed it down to about four images … then two … then put them up on OpenStudio for other students to comment on … then narrowed it down to two … tried some of the editing techniques suggested to improve them … failed dismally on one but succeeded on another.

So, if you visit my Flickr photostream you can view the ten images that I think will probably be my final panel for the ECA submission. I say think because I’m well aware that an unfavourable response to any image may well see me reviewing my choices again.

Aqua Marina’s Photostream

But, since I’m away from home tomorrow evening until Wednesday lunchtime (and I intend to take my laptop so I can show my prospective ECA slideshow panel to family members to gather their opinions), I am planning to chill out a little, enjoy a few days away (collecting autistic daughter from college) and then return ready for the final push. So the ten images aren’t absolutely definite but they are pretty certain.

Let me know what you think of them, please?