Project Evaluation

In this Evaluation I am going to talk through this project, and talk about each stage of the assessment, which I have done to get to my successful output. 

Proposal- As a part of another module I needed to write a proposal for this project. The main objective of this brief was to enhance my professional postproduction skills as this would benefit me in my next leg of my career.

At the start of this brief and when I was writing my proposal I was hoping to enter and start a third year at a number of Universities to fulfil my full degree, or to look and seek and enter in employment and the photography industry. I have now decided to not fulfil my third year top up at university, as I feel I don’t have the academic knowledge and skills to successfully complete the final year. 

“On successful completion of the degree, you will have gained a broad knowledge and critical understanding of the principles of photography and knowledge of emerging aspects of the discipline and those at the forefront of debate.” Open College of arts. (2007), I feel this shows that this final year will only teach me about the more academic principles of photography and not help me in a successful job in the photography industry, I feel I will have to do this myself and the quicker I start looking the better.

Research- Within the mountains of research which is involved in a successful project at this level, I really feel I have learned and understood these new elements of photography which I have researched. Some interesting points which have come up in my developing research were that the powers of the social networking can change the trends of peoples behaviour, and how they go by there day to day living and communication with others. I strongly believe that the Social networking site Instagram has had a massive impact on the trends of 2012 in post production in photography.

” Instagram is the new Polaroid. It may be the new Facebook. And we’d bet our Valencia filter that it’s the latest medium of lowercase “a” art.” 

Mantey, J. (2012).          

“Professional art institutions aren’t ignoring the app’s popularity either. The Columbus Museum of Art currently has a small show of Instagram photographs. CMA asked Instagrammers to take images that best represented eight words, such as curiosity and joy.” Mantey, J. (2012).  These show that Instagram is a powerful tool, which has an effect over the industry and is being recognised in it too., also it links in with my other research regarding phoneography 

Development- I have enjoyed doing this development for this project as I have been able to not just shoot the images, but there have been a number of other things, which I have needed to think about which has challenged me and my knowledge and skills. This project was all about the post production stage of photography so I didn’t want to take a lot of time taking the images, but I needed to think how I was going to do them as I wanted them to been perfect inner camera has I didn’t want people to believe I was using photoshop to mask bad images up. 

“‘You can’t make a silk purse out of a pig’s ear” – Photoshop cannot correct a badly focused image or a badly composed one. It can correct things the camera got wrong, like white balance, and you can go to any extremes in processing to create a particular effect if that is what you want. If you want to visually transform an image then that’s an entirely different kettle of fish. You can combine images, change skies, get rid of blemishes, clone out things, get rid of noise, desaturate parts of an image, selectively darken or lighten parts of a image- these are the things that Photoshop excel in.” Buckley, H. (2010).  This in turn supports my feelings on what is the best and right reasons of using photoshop, also with out using photoshop or another manipulation software you wouldn’t be able to produce images in the style of HDR because of the multiple exposures images which you merge into the final image.

The fInal outcome-I am very pleased with the overall final outcome of this project, because of how I have been able to stick to my proposal and I have been able to do what I set out to do. I feel without following the Proposal, research, development and final piece of artwork method, I don’t think I would have been able to produce to this high quality standard, which I have done. I feel the image quality of all the final images are to a standard which I am happy to put into my portfolio, as I also want to show my very best and must professional looking work. I sadly didn’t get my final images professionally printed but I will do this if and when I need to.

I feel that my work as gone to another level because of the elements I am adding to my work, like the awareness of light and lighting on the subject, also I am able to criticise my work and I am able to make a statement in my imagery so it will professionally  communicate to the audience which are viewing it.

Conclusion- “You’re only as good as your last photograph.” Krupsaw, W. (2012). This is something I feel has helped me to put in 110% into this project . I feel that this saying is key and wholes so much meaning behind it because it’s true, I have started now to pride myself on my last image I took, I think by doing this It will help me to improve myself in my development to become a professional photographer and also in my work. I also feel because of the success of this project, it will put me into good spirits for next year, which I feel is going to be the most challenging quarter of the degree as I will be on the home stretch to complete my degree.