Profile

Personal data

• Age - 56 years
• Student number - 504155
• Email address - gollan.ja@googlemail.com

Courses currently being taken at OCA

• Landscape (started Apr 10, suspended Oct 10, restarted Oct 11)
• Art of Photography (started Jun 10, suspended Oct 10, restarted Aug 11)

Background 
I finished full time work in May 2010 and returned to the UK after living in Europe for 2 years. I wanted to change my lifestyle, by doing more of what I enjoy as well as by pacing myself better through middle age. I saw this change as moving to part-time work by reusing business skills in new and interesting ways, spending more time with family young and old and taking a photography degree at the OCA.


Yet life is rarely lived as planned. As if to prove this, having signed but for 2 OCA programmes in the spring of 2010, I had to suspend them within a few months when my grand design hit some bumps in the road. However, I am now getting back on track with the OCA programme. I have just (Aug 11) restarted my Art of Photography module and plan to reactivate the Landscape course in the autumn.


Previous experience
I took up photography as a hobby about 6 years ago to improve my work: life balance. Creating images that satisfied me - and being disappointed more often than not - led me to ask: what must I do to get the results that I want? I turned for answers to self-help books and occasionally to training courses:

• An excellent 5 day Photoshop course at London College of Arts & Communication (beginner to intermediate user)
• Portraits: a 3 x 1 day basic course in Portrait photography at Citi Lit in London and 2 x 1 day sessions with a professional photographer (David Townend) - http://www.davidtownend.co.uk
• Landscape: 1 outstanding day with Martin Henson http://www.digital-monochrome.co.uk/ 

Not surprisingly, my development as a photographer has been haphazard. Looking back, I travelled without real purpose, still less when I set a direction, I journeyed without maps. I chose paths that promised excitement and turned off them when new avenues seemed more interesting. So, as a result, I moved from sports photography, to family portraits, to landscapes, back to portraits, back to landscapes. Adding to this chaotic approach, work and other commitments squeezed the time and energy available to devote to learning and practice. Too often I postponed taking photographs to next weekend, or tried to push into two stolen hours what needed in a day.


Expectations
I am now have the time to correct these two shortcomings. I am looking to the OCA programme to provide me with the structure, resources and discipline to develop as a photographer. Whilst I like the idea of doing a degree in the subject, I want to make sure that the OCA programme is right for me.


Other information
My 'serious' equipment is as follows:

• Camera bodies: Nikon D 700, D 200
• Lenses: Nikkor 24mm – 70 mm, Sigma 24mm – 135mm 2.8 to 4.5, Sigma 70mm – 200 mm 2.8, Nikkor 50 mm 1.4, Sigma Fisheye
• Tripod
• Cable release
• Polarising filter
• Graduated Neutral Density Filter
• Neutral Density Filter
• Photoshop CS 3 and Nik’s Software Suite

My 'fun' camera is a Canon Ixus 300 HS. Bought with the aid of having a light, small and serviceable camera to capture images on the hoof between one activity and the next, it gets used more frequently than intended.