Open Evening Evaluation

On the evening of 3rd November Harlow College opened it's doors to the public for it's first open day of the academic year. As a volunteer for the event, I was working in the studio showing the guests the different pieces of equipment, explaining to them more about the course and answering any questions they had. Overall, I think that the evening went very well, the college was busy so there was a lot of people to talk to, both students and their parents had a lot of questions about the course, from asking what we study to question about what camera and equipment that they should buy. Over the night there seemed to be a lot of interest in the subject, many of the students I spoke to were keen to learn more and had already told me that photography was one of their first choices to take in Harlow College.

In the studio my some of my classmates and I had two different shoots set up for out guests to see, one was a portraiture shoot and the other was a still life/food photography one; this was because we wanted to show off the range of photographic genres that we explore in the course and also it showed off all the different lighting and background equipment that we use. Our guest also got the opportunity to try out the cameras for themselves, which got them introduced to use a DSLR camera and gave them a feel for the kind of studio shoots we do throughout our course. From what I could tell and the feedback that we got, the guests thoroughly enjoyed both of our displays because they were both fun and educational.

On the other hand, I believe that there were some aspects of the night that could have been improved, for example, there were a lot of us in the studio which made for a lot of us just standing around, doing nothing when there were not many guests looking around. Another idea that could have been done during the open evening was to get the guests more active when looking round the studio, as the camera was on a tripod during the night and on specific settings, we could have encouraged the students to get more involved by changing the lighting or experimenting with the camera setting, I believe that would have been more entertaining and educational.

In conclusion I believe that the open day was a great success, we got a lot of brilliant feedback from both students and their parents looking around the college, an we answered all the questions that guests had to ask and guided them why choosing the photography course would be their best option. I firmly believe that the photography course will be a massive hit next year because everyone I spoke to was very enthusiastic about learning more.