Is it inevitable?

I ask because I announced the new T189 message board on the First Class T189 Cafe forum at lunchtime and Yuku promptly keeled over

Well, not exactly keeled over but certainly started to run like treacle …

It’s a bit like watching paint dry as you wait for the board to FINALLY appear on your screen, threads aren’t being updated, replies are not appearing and I’m starting to feel very disheartened

But a search on the Yuku support board proved that it’s happened before and, if I know message boards, it will happen again. So I’m determined not to get too upset about it and it does seem to have improved a bit as the afternoon has passed.

T189 Digital Photography Unofficial Forum

Considering that I only created the board on Saturday, tinkered with it and got it set up yesterday, posted the link here on my blog and now the announcement is also in the Red Cafe forum on OU First Class, these aren’t bad stats

Founded: 14/07/07

• 32 Avg visits per day
• 18 Posts per day
• 41 Posts in last 24 hours

• 96 Total visits
• 52 Total posts
• 18 Total topics
• 8 Total members

 

Like Meldrewman says:
“I hope this forum goes from strength to strength – it’s entirely up to us – can’t blame the OU for this one!”

So why not come along and check it out?

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?

Refreshing the memory

I decided this morning that I would revisit my OpenStudio weeks and re-read the comments that students made on my images just to refresh my memory. I also went through all the images on my Flickr photostream as well and did the same. It’s interesting that there isn’t necessarily a correlation between the two – an image that was liked on Flickr and got several comments might be languishing un-commented on OpenStudio. I’ve now got a good selection of ECA ‘possible’ images and it’s becoming increasingly difficult to choose between them.

I’d like to get a fairly broad selection of images rather than mainly macros or mainly landscapes. One of the trickiest subjects has been portraits which have been common amongst other student images but which I find very difficult, not only because I feel self-conscious about photographing other people but also because most of the folk I know would run a mile rather than let me take their photo! If I do manage to ’snap’ someone it’s usually a spur-of-the-moment candid shot – grabbing the opportunity when it arises – so the images tend to be less than perfect technically but usually capture a great expression or a special moment.

The other problem I’ve had has been weighing up one image against another and trying to determine which one should be included in the ECA panel. It’s very difficult to make a decision when you’re comparing two very different images. Adding the potential for editing in the Elements digital darkroom just complicates the issue for me especially since I’ve not mastered all the techniques in the tutorials, especially the more complex week 8 techniques. Anyway I’ve always had problems making decisions and the final ten images for the panel is going to take a lot of time and deliberation.

We’re also going to be away for four days over the weekend so that raises the prospect of taking more photos which will then throw all my ECA panel plans into disarray!

Week 8 Assignment

Yes, I know, I’m a bit behind but the weather has been very changeable this weekend and The Artist hasn’t been able to get out and paint. Consequently he’s been working on the computer – catching up on the delicate task of balancing, resizing and adding text to images of paintings ready for printing on our professional giclee printer to sell in the Gallery.

So I haven’t had much time on the computer neither have I been very inspired to go out and take photographs. What is it about inspiration? It seems that either I’m full to overflowing with it or flat as a pancake (mixed metaphors, I know …) Anyway, I’ve been suffering from a badly blocked right ear and my hearing and balance are both affected so I’m due to visit the Health Centre for a ‘de-coke’ tomorrow morning. I intend to take my camera on the walk there and back – if the weather is halfway decent (as it might be according to the Met Office) I might get some good shots en route …

This evening I’m re-reading the week 8 assignment and spending some time online.

Your central task in this week’s assignment is for you to put into practise better commenting and critiquing of others’ images. Constructive criticism is a powerful tool – both for the giver and the receiver of it.

Spend at least 1 hour this week giving constructive criticism on the photos in your group. Share at least three images that you have created by using some of the advanced image editing taught in the course and use the rest to share any other images you wish. To help you focus and improve your commenting, use the language and terminology in the criteria on visual awareness and technical quality used in the ECA. This in turn will help you prepare for your own ECA as well as next week’s assignment.

 

As I’ve mentioned before, constructive criticism is a tough call. I’ve been reading around various photography forums and camera websites and almost everyone seems to agree that it is beneficial but it can be surprisingly tricky to get right. So this evening I’ve settled for browsing the images that have already been submitted by my Week 8 group and admiring their efforts. I try and comment on some of the images that haven’t received comments yet – usually they’re the ones that you look at and think “What do I say about this and how do I phrase it constructively?” as you scratch your head.

 

In the meantime, I thought it might be interesting to post some raw statistics about OpenStudio. Bear in mind that these statistics have been produced about two weeks before the end of the course so they are by no means definitive. But they give an insight into MY experience of OpenStudio.

 

My Photos

• Week 1 -  10 images submitted – 5 received comments
• Week 2 – 10 images submitted – 4 received comments
• Week 3 – 10 images submitted – 7 received comments
• Week 4 – 10 images submitted – 9 received comments
• Week 5 – 10 images submitted – 6 received comments
• Week 6 – 10 images submitted – 5 received comments
• Week 7 – 10 images submitted – 0 received comments

(I haven’t submitted any images for Weeks 8 and 9 yet!)

My Groups

• Week 1 Group – 21 students – 186 images submitted
• Week 2 Group – 20 students – 164 images
• Week 3 Group – 20 students – 163 images
• Week 4 group – 20 students – 109 images
• Week 5 Group – 20 students – 116 images
• Week 6 Group – 20 students – 81 images
• Week 7 Group – 20 students – 60 images
• Week 8 Group – 20 students – 86 (to date – 2nd July 2007)
• Week 9 Group – 20 students – 104 (to date – 2nd July 2007)

Now I’m off to track down and copy my ECA possibles to a CD-RW so I can work on son’s computer tomorrow because it looks like The Artist will be working on the Office Computer….

Being organised

Having now reached week 9 of the course (glad to hear I’m not the only one behind in the schedule, Wanda!) it’s becoming increasingly clear to me that ‘Being Organised’ is a very good idea if you’re doing T189. Not only will you have the photos that you have already taken and stored on your hard drive (some of which might be good subjects for editing once you’re more familiar with the digital darkroom techniques), but you will also have the images that you take during the course of T189 – which could be quite a lot. I was astonished to discover than I had about 5000+ images before I even started the course! The first video tutorials are actually devoted to the important task of ‘Being Organised’ and there is one actually titled “Now where did I put that rhino?”

The Adobe Photoshop Elements 5 software provided as part of the course is not only used for the tutorials but also incorporates an ‘Organiser’ so you can keep track of all your images using tags and collections. It stores images by default in My Pictures …. which is NOT where I store my digital camera images unfortunately. I have a separate folder called Cameras inside which are two folders, one for my Fuji Finepix images (my current camera) and the other for the Kodak DX3500 (our previous camera). I also back these folders up frequently to DVD and to ‘Goliath’ our Maxtor OneTouch external hard drive.

Even more annoying, once you have PSE 5 on your computer, it likes to have total control over your images and gets really cross if you start reorganising folders and images outside its interface. It is, of course, possible to use PSE 5 to move images around and create folders but it’s not as simple and straightforward as using Windows Explorer. If you move images outside its interface, it complains bitterly that images have become disconnected from the catalogue and displays a grey box broken in two just to confirm the fact. Furthermore, any drive or media that you connect to your computer or insert into a CD/DVD/Zip/Flash drive is immediately subject to scrutiny by PSE 5 to determine if there are any images on there. Then it offers to catalogue them for you … whether you want them catalogued or not!

The only way I’ve found of squashing this annoying ‘bossiness’ of PSE 5 is simply to single right click on the little camera icon in the taskbar and select ‘disable’. This means it’s loaded but not active and you don’t have it popping up intrusively every time it detects an image that it wants to catalogue. Then, if you re-enable it before you connect your camera or card reader, it can do its stuff and then you can send it back to its slumber again.

My advice, if you want to keep your T189 coursework images separate, is to be pro-active from the beginning and create a folder in My Pictures called ‘Elements’ or ‘T189′ with subfolders for the first eight weeks when you’ll be taking images as part of your assignment. Weeks 9 and 10 are devoted to the ECA so they will probably contain a selection of images from the other eight folders anyway. Then you can point PSE 5 to the correct folder for the week when you are downloading your images from your camera or card reader. You might even create subfolders within each week folder for images straight from the camera with no editing (so you can preserve your original images) as well as another for images you are working on and possibly even another  for the actual images that you submit to the OpenStudio website. It will also make it easy to back up your T189 images to external media like a CD or DVD for safekeeping.

Don’t forget that Elements will catalogue ALL your images and, when I checked the first catalogue it created on my computer, I found it was even adding website navigation buttons and animated gif graphics. There may be an option to prevent it from including .gif images but I hadn’t found that when I installed Elements and it compiled the catalogue.

So, to summarise, my advice is to make sure you create folders so you can specify where your images are saved, use tags and collections (as explained in the video tutorials) to organise and catalogue your images, disable PSE 5 when you’re not using it to prevent it being intrusive and BACK UP your T189 or existing image collections regularly to external media so you don’t lose them.

Now I’m off to my digital darkroom to practise some of the interesting new techniques introduced in week 8 …

Catching up

I haven’t had much time on the computer over the last couple of days because The Artist has needed it for Gallery work. Also the weather has been so changeable that I haven’t been able to get out and take any photos either. It’s midsummer and it feels more like March!

So I copied the .avi tutorials onto a DVD and booted up my laptop, intending to work downstairs, but I found that I had sound and no video – just like I had done when I first tried to run them on the Office desktop. That was a severe disappointment because there’s only one phone line and only one broadband modem – both attached to the Office desktop where The Artist was working. So I couldn’t even go to the T189 website, follow the link to download the codec that made the video work properly and resolve the problem.

Never mind, I thought, son is away and his computer is even MORE powerful that the Office desktop so I headed into his room, booted his computer … and got exactly the same result.  Now all three of these computers are running Windows XP Home SP2 and are updated to WMP 11 so I’m at a loss as to why they won’t run the .avi videos without downloading the extra codec. I tried Realplayer … no luck … the DVD players … still no luck … this was getting very frustrating…

In the end, the only way I could watch the Week 8 tutorials (yes, folks, I am behind with the course) was to get the original DVD supplied for T189 and try that on son’s computer. Fortunately, given the ‘oomph’ that his computer packs (he plays a lot of computer games) it made short work of the tutorials and I got to watch the first four all the way through without any glitches, out-of-synch problems or crashes.

But this only goes to show that the new video tutorials haven’t completely cracked the problems that some students experienced when trying to watch them.