Tutor Report (highlighted)
Choosing to shoot in black and white was a conscious decision, one that, like my choice of subject in Assignment 2, I didn’t fully articulate in my assignment notes. This is something I need to address going forward, as I find myself now in the position of defending my choices in this reaction post.
I’ve discussed my approach to black and white processing in a separate blog post, but the overall decision to shoot in monochrome stems from personal preference and practical considerations. In Hong Kong, color can be distracting due to the varying quality of light, from the harshness of flat daylight to the strange mixtures of neon. Since this was an essay on the decisive moment, shot over many days, I didn’t want the variation in light and color to cause any image to stand out more than others within the set.
I find black and white to be a great leveller—not a perfect fix, but ideal for this assignment. It allows the focus to remain on the moment and the content of the image, rather than being influenced by external distractions. I stand by my decision to shoot this assignment in black and white.
For the rework of the assignment, the first step is to re-edit the original shortlisted images. As my tutor pointed out, there are some images that I probably shouldn’t have edited out, and others that should never have been included in the first place. I’ll then incorporate some new shots I’ve taken in recent weeks to create a less “patchy” set.
