Evaluation - Street Photography

When I started this project I thought that I was at an advantage to other people, as I knew how to process film and make prints in the darkroom. Then the more I thought about it the more it felt like the odds were stacking up against me. Street photography couldn’t have been a worse subject for me to do, and what use were dark room skills if I didn’t have any films to show them off. 

When I initially started I was having trouble with blogger, as I’m used to sketchbook-based work and to be honest couldn’t even handle the thought of doing it digitally. However after beginning my research I found a way to use it to my advantage. I used all the time I would have normally spent making the pages of my sketchbook look ‘pretty’ were spent looking through books, scouring the internet and even watching music videos and dvds to find influence and ways to reference what I found into my work. After overcoming my initial problems with blogger and actually getting on to shooting film I hit my next issue. I couldn’t bring myself to go onto the street and take ‘street photography’ images. I feel that it took me a while and a good few rolls of film to warm up and get used to what I was doing, I feel like this is shown through the first few contacts that I produced. Also it took this time to find the confidence to get up close and personal with people on the street.  This is what I think were my biggest weaknesses throughout the project however I think that I overcame these and produced a blog and also a set of images that I am happy with and am able to present as a final piece. 

When developing my films and also working in the dark room, I felt comfortable and this is were I could see my project taking form and finally having some images I could actually call street photography images. I also learned a lot of new skills in the dark room such as adding contrast and split toning images. I also brushed up on skills I learned in college such as developing images by hand as well as using the machine to process them. I think this is an area that showed my strengths during this project and what I feel I was most successful at. Another aspect I feel I showed strength through out in is my research. I tried to get a large amount of research that varied over different media so that I had the best possible foundation to create my project on. I looked at artist such as Markus Hartel, Danny Santos and Michael Levine who I feel were great influences in my work and whos work I really appreciated and wanted to be influence by. I also looked at films such as I Am Legend and a range of different books that give me a varied input to what influence my work.

If I was to do the project again I think I would try and just get over my fears of getting out onto the street and taking photographs.  I would have also liked to visit a wider range of locations to capture my images as I think that this would have helped show variation. I would have explored different avenues and followed some ideas that I had into more depth. 

Overall though I feel like I’ve learned a lot during this project about how to tackle and handle situations as a photographer and also simple things like what we are actually allowed to do and what our rights are. I am really happy with the outcome of my project and I feel that it answers the brief accordingly.