Final Images and Evaluation

As a set of final images I have chosen the five I feel go best together as well as the ones which were most successful. I have created a gif which shows them all in a slideshow continuous cycle.

Evaluation

The project I just completed was an individual project called 'the others'. It was a project based on 'other' groupings. This included the subjects in the equality act of 2010, cultures, subcultures and stereotypes. In contextual studies on Mondays we were given the opportunity many of times to learn about certain groups of people including religions, cultures and borders, genders, stereotypes and subcultures and many more topics. The outcome of the project is that we needed a series of images to do with one of the 'other' categories with the backed up research and work.

To start the process of thinking off I started to do some research on my topic. My project needed research based on female stereotyping and gender therefore I needed to look at photographers who had covered this topic and some who had taken similar image to what I was thinking. One of the photographers I came across was Cindy Sherman; I found her Untitled Film Stills very insightful as the conceptual meaning behind them were similar to what I was looking into. Another photographer was Nina Masic who has done a lot of beauty and portraiture shoots; her work was similar to what I wanted in a visual way.

During the project I learnt many skills, which quite often revolved around social situations and discussions. One main skill for me was talking to members of the public when it came to shooting on the streets. Obviously a big part of street photography is getting pictures of people in the street the way they would naturally be doing whatever they are doing so in order to get a picture legally you need to have a short conversation asking them if you can take their picture and telling them what it's about. As I'm quite a shy person I find talking to new people very difficult but when we were set a few tasks which were street shoots I happened to rise to the challenge and prove to myself that I could do it. Thankfully I managed to get a few pictures of people, which I was very happy with. This has made me more confident when doing street shoots. Another skill is talking in-group discussions. As I have previously said I'm pretty shy so this can be quite difficult when I'm not entirely comfortable with everyone in groups but we did a few discussions and debates within in this project and I managed to get involved more than I thought I would've. Another skill I learnt in more depth was Photoshop tools including layer masking. I learnt the process of layer masking and enhancing features in Photoshop. This is something I will definitely be using a lot as I really like how you could make things look softer and more fluent.

The project for me was very stressful as my ideas kept changing and going wrong. My first idea was all thought out, researched and basically all planned. It was a project based on homelessness and the stereotype and stigma around it but unfortunately I had to change my idea, as it didn't fit all the brief criteria. My next idea was to do with female stereotyping over the past 100 years but as soon as I started planning, I got new ideas, which was my final project. My project has been all about female stereotyping and how wrong it is. I wanted to point out how women aren't the entire slim, tall, blonde, tan figure people think about when you think of 'perfect' woman. In my project I completed three shoots with six different models in order to get a variety of looks me characters. The first and third shoots both went pretty well but the second one not so, when I got to the editing stage of my second shoot I soon realised the camera wasn't on raw shooting and I realised I had shot on jpeg which is quite a big deal for me as I prefer to do most editing on the raw plug in. Unfortunately with the amount of time I had left I was unable to reshoot so I worked with it.

My final images definitely link into the criteria of diversity in Plymouth as well as fitting in with the equality act as a part of the gender topic. I feel like my images could've been better if I had more time but as I really struggled with time management for this project I worked with what I could. If I could make my final series better I would definitely get more people involved to make a bigger statement about variety and diversity within the gender. Out of all my final images I have one favourite, which I will put below. I feel like this is my best image as the structure, simplicity and tone all attract the eye towards it.

The series I have created are all harmonious as the style is similar throughout as well as being diverse. If I could've done anything different in this project I definitely would've managed my time properly as I feel that was my main issue and the cause for most problems I came across.