Courses and Assignments

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[2Mar21] A plea in OCA Chat brought the extracts. I am now trying to assemble assignment briefs for all the Level 2 courses.

[7Jan21] For the Level 1 courses, the OCA makes available the first part to allow prereading. I was hoping for something similar for Leve; 2, but I cannot find any. I am therefore trawling student blogs for Assignment briefs in an effort to find what I would like to embark on. I have always assumed I would start with the Landscape course.
In looking for links, I have found three extracts, all except Landscape - Documentary (rather old) - Self - Digital
Links to the student blogs are here.

Landscape, Place & Environment

Course Extract - Contents page(s)

Asg.1 Beauty & the Sublime: Reflection against criteria
Produce a series of 6–12 photographs that convey your own interpretation of beauty and/or the sublime within the context of landscape. You may choose to support, question or subvert accepted definitions of these terms.
Your images don’t necessarily have to be made in the same place or type of location; however, they should complement one another and attempt to function as a cohesive series.
Introduce your work with a supporting text (around 500 words) that:
• Describes how you interpreted this brief.
• Describes how your work relates to aspects of photography and visual culture addressed in Part One.
• Evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of your work, describing what you would have done differently or how you might develop this work further.
• Identifies what technical choices you made to help communicate your ideas, and also references relevant artists and photographers who have influenced the creative direction of your project.
• Explains your reasons for selecting particular views, and arriving at certain visual outcomes.
Send your work and your supporting text, as well as extracts from your learning log or link to your blog, to your tutor by the method you’ve agreed with them. Make sure that all your work is carefully labelled with your name, student number and the assignment number.
This assignment is diagnostic, which means it is an opportunity for you to introduce your practice to your tutor. It should still be submitted along with the rest of your work for assessment: however, it is unlikely to have a significant impact upon your overall grade. If you’ve chosen your location for Assignment Six, let your tutor know now. It’s important to come to a decision as soon as possible so that you can maximise your photographic opportunities.

Asg.2 A Journey
Produce a series of approximately 12 photographs that are made on, or explore the idea of, a journey.
The journey that you document may be as long or as short as you like. You may choose to re-examine a familiar route, such as a commute to work or another routine activity, or it may be a journey into unfamiliar territory. You may travel by any means available.
Introduce your work with a supporting text (around 500 words) that:
• Describes how you interpreted this brief.
• Describes how your work relates to aspects of photography and visual culture addressed in Part Two.
• Evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of your work, describing what you would have done differently or how you might develop this work further.
• Identifies what technical choices you made to help communicate your ideas, and also references relevant artists and photographers who have influenced the creative direction of your project.
• Explains your reasons for selecting particular views, and arriving at certain visual outcomes.
Send your work and your supporting text, as well as extracts from your learning log or link to your blog, to your tutor by the method you’ve agreed with them. If you have any preliminary ideas about your critical review (Assignment Four), share these with your tutor now – or as soon as you feel ready. Now is also a good time to let your tutor know how you’re getting on with the ‘Transitions’ task (Assignment Six). Make sure that all work is clearly labelled with your name, student number and the assignment number.
You don’t need to wait for your tutor’s response before starting Part Three.
Reflection
Just a reminder to look at the assessment criteria again. Think about how well you have done against the criteria and make notes in your learning log.

Asg.3 Spaces to Places
Within a series of up to 12 photographs, explore a landscape, or a small part of a landscape, which you believe to have some kind of significance. This may be a landscape with which you have a personal relationship, or it may be somewhere that is more widely known. You may wish to begin your research with your findings from the local history exercise (3.5).
The objective of this assignment is to engage with the question of how a ‘space’ becomes a ‘place’. Your project should put into practice the idea that a ‘place’ is a constructed, subjective term that, for whatever reason (political, industrial, mythological, environmental), is imposed upon, or becomes associated with, a particular ‘space’. This may be a very specific location, or it may be a more generic type of space. You’re free to approach this project with whatever strategy you feel is appropriate to your subject matter…

Asg.4 Critical Essay
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Write a 2,000-word essay (excluding any quotes) on one of the areas of landscape practice you have encountered during this course so far.
The critical review is an opportunity for you to gain a greater insight into an area, theme, debate or other issue relating to landscape photography that is of particular interest to you. You must choose a topic that’s relevant to your own practice in some way, in order to help you to contextualise your practice and to show that your understanding of landscape photography is informed by relevant practitioners. You should include an in depth evaluation of the work of key practitioners that you reference in your essay. Where appropriate, also reference your own individual images, bodies of work and ongoing or forthcoming projects.
Your written work should clearly show that you have engaged with theoretical, historical and cultural debates around landscape practice within photography and visual culture, and demonstrate that you have developed academically as well as creatively.
To sum up, your critical review should demonstrate that you can:
• understand relevant topics and issues around landscape practice
• use research skills competently
• analyse appropriate resources
• articulate your own, informed ideas at a level commensurate with HE5 level study.
Remember to include:
• correctly cited references and quotations (Harvard referencing system)
• referenced illustrations
• word counts, both excluding and including quotations.
Finally, make sure that your essay is critical rather than narrative. This means that you should focus your efforts on evaluating, comparing, contrasting and questioning the work and theoretical ideas, and not on recounting biographical or historical information, unless it has a significant relation to practice.

Asg.5 text
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Produce a body of work that explores a particular place, type of space or theme relating to landscape practice.
You’re free to choose the subject for this assignment, although you should be able to contextualise the project in relation to contemporary landscape practice. Negotiate the subject, as well as your research, technical and visual strategies, with your tutor before you start work.
The depth of your research, the scope of the development of the project and its resolution should reflect a substantial effort of independent study, as expected of students at Level 2 (HE5).
Submit your work to your tutor by whatever means and in whatever form you’ve agreed with them (e.g. book, portfolio, installation maquette or slideshow). If your self-directed project isn’t submitted as a conventional set of prints, we suggest you include a portfolio of the photographs in addition (max A4 / 8” x 12”). This will allow assessors to evaluate the quality of your work independently of how you’ve elected to present it.
Also include:
• An evaluation of your work (as for previous assignments).
• An artist’s statement that professionally contextualises your work to its audience. (This may be what you produced for Exercise 5.7.)
• Your original project proposal and your latest version of it, if applicable.
Whilst you await your tutor’s response, continue with your work on Assignment Six and begin reviewing your work for assessment.

Asg.6 Transitions

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Produce a series of images that responds to the idea of ‘transitions’ within the landscape. Work on this assignment throughout the course. Record the changes that a part of the landscape undergoes over an extended period of time. You may want to revisit a very specific view or you may choose to explore a particular part of the landscape more intuitively.
You may wish to photograph at very specific intervals (monthly, weekly, or even daily) or your routine may develop by other means. The quantity of work that you submit will depend on your particular strategy.
When completed, the assignment should address the notion that the landscape is an evolving, dynamic system. You may wish to confirm, question or subvert this assertion. Your assignment should be accompanied with a reflective commentary (minimum 300 words) on how your project developed and how or whether it has affected your ideas around landscape.

LPE - DFF - S&O - DIC

Documentary - Fact & Fiction

Course extract - Contents page(s)

Asg.1 Local Communities
Produce a small photo essay of 10 images that demonstrates your engagement with the lives, experiences and histories of your local community and its people. You’ll need to decide on a single theme, topic or activity to focus on. Discuss your ideas with your tutor before committing to it. Do this assignment with only one camera and one lens. If you only have zoom lenses then decide on one particular focal length and don’t move the zoom from that position – you can tape the zoom barrel to avoid moving it. Provide a short commentary (200 words) explaining your ethos and rationale along with your images.

Asg.2 text
Produce eight images that, individually, have a narrative and convey a specific idea. You needn’t limit yourself to your immediate surroundings as you did in the previous assignment. Rather than focusing on a theme or activity, work on a concept. The more abstract the concept the better. Abstract concepts name ideas, feelings, qualities or characteristics that are not directly perceived by the senses, e.g. hope, love, exploitation, sadness, freedom and greed. You can do this assignment in B&W or colour.

Asg.3 Visual Storytelling

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Produce a photo story of 10 images that, as a set, tells a story and conveys a narrative. As in Assignment One, engage at local level. Do this assignment in colour.

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Continue working on your personal project and produce a photo essay of 15 images. Your work should demonstrate good research, a methodical approach and a wider scope than previous assignment work. To accompany your images, write around 300 words of background information about your project.

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LPE - DFF - S&O - DIC

Self and the Other

Course extract- Contents page(s)

Asg.1 text

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Create a short series (6 – 10) of environmental portraits of people in places that provide the context for us to understand them. Pose and details are important, look again at examples from the history of photography as well as the contemporary practitioners listed below. Think carefully about whether you want to photograph people close to you or subjects who are distinctly ‘other’ to you.
Please ensure you gain consent from your sitters, send digital versions of these consent forms to your tutor along with your assignment. Upload the finished images to your learning log together with a short reflection (500–1,000 words) on your motivations, references and methods.
For inspiration and context. Please look at the following:
Tina Barney, Larry Clark, Karen Knorr, Melanie Manchot, Sally Mann, Susan Meiselas, Zed Nelson, Martin Parr, Graham Smith, Larry Sultan
Reflection
Before you send your work to your tutor, check it against the assessment criteria listed in the introduction to this course and make sure that it meets all the criteria.
Your tutor may take a while to get back to you so carry on with the course while you’re waiting.
Reworking your assignment
Following feedback from your tutor, you may wish to rework some of your assignment, especially if you plan to submit your work for assessment. If you do this, make sure you reflect on what you’ve done and why in your learning log.

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LPE - DFF - S&O - DIC

Digital Image and Culture

Course extract - Contents page(s)

Asg.1 Combined image

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Produce either a series of four to six portraits (looking at Stezaker and Stenram) or a series of four to six landscape-based images based on your immediate surroundings (as with Gill’s Hackney Marshes series). Complete Parts 1 and 2 of the assignment and upload the finished images to your learning log together with a short reflection (500–1,000 words) on your motivations, references and methods for both parts of the assignment.
Part 1 Use traditional ‘cut and paste’ techniques (scissors/scalpel and glue) to produce a series of simple photomontages using elements from two to five original or found photographs. These can be found images and/or images that you’ve shot yourself. Re-photograph your finished photomontages and present the work in your learning log as a digital file.
Part 2 Using digital montage techniques (Photoshop or similar image-editing software) produce a digital montage using elements from a minimum of two and a maximum of five digital files. Use components that you have shot yourself rather than found images for this exercise.

Asg.2 The archive

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Produce a series of related images that use a readily available online archive (or archives) as their starting point or subject.
Make a small book for this project, using proprietary software, to be viewable online. In your book, you may use a selection of images from primary sources (your own images) and/or secondary sources (images found online and/or scanned from other sources). Think about a theme for your book and use the references provided throughout Part Two as inspiration. Your book should contain a minimum of 12 double pages and can contain text if you wish, or simply a collection of images. Provide a link to where your tutor can view your book and also provide a few double-page spreads as still images as part of your learning log.

Asg.3 Critical essay

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Write a critical essay in response to ONE of the following questions:
• Using relevant case studies, discuss whether digital cameras and related technologies for the dissemination of digital imagery have affected our choice of subject matter or how we take photographs.
• Has the ‘digital revolution’ created more problems than opportunities for today’s professional photographers? Discuss this question using relevant case studies and/or specific aspects of modern professional photography.
• Discuss how the conditions of the ‘post-photographic era’ relate to a particular area or institution of photography.
• What is your understanding of the ‘digital self’ and what is the effect of our everyday use of photography upon it? Discuss using relevant case studies and published research.
Please adhere to the following guidelines:
• Your essay should be 2,500 words, +/- 10% excluding quotes.
• Include a cover page with the title and a word count, including and excluding quotations and any footnotes.
• Include examples to illustrate your discussion and list your sources in a list of illustrations at the front of the essay.
• Your essay should be fully referenced and include a bibliography at the end. Follow the guide to academic referencing on the student website.
• Your essay should be in a standard font and 1.5 or double-line spaced. You may include additional material (primary research, correspondence) within appendices at the end if you wish. If you wish to write your own essay question you may do so, but please confirm your title with your tutor before you start writing.

Asg.4 Digital identities 1

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Develop a project around the theme of identity within the current digital climate.
This could be an autobiographical exploration examining how you relate to digital culture, or it could be a more critical examination of an aspect of digital culture. You should develop your project over the course of Part Four. This is your chance to find and articulate your personal voice in relation to digital culture.
Start by listing or making a brainstorm diagram/mind map of possible ideas and starting points. Put this in your learning log. Expand your list or develop your diagram as you work through Part Four. Try out a few of these ideas, and develop further those that seem to be the most effective or interesting.
When you have developed at least one idea to a point where you would like to receive feedback from your tutor, submit it to them by whatever means you both agree. Assignment Four is your digital identities project ‘in progress’. It is not expected to be a fully resolved, visually coherent or clearly contextualised submission. As well as visual material (contact sheets, work prints, etc. depending on the nature of your practice and your project) you should include a short text (around 500 words) setting out:
• the specific themes your work is addressing or what your work is attempting to communicate
• a list of the practitioners you’ve looked at in relation to this assignment
• a bibliography
• a brief self-evaluation. You may wish to consider requesting an audio/visual tutorial for feedback on this assignment.
Your tutor will give you guidance on how to develop and/or resolve and most appropriately present your project.

Asg.5 Digital identities 2

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Use your tutor’s feedback on Assignment Four to help you develop your digital identities project to the point of resolution.
The method of presentation that you choose for your project should be appropriate to, and complement, the work you make. Your work may suite a print-based submission, or it may be appropriate to present your work in a book, audio-visual form, web-based project or installation.

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Pre-assessment tutorial

LPE - DFF - S&O - DIC

I&P Part nReferences

Bloomfield, R (2017) Expressing your vision [EyV]. Barnsley: Open College of the Arts.

Boothroyd, S. and Roberts, K. (2019) Identity and place [I&P]. Barnsley: Open College of the Arts.

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author (year) Title. Newspaper. Date. pages.