Final Evaluation

Final Evaluation
I chose to do the project of self identity for a multitude of reasons. The main reason being that it is a very personal topic to me and I want to look back and analyse how I got to where I am today. I also chose this project as I could have executed it in a multitude of different ways; through fashion, a documentary style or through portraits. I further wanted to tell my story through an art form and felt that this project was the best way to do so and therefore this project was created in a personal manner.

Looking at my work overall, within every photography project, I feel that I have done well in responding to what I was asked to do within every project; Especially with later projects in Component 1, Component 2 and the Exam itself. I feel that I have successfully created creative images and with that connotations that link to the provided subject matters.

My research into other photographers has helped in inspiration for many of my shoots within Component 2 and the Exam tremendously. Especially the two Photographers Mathu Andersen and Samuel Fosso. Both of these artist's work battles stereotypes and enforces self identity and the importance of embracing who you are as a person. Their work has been a huge inspiration to mine and to me as a person in a multitude of ways; Mathu Andersen's especially. I took the content and connotations of his work and altered it to suit me as a person. I combined it with my visual composition and through this many of my shoots for Component 2 were inspired. I also took inspiration from one particular image of Samuel Fosso's as it was very colourful and stood out to me - This piece was called "The Liberated American Woman of the 70's, 1997" from the Deutsche Bank Collection. Both of these photographers also link to the fashion and beauty world and therefore make for the perfect inspirations for my personal project of self identity through fashion and beauty. There were not many other photographers who inspired me to chose the self identity project. However, there are photographers who my work links to. Some of these photographers are: Gillian Wearing and Vivian Maier. By researching these photographers, I also came to find out about their backgrounds and their work background and discovered that Mathu Andersen works within the fashion and beauty world as a photographer, makeup artist and fashion designer which, again, inspired me to further pursue the self identity project.
My preparatory shoots helped me come up with ideas that I would execute within the exam. The content of Shoot 1 was not inspired by any of my preparatory shoots however the editing of the images was. I chose to have a different approach of self identity in the exam and to avoid the fashion and beauty aspect of self identity with the story of Shoot 1. I wanted to do this so that I had a varied approach on self identity as a whole. Shoot 2 however was inspired by Shoot 2 of Component 2 where I used objects to express who I am and to also help myself and the audience find out who I am. I took the idea of using objects and changed the way the images were visually and contextually composed to have differences between the shoots but to also still have a connection.

I have learnt a range of different things through Component 2 and the Exam about photography, camera techniuqes and self identity itself. The main thing I have learned through the course is that there are a large range of ways to take and compose images with different camera settings etc. All of these aspects depend on what you want to portray within your images. For example, I wanted to have a range of different images that had different moods within them. Within Component 2 and the Exam, you can see different moods being portrayed with the use of different lighting which connotes different ideas and emotions within self identity. I further learnt that by using longer shutter speeds, you can capture movement within images. This is shown within Shoot 5 of Component 2 and also Shoot 1 of the Exam.
Through this learning process, my work and my photography knowledge and skills have improved immensely. I now know how to capture movement trails within a single image for example. My work is the thing that has majorly been effected through the learning process. Within Component 2 and the Exam I have a large range of differently composed images and also a lot of connotations within all of my shoots. This has improved the quality and the rate of interest within my work which causes audiences to become more interested by my work and may also be inspired or gain guidance into identifying themselves within their own self identity. Similar to how I was inspired by Mathu Andersen.
The ways that I've presented my work has stayed the same throughout Component 1, 2 and the Exam Project. The overall layout is similar and also the type of photography that I do has also stayed the same, but also slightly differed, in ways of Composition, content, connotations etc.

Overall, my response to the exam paper, I believe, was successful. The exam paper was asking to express self-identity through the means of photography. I could add a personal touch to my work or make the project about people in general. I chose to make the project personal but despite this, my work also links to the self-identity of others. This meant that I created a relationship with my audience and allowed them to be able to connect to my work with the visual and connotative aspects of my work.
I feel like the most successful parts of my shoot were the fashion shoots within Component 2 (Shoots 1, 3 and 4). These shoots really expressed the self-identity of me and told a story very easily. All of the images within these shoots were also perfectly composed and linked to the subject matter perfectly. The images within these shoots were also my favourite as I got to express my self-identity through my work easily and effectively.
Despite the many positives to my work, I do feel like Shoot 2 in Component 2 was my weakest. This is because of the way that the images were composed and edited. The connotations and the content of the images were perfectly linking to the subject matter despite the flaws in composure however. When composing the images I could have used a more seamless background and I feel that some of the wrinkles in the background may be distracting to the content. I could have also perfected the images even more by adding an additional editing step into the images - This step being fixing of the lighting using curves.
In the exam, I feel like both shoot 1 and 2 were successful in the aspect of content, composure and relevance to the exam paper. However, I feel like I could have done a little more to the images or even made another final edit to further express the connotations. I could have also featured the items used in previous shoots from Component 2 to link the exam images back to Component 2 directly and clearly. Despite this, I wanted to express self-identity through multiple ways and the experimentation of image composure and editing in the exam helped me to do this.
Overall, I feel like I have successfully expressed self-identity through Component 2 and the exam in many ways despite the few flaws there are.

Universally, this entire project was a lot of fun to execute. I feel like the majority of my images are very successful and effective; some even political with the counteraction of stereotypes. All of my work is very personal and helped me identify who I am as a person and hopefully also helps others discover who they are and give them confidence to be who they are - That is the reason I chose this project, to not only help myself but to also help others.

Final Shoot 2 - Connecting Essay / Vivian Maier

Vivian Maier's Work
Vivian Maier used the idea of reflections within her self identity work to create a type of self portrait that featured herself within the image. You could often see the camera in her photos which personalised the image even further. She would use many types of reflections such as mirror and shadow reflections within her work.

This particular image show Vivian Maier  standing in front of a mirror looking at herself. She is holding the camera that the image was taken on. The image shows her reflection and is black and white.


My Work

This is my image from shoot 2 of Self Identity. When I originally took the image I did not have Maier in mind. This connection to this artist was a mistake but it works out well.

Within my image you can see three of me. My physical hand, a reflection of me and my camera and also 4 images of me in drag. The image features a reflective photo frame, a plain background and is in colour.

How they link
Both mine and Vivian Maier's work links in a multitude of ways; There are also a few differences. Both images feature the artist within the image. Vivian's image shows her mirrored reflection and my work shows myself in the image in the three ways previously explained. Both images feature reflections and within these reflections are the artists.
Despite the similarities, there is a clear difference in the images. Maier's work features a black and white portrait and my work features colour.

Final Shoot 2 - Final Pieces

Final Pieces

Both of these images are my two favourite images from the shoot as I feel that they are the two images that feature strong connotations. Both of these images also link very well to the criteria of the exam and also play a personal role in the story of my self identity which I have told through Component 2 and the Exam.

Final Shoot 2 - Work Record/Items

Final Shoot 2
Items - What I hope to achieve
For my final shoot I have decided to follow one of my very simple, yet creative, ideas from my Component 2 project. This idea is using specific items that are related to me to help the audience understand who I am and what I love. The use of these items will portray me as a character and will now help the audience identify who I am as I have now identified who I am.

What I have achieved
I believe that I have achieved what I wanted to created within the second photo shoot. I have taken images of 5 distinctive objects that are either sentimental or personal to me and/or link to the idea of self-identity alone. 4 Images link to me personally and 1 image links to self identity as a whole.

Edits
Every image was edited using Photoshop. They were all edited using the same tools but to different extents. Also, a few images used a tool that was not used on other images.
Firstly, I took the unedited images and adjusted the lighting within the images to appear brighter but not too harsh. This helped me see the colours within the image easier which made the colours appear brighter. However, When brightening the images, imperfections in the background, on the  items and on my hands were becoming more apparent.
To remove these imperfections, I used the spot healing tool and eliminated any marks, reflections etc. from the images. I did this as I wanted the images to be as seamless and perfect as possible with no distractions. The use of this editing tool also links to me as I am obsessed with the beauty world and looking perfect is a large factor of stereotypical beauty.
I next took the saturation tool and increased the saturation of all images to different intensities depending on the image and what item was in the image. For example, The first image was only intensified by +5 as the colours were already made more vibrant by the lighting increase. However, the second image was intensified to +20 so that the true colours of the lipstick were not masked by any shadows.
As I wanted every detail to be seen within the images, I then took a sharpen filter to further intensify detail on all images. I sharpened all images by +10 so that the images still looked seamless and not grainy.
I then, finally, flattened all images to compress all of my editing into one layer and saved them all as JPEG files.


This first image shows me holding two products that are a part of my skin care routine. Skin care is a big part of who I am as I am obsessed with the stereotypical media representation of beauty. The products are from one of my favourite skin care brands; Mario Badescu. To personalise each image I featured my hand holding all of the items in one way or another. This helped intensify the self identity aspect of my project as the items belong to me.


This next image shows me holding one of my favourite lipsticks from another favourite beauty brand. I linked two images with the ideas of beauty to link back to one of my previous ideas within Component 2; The representation of fashion and beauty within yourself. I am again holding the item to show that it belongs to me and is also a part of me. I wanted to use a plain studio background so that the focus of the image is clearly seen without any possible distractions.


These next two images feature items that are personal to me and have sentimental value.
This first image shows me holding a picture frame of me and a friend from my secondary school Prom. The images within the photo frame show me as my Drag persona which alone represents self identity. This image was personalised in two ways. The use of my hand holding up the frame and also a reflection of myself within the image in the frame. The use of reflections links to a photographer known as Vivian Maier and her work of self identity with the use of reflections.


This next image is of me holding up my phone. As my phone is a very important thing to me and who I am, I decided to photograph it alone as opposed to the previous shoot where it was feature in images that held other items within. This image was composed differently to the rest as it was taken portrait instead of landscape and also used a different background. This background was more white than the other background and also had more light reflecting onto it as it was positioned in a different part of the room. The reason I used this background for the this image is because of the change in composition, I wanted the image to look very different to the rest to show versatility in my photography skills.

All of these four images above represent me and who I am now. The previous shoots within both the Exam and Component 2 mainly show experiments of my self identity and don't show the present me. I decided to show who I am now within the last photoshoot so that all of my work itself is a storyline and shows the audience my story over time.

This image of a Rubix Cube represents the ideas of self identity alone. A Rubix Cube is a puzzle where you use trial and error to try and sole the cube to make it perfect. The puzzle itself can be quite frustrating and sometimes cannot be solved.
Self identity is a similar concept; To find yourself as a person you need to go through a lot of trial and error to find out who you really are as a person and people execute this in a manor of different ways. Many would get frustrated, like myself, in finding who they are as it can be difficult and may take a lot of time as you can see from my work within the Exam and Component 2. I wanted to use this image as my last image to cap off the project with a message that self identity can be a struggle for many people who're trying to find out who they are. I felt that by using a blank image with a simple toy that is universally known, more people may be able to understand this and link the inanimate object to self identity.

How I have improved
The way these images were taken was differently to the way that I previously took photos of objects. Within Component 2, I took photos of objects within the form of still life and at home. These images were taken differently and were taken using a studio background. Both photo shoots used natural lighting despite their different ways of composition. I experimented with studio lighting but the photos were coming out very harsh in terms of lighting and I did not like the appearance of the images. I therefore stuck to natural lighting as it gave a softer appearance to the images.

Final Shoot 2 - Straight Images

Straight Images

These 5 images were the top 5 out of shoot 2. They were all visually and technically composed perfectly and linked to the idea that I wanted to portray.

These images were taken free hand - I experimented with studio lighting to make the images look as if they were taken for a commercial or a magazine of some kind. However, I decided against the use of the light boxes as the images were coming out too bright. I did however keep the use of the plain white backdrop.

The camera settings were set on shutter priority - The shutter speed was kept at 1/60th of a second so that the images were not blurred in anyway. I set the shutter speed at this level as the images were being taken free hand. The other camera settings were as followed: Aperture: f/5.6, ISO 100 and a manual focused was used.

Final Shoot 2 - Contact Sheet

Final Shoot 1 - Final Pieces

Final Pieces

This image is the overall final piece of my first shoot; The image includes a range of different images that tell a story about my everyday life. This is how it links to the subject matter of Self Identity. 

Two favourite Images

Both of these images are my favourites out of the 9 selected as I feel that they are both perfectly composed and are also representing two of my favourite parts of my day.

My work links to my previous work in photography through the connotations and story behind my self identity. Although all of my images may look different throughout previous shoots, they all combine together to tell my story about my own personal self identity and show what I have done to help me find that out. 

Final Shoot 1 - Work Record/Journey

Final Shoot 1
Journey - What I hope to achieve
For the first photoshoot of the Exam I have decided to create a visual journey using movement. The journey will show a day at college for me and will feature some personal items that I bring to college everyday.
The shoot will carry out 9 or more activities that occur in my everyday college life. I will overall chose 9 images to put into a grid of 9 that will progressively show my journey throughout college.
The images, as they are representing something that has happened in the past, will be edited to appear black and white. I have not previously edited images black and white within Component 2.

What I have achieved
Looking at the unedited images, I have achieved what I wanted to achieve in my first shoot. I have over 9 activities or moments of my everyday college day and have chosen my top 9 images to put into the time line grid.
When shooting the images, I used specific camera settings to enable me to add movement into the images. I first set the camera onto shutter priority which allowed me to chose a certain amount of seconds that the shutter on the camera stayed shut for; I chose 8 seconds. This gave me enough time to take part in the activity that I was capturing to show the activity taking place. I chose to show the activity in action to make the images more visually interesting. I feel that if I just took the images on a shutter speed of 1/30 of a second and not feature any movement, the images would not be as interesting.

Edits
All of these images were edited the same way. They were turned black and white and some of them has curve fixtures to either dim or intensify the light. Each image however was edited on a different black and white scale so that specific colours within the image would be more intense in the black and white format.

Firstly, I took the unedited image and adjusted the curves slightly within the images. Some images did not require this step as I felt that the lighting was perfect in some images.

I then adjusted the images to change the colour format to black and white. When doing this I could adjust specific colour hues within the images and intensify the black and white tones within the image. For example, as there was a lot of blue hues within the first image shown below, I used the blue hue adjuster and increased the intensity of the blue hues so they would appear darker in the black and white image.
Finally, I flattened the image so that all of the editing would compress into the image and then saved the images as a JPEG image.
The images you see on the left are unedited and the images on the right are edited.

This first image shows some personal items that belong to me or are a part of my everyday college life. These items are the fundamentals to my college day and are what are needed. I laid the images out in a random matter so that the image looked like a natural scene form my day.
As the subject matter is self Identity, in every image I made a certain item, that was a part of me or showed who I am, blurred/opaque to single out this one object to further intensify the personal aspect to these images. For this image in particular is was my ID card. This card has details about me on it and also holds an image of me on it. I felt like this was the most obvious item to single out.

This next image features, simply, me putting on my backpack. To take this image I set the camera on a timer so that I would have time to move into frame to take the image. I used a plain black background as I wanted the focus of this image to be me and the backpack alone with no loud distractions in the background. I chose to make the backpack in the image blurred as this carries all of the college materials within; it also holds all of my personal items.


This image features me working at a computer. The majority of my courses at college require a computer. Therefore, this is a key aspect of my day. This image featured two aspects of me that were blurred. My phone and my hands. I chose these things to be blurred as it shows a specific movement and activity taking place overtime. This image required an extra step to editing. This step was the use of the spot healing tool which helped me perfect the background of the image as there were a few slight imperfections on the background such as marks or scratches on the table.

This next image shows Lunch taking place and features a lot of movement within the image. This was the only image where I wanted a majority of the things in the image to be moving. I wanted this image to be different as it features more people than myself. Despite this, all of the people within the image are a part of me as they're my friends. I therefore wanted to show this with the busy movement of the images. This image is still personalised with the use of my phone; which is featured in many other images.

This is the final overall image of the first shoot. The images themselves may have connotations to them but I wanted to focus on the sole connotation of the final outcome and the story it tells. The images tell a story of my everyday college life and what it features. From left to right and top to bottom, you can see a simple story that is very effective in helping myself and other audience members identify who I am and what I do daily.
Each image represents a different activity or scene:
Image 1 is a preview of personal items that I use on a day-to-day basis in and out of college.
Image 2 shows me and friends entering the college to start the day/
Image 3 shows me and other people walking through the corridors. You can also see other students living their college lives also.
Image 4 shows me working in a written lesson.
Image 5 shows Lunch, an activity that is shows with friends.
Image 6 shows a conversation happening between me and a friend. This also represents the Lunch portion of the day.
Image 7 shows a Photography lesson, a lesson that I particularly enjoy. I captured another student photographing her model to represent this.
Image 8 shows me working on a computer which is a recurrence in everyday at college for me.
Image 9 shows me putting on my backpack to leave college.
These 9 simple images, I believe, show my everyday college life easily and have a narrative behind them. All of the images feature something relevant or special to me and also show what I do on a day-to-day basis which is a key aspect of my self identity.

This image was created through the use of Photoshop. I simply, took all 9 images and evenly spaced them apart, on a black white canvas, into a 3x3 grid to show the story of all 9 images in one. All of the images are in black and white to show the past events and to also show memories. I feel that if the images were in colour then they would be showing present events and in the future, they will not be present, they will be memories.

What I will do next
I believe that this first photoshoot was a success. The images were composed how I wanted them to be composed and the content, connotations and story of the images link to the criteria of the Exam Paper. All of the images were composed differently in terms of camera angles but were all shot using the natural lighting around me and the same camera settings.
As the next shoot will be something that is very different to this particular shoot, It is difficult to say what I can improve on; especially when I feel that the images are perfectly composed. For this shoot I used a tripod and specific camera settings. Therefore, in the next shoot I will not use a tripod and also will use different camera settings to experiment in the way I take photos and to also vary the way my images look.

Final Shoot 1 - Computer Experiments

Computer Experiments
Use of Black and White
For shoot 1, I have changed the way that I edit photographs within Component 2 to change the overall effect and connotations of images.
I have decided to colour change all of my images to black and white for many reasons. The main reason was experimentation - To see what some of my images might look like without colour. This is a big experiment as most of my images tend to be full of vibrant colours.
Another reason for the change in editing was to change the connotations of the image. Despite the story of the image being the same, the black and white colour make it seem like it's a memory of the past. Whereas if the image was still in colour, the story would look as if it is taking place in the present. I wanted to create a memory with these images which is why the experimentation of editing colour was a success.

Use of Grid
I have used grid before within Component 2, however, this grid is used in a different way and is also visually different. The way I laid out the images looks like a time line as there are fine spaces between the images horizontally, but have thicker spaces vertically. This layout also resembles a camera roll and shows the story well. The previous grid that I used was in the shape of a square and this grid is in the shape of a rectangle; So, despite the similarities in grid usage, they are visually and contextually different. Both grids were used differently connotations-wise also. The previous grid in Component 2 was used to show off a bunch of characters that are a part of me as a person. This grid was used to tell a story.

Final Shoot 1 - Straight Images

Straight Images

These are the top 9 images that I have chosen for the Journey Grid. I chose these images because I felt that they presented the activities that I was doing well and all had parts of the image that were in perfect focus. The images are also perfectly composed to what I was trying to achieve.

These images were taken around different locations within college. I used work spaces that I use within my college day so that the subject matter of the images were true to what I was trying to portray.

These images were stationed on a tripod and had very specific camera settings. As I wanted to show movement within the images, I used a shutter speed of 8 seconds. This gave me and the other models time to move around or do an activity within the frame and allowed me to capture the movement and show a story within a single frame. The other camera settings were as follows: Aperture: f/4, ISO 100 and the focus was Auto. I used auto focus as there was no specific subject within frame; all of the frame was relevant. Finally, before taking the images, I set a 10 second timer on the camera so that allowed me to get into position for the shot.