Lesson 26/10/15

The second lesson I attended, we first met up as a group, like before and were greeted with Richard asking how we all were and asking if we had any issues that we could discuss and sort out, like the previous lesson and if we did we could write them down this time as it was time for our annual student assembly. As we are 3^rd year he left us alone to conduct the meeting ourselves and discuss any issues we were having and for our representatives to write them down and fill out the paper work left for us to do, whilst we were answering the questions. After that was finished he came back and mentioned that the AOP (Association of Photographers) Awards are now open starting from this October, which he informed us had been moved forward without any real warning and it had only recently been announced and that if we wish to enter these awards we are welcome to and also that they normally give more warning than this and there’s normally a discussion within the people involved. Within this lesson we had a talk/ presentation from Ste, our technician and who runs the photography shop, were we had a printing workshop and learned the best things to do to our images before sending them off to print. During his talk Richard would chip in with some of his comments, information and experiences regarding certain things about printing and techniques Ste was saying. We learned what was best to do with our images and to leave sharpening to the end and I, if not us all, learned a different way to sharpen and what the best settings of that were to use before converting it to the correct profile and sending it off to print. We also learned the differences within certain profiles, like SRGB and Adobe RGB and as well as that about the ‘colour space’ and what different profiles can do with it and what the information is and means to us and various printers and what would happen if we used the wrong profile with the wrong printer – that it wouldn’t understand and try to fill in the gaps or it just wouldn’t print all together because it couldn’t cope with the amount of information given to it. The same with putting an image on the web, were you have to use JPEG as this condenses the file of the image down so it can be used on the web, so it’s not too big and can be handled. When converting an image from a RAW file or TIFF to a GPEG it takes away some of the pixels and like previously mentioned, condenses it down so it doesn’t take up too much space therefore making it easier to send over email so someone can have a look of it for example. In addition to this we also got told about sizing our images and what’s best if we want borders etc or if we want them ready for printing on canvases or what to do if the printer being used won’t print right to the edge and therefore creating an automatic border but which might not suite your image and may not even be symmetrical. We also got told what papers would be best for different profiles to send to the printer for best results for our images and what’s best for images when using them on the internet and not all screens show all colours and to use calibrated monitors, as this is best – you can get a consistency of what your images look like instead of seeing different shades of the same colour on different monitors but without having changed anything, this is based on the colour space we learned about and that various profiles see different amounts of colour and to find the best combination of profile/ printer and paper to use for the printing of our final photos. After the talk we all got told to choose one of our own images and to do what we had just learnt about and get it ready to send off to print and then once it was ready to send it to Ste to print off for us and we’d meet back later in the afternoon at 4pm and look at the photos produced and to watch videos from The Print Space and Digital Lab. During this in-between time I also got asked to have a tutorial with Richard as I had not had one yet. He asked me to go for 2 which gave me time to get a photo ready for print and to get some dinner as well, he mentioned to the class to look at books by Tim Daley on digital printing from the Uni library.