Friday, 18 January 2013

Evaluation

To find out we were doing portraiture for our second assignment was a relief.  After the stress of street photography I was happy to be spending my time back in the quietness of the studio. It’s something I think I already had knowledge about and felt like I could push myself to try and get some really striking images.

I began by thinking that I had an advantage as I did portraits for fmp work before and though I would have a wide range of research to use. However I changed my mind and decided to start from scratch and look at a whole new group of photographers and artist. I think that this was a wise decision to make as I wanted the images I was about to create to be different to what I may be produced before. My research started looking at the basics of portrait photography what I think really helped me get an understanding of the genre and what I wanted to do with it. They were simple and classic. This was going to be my angle to target. Something simple but speaks for itself and didn’t need much work doing to it. Not that I’m lazy just wanted to see if I could come up with something I was happy with straight away rather than manipulating so much that it was no longer the image I too. Photographers such as Julia Margaret Cameron and Louis Daguerre made me realise that a simple head and shoulders shot was the key to capturing my images and they also created a mood around the image and the model. They had a formal and timeless feel to them. Unlike there work though, I wanted to do this in colour.

Loaded with ideas and a set focus of what I wanted my images to look like I went to the studio. I thought about using the same model and just showing how lighting can affect the mood of an image and the mood it portrays. However I thought that this might be quite limiting so I decided to use a range of people. The shoots were simple enough as I already had a good understanding of how a studio works. It was just a case of getting used to how the new equipment worked. I did run into a few problems when it came to this, for example I’m ashamed to say I could not get the camera attached to the tripod and had a bit of trouble getting it to stay in position. But these were silly errors that I eventually sorted out.  I tried to get as many factors as I could exactly how I wanted them during the shoot such as crop, framing, lighting and colour balance so that I wouldn’t have to do much editing after the shoot and the majority of the time I’m glad to say I did this successfully.

When it comes to choosing my final images I don’t think I had any doubts. In my eye it was clear that the images stood out compared to the rest when it came to the factors of focus, if they had a clear catch light and also if I actually liked the image. I am really happy with my outcome and also with my will power not to turn them into black and white what always seems to be my back up safety net. I think that they do show the moods created by different lighting and the lighting enhances the models and makes the images really nice in my view. I’m really happy with my outcomes and think that this project was successful over all.

The fact that I have overcame my problems with blogger in the last project it seemed a lot easier to carry out research and post stuff on this project. However some problems I ran in to were the fact that blogger seemed a bit temperamental and I often had problems getting it to run or even be able to upload images. Other problems throughout the project were simply trivial aspects that were resolved almost instantly such as ordering the images where I ordered 1 matt the rest glossy, resolved through simply ringing the company. However I think that the project ran smoothly as it could.

Over all I am really happy with the running and also the outcome of this project. I think that I worked efficiently to produce a set of images I am really proud of. I used a range of research that has shown me new styles of photography and also new angles on the genre. I have a real passion for portraiture and I hope that that has shown through my work.

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