Personal Evaluation

During the course of this unit I felt quite interested and also inspired by the different tasks that we had. I enjoyed most of the tasks since they revolved around photography especially street photography, which I’m a fan of. I found task 2 quite interesting, it really inspired me to look at things in my own hometown from a different perspective. I feel like some of the images I took were quite interesting and inspired me to take more photos in the end.

During the 3^rd task I was really inspired by the theme. The Uncanny is something that I’m very fascinated by, I like reading about the human psyche and how it reacts to certain stimulus. Therefore, I was inspired by my very own nature to find something that is peculiar and unfamiliar to many and sometimes even to the sufferers themselves i.e. Social Anxiety. The way I wanted to portray this was inspired by a painting by René Magritte called, The False Mirror”. I felt that the eye represented what the socially anxious mind is prone to experience. I believe that in the end my final photograph, although only one, was effective enough in delivering the message. Ian mentioned in his peer review that I wasn't clear enough to what direction my project was taking in the presentation, however I feel that it was an unfounded comment since things are never clear from the start and thus need explaining in an adequately paced form.  I don’t believe that badgering your audience with data is effective in the long run. I did not use a visual mood board since I felt that the slides themselves were delivering enough information and having a mood board would detract from the presentation rather than embellish it. I was very confident that my product was effective at delivering my message and I wouldn’t change much. Maybe if I had more time, I would re-edit the photo to refine it more. Thus, making the effect I wanted it to have, clearer. I’m also very happy that I was quite relaxed during my presentation, something that seldom happens due to my social anxiety which happens to be the subject that I portrayed in this task. I felt I knew the subject well enough and could easily deliver the information that I had in mind.

Throughout this semester, I felt that the Visual Thinking lectures were quite interesting and that they were well delivered for the most part, however the amount of time that we spent on each subject was a bit limited at times and thus the knowledge I gained was also limited. This, however, does not excuse my ignorance in a subject that I should be looking into in my free time. I really enjoyed most of the lectures since they revolved around the psychology behind them, and that is in my opinion a very interesting subject to delve into, especially in a visual medium such as photography. Something that affected the way I viewed these lectures was the unbreakable chain of lateness that the lecturer presented throughout the semester, it impacted the amount of time that we had to discuss each subject matter that we studied in class. This was a such a staple that I changed my alarm on my phone so that I would wake up later, knowing that the lecture wouldn’t really start before noon. This didn’t affect the way the lessons were delivered and their effectiveness towards my learning experience, but I would appreciate punctuality. I really enjoyed the outing we had at Mdina, I think it was a very interesting and interactive activity which helped fuel some of the ideas that I generated later in the tasks that followed. I wish we had more activities like the aforementioned one which I think would help the students feel a little more motivated and would make the overall course more appealing. I really appreciated the tendency to understand the students rather than pushing them to the brink of exhaustion, since a lot of extensions were given throughout the semester when things didn’t go as planned.

Overall, I feel like the experience in this unit was quite positive and I wouldn’t change much.