Evaluation

Evaluation

In my preparatory shoots leading up to my final exam I believe they have turned out well and have helped me decide what shoots I will be presenting in my final exam. At the beginning of component 2 we were given the exam paper which contained several photographers under the topic I would be studying. I chose to take the topic everyday activities because I believe that this was the best topic to express my work. I decided between self-identity and everyday activities, I was going to chose self-identity but I decided that I would find it hard to express myself through photography. 

On the exam paper there were several photographers under each topic. Under the everyday activities section there were three photographers and I decided to relate my work wholly to Bruce Davidson. I like Bruce Davidson's work because he documents everyday activities of urban life. I particularly like his photos of the New York gang he documents. As well as researching Bruce Davidson from the exam paper I also researched other photographers that have influenced my work. I researched Sam Shaw who documented photos of Marilyn Monroe. His images of Marilyn Monroe influenced the photos that I produced in my shoot called the stereotypical life of a girl. Marcel Kolacek was another photographer I researched. I liked his work because he documented peoples hard lives but these included emotions joy and happiness. Also, I researched Henri Cartier-Bresson, he uses the decisive moment which helped influence my shoots because I had to decide when the right moment was to photograph my pictures. Finally, I researched Barbra Kruger who influenced all my stereotypical life shoots because she creates images that show the real world and express real life opinions which link with what I was trying to express in my work. All the photographers that I have researched have influenced my work highly because many of my images relate to theirs.

During this project I think I have developed various new skills. In my shoot titled football I had to capture quick movement and I think I was able to capture this well. This counts towards developing a skill because I have changed the various settings on the camera to complement the images well and not create too much of a blur in these images. It was mainly the camera settings where I developed new skills because each of my shoots were in several different locations and these places all had different light which affected the camera. I was able to change the camera settings from my current knowledge and make them suitable for the environment I was in to make the images turn out visible rather than with too little or too much light. Also, I feel as though I have developed my skills in photoshop because I discovered how to use the camera raw filter which has many settings included which helps in editing my images. 

I believe that throughout this project my photo taking ability has improved because I was able to take pictures relating closely with the topic I was focusing on. As well as taking pictures in relation to the topic I was also able to capture interesting images which attracts the viewer and maybe plays with their minds and makes them think about what is actually going on in the image. I believe that each of my images that I have taken throughout these shoots each have a deep meaning and represent a purpose to the viewer. I was also able to produce experiments in this project such as physical and computer experiments. These experiments all worked out well because I played around with the images I had produced more than I normally would. I enjoyed the physical experiments because it was different to what I normally do by just editing them in Photoshop. Also, I enjoyed the computer experiments as it enabled me to change the image in anyway I wanted and give it different meanings.

In this project I believe all of my shoots were fairly successful. All of my shoots consisted of failed and successful images, I believe that it was good that some of my images failed because in my final shoots I can decide what will work and be successful and what will turn out to be a failure. I think all my shoots revolved around stereotypical life worked well because they displayed meaning and have an effect on peoples lives. In these shoots I believe that I can express feeling towards stereotypes and that we do not and should not follow them we should inspire to be our own person. At first I didn't really like the football shoot that I produced but when I published all my photos I saw each of them properly and decided that they did work under this topic and they were different compared to what everyone else was doing under this topic. I also like the urban life shoot because it goes outside the box of stereotypes and shows us what people who don't follow stereotypes are like and how they live.