I've had about 6 weeks of my uni course now, and I'm loving it, especially my photography course.

We have to take all our photos on slide film, so as yet I've been unable to get them online. My first two assignments turned out blank, however, thanks to the film not loading in the camera (I attribute that to my getting used to digital). That was VERY frustrating, especially as some of the photos I'd taken I thought would've turned out really well.

Not to despair though, the second lot I took turned out much better than expected.

The first assignment was just technical stuff. Using SLR cameras.. "show change of focus from foreground, midground and background" and "take a photo with changing aperture" etc etc etc. Boring stuff but in the end, the changing focus one earnt me a lot of praise from my tutor. I took it in silhouette, and he was giving me heaps of praise.. kept saying, "no one's ever thought to do it that way (in silhouette) before!" ..I was thinking, "how long have you been teaching photography...and what kind of students have you had?" ..it surprises me that no one's EVER done it that way.

I was pleased though, of course.

And my second assignment, we had to take photos based on criteria such as texture, colour, symmetry, objective and subjective views... etc etc. Anyway, I went down to Brighton beach where the beach boxes were on a clear, warm evening, and took a series of photos with the soft light accentuating everything. I ended up with some photos I was quite pleased with, which is surprising seeing as I prefer portraiture over any other form of photography.

But yeah, my tutor loved those as well. Said I'd actually combined the third and second assignments, so I'm ahead by a step almost. Now I have to come up with a topic for my third assignment, but the key element is the idea of a series of photos involving a location in itself, or a location and the people within it. My friend's sister suggested the zoo, which sounds like a pretty good idea if the weather's good next Saturday.

I have an idea for my final (6th assignment) too. Our topic is "the body" ..I'm going to get Chloe to model for me. Want to do full on makeup and costuming and have really striking lighting. Will probably end up taking a couple of rolls (36 exposure each) for that assignment, just so I have room for experimentation. I'm really excited about that one!

Meanwhile, I'm still taking all my other shots on my digital, and those are the ones I can actually display.