Reflections on People and Place

I have enjoyed the course People and Place and at times have found it challenging. I have however learned a great deal. I am now more comfortable with using fill-in flash and I hope that I look at backgrounds more carefully. I have learned a great deal from my tutor but am not sure about trying to achieve eye contact when photographing people. I regularly look at the work of other photographers both current and from the past and even in formal portraits the subject is often looking away from the camera. I feel that there is a place for both styles.
I think that I have done well at some aspects of the course, especially when photographing people unaware. I wonder if I enjoy this type of photography because I do well at it or do I do well because I enjoy it. Despite my less than good performance in Assignment 3 Buildings in Use, I do actually like architecture and enjoy photographing buildings. I do think that I fall into the trap of becoming bogged down in the wording of the assignment and try to fulfill the brief with poor photographs rather than concentrating on taking good shots. I also think I need to work on my editing skills.
One area that I would like to concentrate on in the future is the use of artificial light and controlling backgrounds both in still life and portraiture.
I find the subject of people interacting with place interesting. I can see that in certain instances including a figure would improve and help to resolve an image for example in my pictures of the greenhouse in assignment 4. Most landscape photographers go out of their way to avoid people in their images. However, people interacting in landscape shots are usually featured in magazine articles such as Trail magazine.