Final Evaluation

For my final major project I decided to use portraiture to show people's personality, identity and character. My plan was originally to start looking into ways of portraying these things in portraits and even though though my project evolved a huge amount, my final outcome still focused on the main proposal ideas. Even though in my head my initial ideas were a bit more traditional in the wavelength of 'portraiture', I ended up working with a more alternative response to portraiture which some people would think about as being portraiture. In my first shoot for this project I was focusing on facial expressions and how they contribute to telling a story of a person or give others an idea of the sort of person they are. I feel like the image below definitely managed to portray the main aim of the project as the character looks tired and worn down which could also link into personal life and lifestyle.

My 7th shoot definitely got across the point I was trying to make in this project, just in a different way to the first. This was one of my favourite shots as you can clearly pick up personality and character traits from this character including musical and creative.

My last shoot obviously shows my original proposal within the work. This photo below shows you a great deal about the persons identity without even seeing their face or body. You get a big idea of a person just from their hands and setting.

As for research in this project, I actually research an awful lot of thing ranging from projects to artists as well as definitions of words! As like most of my research, I always tend to start off with a mind map or a mood board which is what often inspires me for future research but it's also been from what I've found online from Google searches. When looking at hands with hobbies and careers I mainly drew inspiration for this from what I've learnt from the world around me, I know that it can be very easy to figure out a person often but something they like to do. My research always helped me on shoots as that's what I like to use it for, when I have researched something if I'm shooting a similar thing I often print or pin favourite shots to help me on location. After completing shoots or a piece of work, research would always be the next step if I didn't know what to do next. I feel like I could've expanded my research a bit more into other art forms as I did stick to photography most of the time. My project didn't really have anything mathematical within it so I didn't have to use any skills as such whereas English has been put to the test throughout the entire project. I feel like my English skills have improved in the sense of I can now analyse and evaluate a shoot a lot more effectively than I could and have been doing before now. My photography skills have definitely grown a huge amount as my depth of field work has gotten so much better! I'm actually very happy with how I've naturally gained skills and manual camera setting knowledge. As well as technical camera skills, I've also gained a fair few photoshop skills including the transform tools, editing black and white imagery and how to make something more defined and focused. I enjoy learning new things in Photoshop as it's something you can play around with and get many different outcomes. As well as camera and photoshop skills I have also improved on so many other qualities. One of the main skills I have improved would definitely be communication; throughout this project I have had to pitch my ideas and present my project in from of a mix between 1 and 12 other people which for someone as shy as me, can be very daunting and scary. I overcame these things as I knew it would contribute to my final project in respect of presentation skills and social skills. My confidence has increased during this project as when presenting my work I've been receiving helpful feedback as well as approval from others. As I now know that I can talk to people about my project and get good responses I don't feel so on edge when it comes to talking about my work. I actually enjoyed pitching my ideas to a group as they gave me multiple ideas which later came into my work, it's something I'm going to keep on doing and hopefully improve in. There was a small amount of time in the middle of the project where I really started to stress out and worry that I wouldn't be able to complete a good final major project but with guidance and support from tutors and peers I was able to get my self back on track with everything. Whenever set deadlines throughout this project I always handed things in on tin wand worked very closely to my time plan (and revisited time plan). Problems I faced during the project- During this project I've dealt with quite a few personal issues outside of college which has definitely been something I've had to deal with and think highly about alongside work. I've talked to tutors about these things to try and overcome them or at least make them better so I've tried dealing with this issue. Other things include simple equipment issues where the lens I was using for one of my shoots didn't zoom which was very awkward when trying to get in close to said subject. Another issue I came across during my second shoot was getting the key to the cove studio. As its done by a system where you can't book it out until someone returns it, it delayed my shoot by nearly an hour. This has taught me to always have a back up plan and not to set your hopes onto it. I think I have successfully met my brief/proposal as the aim was to create a project based on personality and character and to show a variety of them through portraiture. Admittedly my project changed direction a few times but I still stuck to the original idea overall. As for my progression side of the project I feel pretty confident in my options as I've researched though roughly into each course of interest and compared them with online statistics. I've taken part in talks from a BA (Hons) Leader to gain further knowledge as well as looking around an exhibition of graduate work to see what sort of thing gets produced. I feel like I'm not very informed on my options and I have a large amount of paths to choose from. After looking at 3 example bodies of work from the same course, I think my work fits nicely into a merit grade with elements of distinction and element of pass. I feel like it is in the middle as a body of work as it contains a huge amount of research, practical work (shoots), analysis and evaluations. I've covered all bases in my final major project and I hope it can get a good grade! Overall I have enjoyed this project as I've seen it evolve so much since the beginning and now to see a final body a work which all sticks to the brief/proposal, I think I've done pretty well. There have been times over the weeks where I've been stressed out but I've overcome everything. I enjoyed the last 2 or 3 shoots the most as it was when I ever that knew what I was looking for and therefore it didn't take too much thinking. I liked how natural the last shoot came to me as I had practiced so many times. I'm most proud of my final image which I also used as my exhibition print. I'm just very pleased with how it came out as I had been stressing for a long time and then got just what I wanted. The thing I would like to improve on would still be my time management and maybe the way I start the project and take so much time to get into it before actually shooting? Maybe I could start that process earlier to save stress? When working on future projects next term I'm going to focus more on keeping myself up to scratch with work as well as keep on improving my technical skills when it comes to the cameras and other equipment. I want to focus more on fashion and/or advertisement and editorial work next term so that I can build up a specialist portfolio for university interviews.