Final project evaluation

Photographic genre research

The genres I researched were, nature, architecture, fashion and abstract. I chose these because I was familiar with them except for abstract.

I liked looking into different types of photography because it helped me decide what I wanted to do for this project.

I created mood boards for each genre I researched to get some inspiration and ideas as to what I wanted to take photographs of.

Primary research photo shoots

I thought that these tasks were really helpful for this project because I didn't really know what genre to choose because I had three different ones in mind which were, nature, architecture and fashion.

I decided to go with nature for the sun task because I thought that would have been the best genre for that task.

Photographer research

Doing photographer research is always helpful because it gives me inspiration to look up to when doing photo shoots and developing ideas.

I mainly tried to find photographers that focused on the types of nature elements that I was going to explore with my work so that it was more realistic to be inspired by.

Proposal

My proposal was a good plan of ideas look remember when I was doing my photo shoots because I gave myself a set plan of different techniques and types of nature photography to go into.

My proposal didn't really change at all throughout this project because I think that the ideas I had at the beginning were good enough for me to complete.

Photo shoots

I did six different photo shoots for this project and I had written what I was going to do in my proposal and photo shoot planning. I said I was going to do some macro, landscape, still life and animal photography.

I think all of these shoots went really well because I have ideas and images in mind that I had brought to life in my photo shoots as I imagined they would when I was thinking of my ideas at the start.

Photographer research

Alex Saberi is a National Geographic photographer from London. He began photography as a hobby by mainly taking photos of Richmond Park. Only recently he turned this hobby into a profession and has recently had a photo book of the park published. He has on many completions and awards for his work from winning the Environmental Protection Agency’s wildlife competition, to winning on several worldwide online competition websites. 

Saberi has made appearances in many different digital camera magazines and other publications.

John Shaw has been a professional nature photographer since the early 1970’s. His work has been published in many publications and books, including National Geographic, Nature’s Best, National Wildlife, Audubon, Outdoor Photographer, and many others. In 1997 he was given the first-ever Outstanding Photographer award given by NANPA (North American Nature Photography Association). Nikon had chosen him as a featured Legend behind the lens in 2002; also Microsoft designated him as Icon of Imagining in 2006. He has been part of Epson’s Stylus Pro fine art print makers group since 2001.

John has published six books on nature photography, eight eBooks on Photoshop and Lightroom and two eBooks of photographs. He is expecting to release some new work “John Shaw’s Guide to Digital Nature Photography” scheduled to be published in early 2015. He has photographed on every continent, from the Arctic to the Antarctic, from Provence to Patagonia.

Stephen Studd is a London based photographer but he was born in Leeds
that mainly focuses on location photography but also does a lot of plant photography.

The reason why he wanted to become a photographer in the first place was when he developed a black and white photograph at school and ever since then he started to puruse photography.

He went on to gain a 2:1 degree in photography at LCP London. After that, he worked in colour darkrooms at a leading stock agency, then went freelance as a photographer 25 years ago.

Stephen went to go on an travel around the world as a pro travel photographer, then moved to Stroud and thats when his plant photography started. He has his own organic allotment and garden.

[his website]

Target audience

The target audience for my theme of nature would probably be in galleries and exhibitions because people usually go to galleries to look at nice, aesthetically pleasing images and thats what pictures of nature are. I think there would be a different range of types of people from all ages, genders, races etc because nature can be enjoyed by anyone as it is a part of the world and culture.

Another place nature photographs would be is magazines such as National Geographic, BBC Wildlife, World of Animals etc.

I have noticed another place that nature images are quite popular which is waiting rooms, whether it's doctors, schools, businesses etc. I think the reason why nature images are put in these places is because they are nice to look at, set your mind at ease - if you're in a doctors waitng room and want to feel calm - and distracting.

Photoshoot planning

Black and white film

I am planning on using the black and white film when we go to yorkshire dales with college.

I think that the photos of the farms and nature around hawes will look interesting in black and white because with any weather it will give it a more dramatic, moody look. For example, if it is rainy and cloudy then the mood set would look gloomy and distressed.

I plan on doing some wildlife photography of the farm animals, some landscapes and flowers.

Colour film

For the colour film shoot, I want to do some photographs around the Bradford area. Bradford is quite an urban place but also rural and country at the same time so it will be interesting to find some natural scenes in Bradford.

I am wanting to photograph the fields, trees, flowers, sky, clouds and anything else I can find that is natural.

First photoshoot

For my first photoshoot, I want to explore what nature looks like when it's spring. I am going to take the pictures during the afternoon time so I can use the sun as light which will make the flowers look really bright and vibrant.

Second photoshoot

I don't really have a set plan for this shoot but I know that I want to do some macro pictures of flowers.

Third photoshoot - still life

For this photo shoot I want to get some nature from outside and bring it inside to do some still life photos with it. I will either go in the studio and use a cove or just put some paper down near a window and use natural light.

Yorkshire dales

I plan to do some wildlife/animal photography of the farm animals. I also want to do some landscapes and flower pictures.

risk assesments

black and white film

These pictures are from Hawes, Yorkshire dales when we went on the trip. I decided to use black and white film for this shoot because it gives the pictures a more dramatic look.

I only did two prints in the darkroom with the black and white film so I scanned the negatives in to see what the rest looked like and also so that I could evaluate them.

Some of the images had dust, hairs and grains on them so I went into Photoshop and corrected them by using the clone tool and I used levels to turn up the brightness and contrast.

Edit

Original

first photoshoot

These images that I have selected out from the contact sheet really represent what this photoshoot was about, which is mainly to capture images of Spring and what nature looks like when it is spring.

I did a couple of black and white photos of the daffodils but I prefer when the images are in colour because thats what makes the picture stand out and look better to me.

This was the first photoshoot I did for this project and these were my initial ideas for the project and what area of nature I want to explore.

Edit

Original

Even though the original image was already quite good in terms of colour, focus and composition, I wanted to test things out on photoshop to see if I could enhance it.

To edit this, I mainly played around with brightness/contrast and colour enhancemnets such as levels, virbrance and saturation.