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george-crocker-fmp · 7 years

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Final Evaluation - Final Major

The amount of research that I have done for this project I feel definitely exceeds the requirements and have spoken in detail about the sort of research I have done, why I researched the specific topic or person, and what impact that they have on my final major project

My whole project is based on this we can’t or rarely get to see and experience. Within this, I used light photography to create some really captivating and interesting images using steel wool, torch on some string and a light-up hula-hoop. Another aspect was macro photography, showing off what we are surrounded by but we always take for granted. The third way that I had shown off things we don’t really see was from underwater photography, as we can’t really take cameras in water often as they are electrical so getting the chance to take the camera underwater with protective casing was a blessing.

While looking for what to do my project on, I came across light photography which I have researched before. My first part of the research was based on Michael Bosanko who is a famous light photographer who has a range of different styles of light photography from abstract to recreating icon frames from films. II had a made a comparison between Michael Bosanko as Lightmark, who is another light photographer. While Michael Bosanko uses light in an extreme, colorful way, LightMark likes to use light photography in a subtle and minimal way.

In my opinion, I do believe that I have researched in depth and have found a satisfaction amount to base my project around. I have looked on social media such as YouTube, Artist portfolios, Flickr and went to a few exhibitions I found some tips and tricks into how to create some good effect when shooting light photography. Flickr and other forms of media such as artist portfolios also inspired me as I could see what people can create and I can try to either do my own thing with the technique they used or recreate what they have done so I can get used to the technique, learn and practice from. Concept

My work is about showing things that we can’t normal see. I focused on Light photography and macro photography due to the fact that light photography requires you to leave a shutter open to capture the light. Macro photography focuses on the small, minute detail of the world around us which I want to show off and give more of an insight to what is around us, as well as shine light on small things and the beauty of taking the time to look around us.

My Initial idea was to go with Light photography mixed in with some Urbex photography as I looked into Rebecca Lilith Bathory who specialized in urban exploration and environments. She has been to a few places such as schools, prisons, and factories which she has documented and photographed. One reason this idea didn’t quite get to be part of my final project was due to the area am in, transport and locations, it’s hard to find places that are abandoned or not in use that we can go in because the council owns the majority of them which means gaining entry would either be hard or illegal.

My other idea was to go with an underwater themed project which would be hard due to getting the correct equipment for the shoot, I managed to get one shoot in but I have decided not to include these as final images due to the images not reflecting what I want my project to be about. I felt like that if I did include these image into my project, they wouldn’t have worked, they wouldn’t have a place due to only having one shoot and not many good images.

Communication between the reader and the artist need to be clear, so showing what I am trying to achieve is my main goal. I have spoken about what my aims are and what I want to achieve and have also visually represented what my outcomes were. I am hoping the reader understands what I am trying to get across as I want people to know that my project is all about small things and exposing what we can’t see or even things we may take for granted. I want my work to inspire other people and show them the world around us which would ideally make them think more about their day. For example, getting on the bus in the morning and noticing the detail on the stop button or the aesthetic of a stop sign. The best outcome would be that I can get the reader to also start doing what I have been doing and get then into photography and shooting light and/or macro photography.

Core skills

With some of my shoots, I had to fill out risk assessments for the safety of myself and others. Knowing this will show me the dangers I need to try and avoid or reduce the chance of injury, conflict, and damages to equipment. I had also added an evaluation on my posts so the reader knew what the images, videos or links were and they understood how relevant it is to the project. 3/4ths of the way through the project I peer assessed someone’s work so they could get feedback on their blog. The communication between me assessing and the person receiving the feedback needs to be strong so my grammar and punctuation needs to be to a high standard so they can identify what I am asking them to look at and review to improve. If this isn’t clear to the other person, then they aren’t going to understand what I am trying to help them with.

More grammar and punctuation was used when talking about a client brief which I received to help Mt.Edgcumbe receive more attention and get more recognition so that they can receive more income to keep the place open and available to the public. This is showing us what kind of things we need to do when we get a client brief when we go into our own profession. Things like how much will you as a photographer charge per hour, how much editing and post-production will you do and how long will that take.

Maths is a key part when taking any photography due to the fact you have exposure, aperture, ISO, you can have the distance between the model and the lights, light meters also help you identify when settings would work best for the correctly exposed image unless you want slightly over exposed or under exposed. For the current general election, we found some statistics on who voted in the 2015 general election and I found out that 43% of 18-24-year-olds didn’t vote which means almost half of the population didn’t vote and get their say in what sort of government we run.

Technique

Techniques that I have used in my FMP have mainly been focused on Light photography. This involved leaving the camera open for long periods of time on a tripod. Calculating how long I want to the shutter open for and how I am going to use the light to make a decent image. Light photography is hard because you can’t see what you are working with until you see the image that you’ve taken due to the camera capture the light trail which we can’t see with our eyes. This makes this type of photograph a lot harder as you can’t see what you’re doing.

One thing I learned with Photoshop is that it’s not very keen on light imagery. I am able to change colors and make it more vibrant but when it came to the editing like ‘spot heal’ or ‘content aware tool’, I noticed that it doesn’t like light trials as a lot of the time, it messed up the images. My main thing with Photoshop is I prefer the original image when it comes to light photography because you can’t see it normally, therefore I think what you capture is truly a unique thing, no one else can create what you created.

Macro photography was another technique which I decided to try and use as my final project. Macro photography really relies on depth of field and detail. If the object(s) or subject(s) that you are photographing have a lot of detail, you are then in control of the depth of field which means you decide how much detail you want in the shot to some extent. Like all photography, light, aperture, exposure and ISO are still factored in.

When photoshopping with macro images, the first thing I like to do is play with the clarity and saturation as this brings the detail out and the colors jump out at you. I then go to the Black and white slider and see what works and what doesn’t. Usually, blacks work better as the detail is seen with shadows and darker colors. Shooting the macro and light images in RAW also gives you more options to work with when editing which you can always go back to if you open it as a smart object. You need to be able to see what things are around you that are interesting to look at when you get in close, for example, a flower, you can see the detail is the petals and the center area of the flower. I think this is interesting as people don’t see this often.

Another style that I tried was Urbex photography, this was challenging and in the end, I didn’t get the chance to get any images, therefore, I cut this from my FMP. The main challenge was actually finding places to visit and explore to then take pictures off. As I can’t travel, it’s hard to get to places even if I could find somewhere. As I was very interested in this and still am, I want to be able to do this in the future with transport and a few locations planned.

The final technique I experimented with was underwater photography. I went to a local pool with cameras and full waterproof casing. The hard part was because it was a pool with chlorine in, the flash also picks up the chemical as spots in the water making the image very dotty and doesn’t look very clear.

When it came to editing the underwater images, the first thing that I found out was that the spot heal tool was very useful to get rid of the specs. The second issue was that out of about 50 images, I only liked 2, which still needed a lot of heavy editing. I don’t mind editing images but if you over-edit an image, I find that the image loses what it captured and turns out a lot worse than if you left it unedited.

Underwater Photography Is something I would like to do more of but it’s a very expensive style as you need the right casing and protection for your equipment. Other than that, I would definitely do more.

This project I definitely can say that I’ve gone out my way to try more things such as underwater, light and macro photography. If I push myself, I know I can get really good results and great images. I feel like everything came down to the past 3 months, everything I’ve worked towards, learned and put into practice needs to be perfect and clean, and I feel like I have executed this in the best way I can.

I learned a lot from people around me, I got feedback from friends and lectures on how to improve my work, my composition, a way of displaying my work and other small things. The main thing people liked about my work as the colors and vibrant feel to the images, steel wool on fire people felt warm, my light spirals images, people felt. Their feedback has helped me develop my ideas and create stunning final images. Character development

As a person, I have grown a lot through this project as a person and photographer. I have learned a lot more techniques with cameras and using other instruments to aid me in capturing amazing images. I have learned more about myself and what I am capable of. I have had things out of college going on which have had a negative effect on me but I hope that my work still stands strong and it had no effect on my project. It’s been hard but I have noticed an increase in work performance and determination to get things done now I haven’t been distracted much by things going on in my private life.

Working with other people has been an important part of my project as I have needed to use people to help me produce my images. My steel wool images needed someone to spin the wool while I take the photo. Communication also comes into his as it all depends on what you tell your model to do while spinning, for example, spins the wool while walking forward or spin the wool above your head. If you don’t have any communication, you aren’t going to have that connection with your model and you won’t feel much in common with the final images.

Deadline are a tough thing for me and trying to get work done for a certain time can be hard as I can work hard and get a lot done, but as soon as someone says it needs to be done to this date, I start to panic and worry that I am not going to get the work done. Once I panic, my mind goes into a constant mess and I then have a harder time to try and get work done as I forget what I have done and what I haven’t done. I feel like I have got better with deadlines and are now able to manage myself and be able to complete on time and think clearer. It helps when I plan things out in a diary or date-by-date format so I know what I need to do on what day before the deadline hits.

Considering the fact, I have got better with my stress, I think I have worked very hard to produce what I have produced. I am happy with my final outcome and would happily give this to a client if this was work for someone.

My presentation I have tried to keep tidy and clean so people can clearly see what images go with what explanation. This way, it makes it easier for people to look at and still get different feelings from my work. Enjoyment and Engagement

As this was a project that we could choose anything that we are interested in I have enjoyed 90% of the project. From coming up with ideas as I had no ideas, I always had something in mind and set them as goals. I haven’t enjoyed some of the written tasks such as talking about the general election and I didn’t enjoy going to one exhibition which, to me, had no use as it wasn’t relevant to my project.

My shoots, explaining my shoots, editing, and research I have actually enjoyed as its all based around a topic I like. I like to talk about my work as I get to express what I feel I want people to try and get from my work. I know what they mean and getting my audience to feel or get the same message is what I aim to do with my explanations but hopefully, they get a good sense just from the visual representations.

One factor which has given me the motivation to engage more in my project was that another student and a year 2 student were doing very similar photography, so this has driven me to try and top their work and push myself to make something better or as equal as their images.

High and Low points

The best part of my project has to be spinning the steel wool for the second time which to this day remain my best images. They were the most fun to actually take and make. The images, when shown to friends and family, got a really good reaction. They were impressed with how they turned out and couldn’t believe how it was done or that it would look like that. This had given me hope and made me feel proud to continue to work on this project and see what I could really achieve.

The low points, what I am least proud of my progression work for unit 9. Unit 9 was all about looking into the future like uni courses and jobs. As I am not sure what I want to do at uni, yet Computer Science is my first option, I am not 100% sure if it’s the right decision. I want to carry on looking and hopefully I can decide on something which I really love, like photography or computer science, but for now, I am unsure.

What did the audience think?

During group crits, we have feedback on other people’s work on how good it was, what it made us feel and what we could improve.

My light spirals were mentioned during one of the crits we had. People spoke about the images and asked what are they, how did I take them and are they edited. With light images, I’m not a fan of editing them as it can really mess them up so I like to try and keep close to the original as I can.

I asked family and friends what they thought about my project too, they all liked what I had so far and given me ideas to what I could do next to help my project improve.

I did get one bit of constructive criticism which I’m glad I got. One image I put in for a crit got the response of “I’m not sure what I’m looking at” which sounds harsh but if people don’t know what it is, then I have to try harder to get what it is across to the person viewing it.

I do appreciate that comment as it shows I need to work harder into showing off what my project is about and that work needs to be recognizable without explaining it. This way people can see my work and know what it is easier.

I and another person did talk about our projects as we are doing similar things so we shared ideas and got to see what each other are doing for our projects. This gave both of us more ideas for our projects and different ways we can incorporate different styles of light photography into our work.

Calculating how much time spent on our project.

18 hours in half term – 3 hours a day for 2 weeks. 175 hours – Monday and Tuesday for 10 weeks 35 hours – Wednesday for 10 weeks Total = 228 Hours spent on the project.

Time spent on: Research and developing ideas: 28 Hours 28/228*100 = 12.3% Planning, organising, and production: 25 Hours 25/228*100 = 11% Practicing skills, equipment, and software: 53 Hours 53/228*100 = 23.3% Taking pictures: 22 Hours 22/228*100 = 9.6% Editing pictures: 50 Hours 50/228*100 = 21.9% Posting, blogging and uploading: 50 Hours 50/228*100 = 21.9%

I feel like these times are a rough idea of what I have worked on but they seem to be fairly even when looking at the pie chart it by hours, it’s very different.

If I charge £15 per hour and I spent 22 hours taking photos and 50 hours editing, that means 22+50=72 hours. 72*15 = £1080. I feel for the price over 3 months, this is very cheap and I should charge more for my time considering the time period.

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