The Others: Evaluation

In my evaluation for ‘The Others’ I will talk about what I first thought when I was given the brief and how I felt throughout the project, my different research I did in order to get a solid idea, different lectures that helped me with different techniques to use during my project, my overall time management and what could have gone better and what I could do next time to help me with future shoots.

I am in my final week of my 5-week assignment for the project ‘The Others’. This project has been all about looking into different cultures and religion and to really think about the diversity in the city around us. My initial thought to the brief was that I was really quite unsure what to do because it was all about religion and showing diversity, which was similar to what I did in the last assignment. When I first read through the brief it said quite a lot of things that we had to include in our images. The brief said that we needed to include something to do with the equality act and diversity in Plymouth, so when I first read the brief I was a little bit confused as to what to do and actually what was expected of us. I felt that this brief was telling us what to do too much so it has gone from being too open to being too closed. When I started to research into things I was coming up with ideas based on parts of the equality act which then I started to think whether they were showing diversity as well. Something else that confused me about the brief was that we had to work for three different units 5,6, and 7. Unit 5 is based on 2D imagery, which is the easiest for me as a photographer as all photography is taken in 2D. Unit 6 is based on 3D work and unit 7 is based on 4D work. Both of these units made me quite confused because we had only had brief conversations on 3D and 4D and I had been told different things about the units every time. I decided to ask about the units and I got told just to focus on the 2D side and then the 3D and 4D parts would be covered thoroughly in the next assignment. When I had researched some things I started to build an idea up in my head something that I wasn’t sure on because it would have meant I would have to use my family again. After a lot of thought I came to a decision to use my family again because my family is showing diversity in one way.

I found some different photographers that have done some shoots on generation that I used for inspiration. I don’t think I found any famous photographers that have focused exactly on what I was focusing on but I did look at Martin Parr who focuses on the difference of society and what different people think about being British.

My research influenced me quite a lot because I kept going back to my research to plan my shoot and to help me get even better ideas. I decided to base my style of photography on what I had found in my research. When I came to do my shoot last week I had the images in front of me while I was shooting so that I could try to go for the same sort of positioning of the hands that was on the pictures from my research but I didn’t use them all the time because I wanted to try my own positioning as well. While I have been doing my project I have been thinking the same as I was on the last project. Last project I said that I had ‘realised that it’s quite hard to think of what you want to shoot with a meaning and influence behind it.’

During the process of this project I haven’t learnt a lot of different techniques but I have advanced my skills on a bit.

My images are meant to portray the generations through my family and are also supposed to have an idea of diversity through family as well. I believe that my images show this as I have used my nan and grandad’s hands to show the generation and the marital bond between them, I then used my mum and sisters hands to show the mother and daughter bond between them. I then have a final image to show the family bond and to show the generations. I believe my images link to the brief.

I didn’t really come across any technical issues during my shoot. The only thing I needed was probably a bigger light source than I had. Some of my images came out dark and some came out really dark. However, I have ended up with a series of three images that I am happy with. By using the light source that I did my images came out quite red so when I edited my images I needed to change the white balance of the whole picture.

Overall, I think that I have managed my time well even though we haven’t had that much time to complete the assignment. I have felt that this assignment has been really rushed so I feel I have managed my time very well. All of my blog posts are in chronological order and include nearly everything we have covered in this project.

I think this assignment has gone really fast and has been about working individually but has also made us have to work as a group as all of our pictures have had to be based on similar things. We have all had to work individually to produce our images but the research and the lectures that we have all done have all been similar. I believe that I have been very good at managing my time because all of my images are edited they just need to be printed and my blog is up to date. I think that I have made the right decision about doing tasks as we got asked if we wanted to do photo challenges some days and I said that I didn’t want to do some of them as I felt that I needed to focus on my shoot and editing. For my shoot at home I didn’t use any other techniques that I didn’t already know but when I was shooting in the studio I used new effects that I haven’t used before. Next time it would be nice to use the studio because I am starting to feel more comfortable using the studio but it’s always so booked up that it’s never available at the right time for me. I think overall, my project has been very successful as I have been able to take photos of things that link to the brief but that also relate to me. If I were to do this again I would make sure that I had a longer time to do it and so that I could book out the studio to use to get a professional look. I would make sure that my camera settings were set a little bit better because my images came out a little bit red this time.

These are my three final images that I have decided on, I am very happy with them overall because they definitely fit with the brief and show off my concept.