Overall Project Evaluation

We have now finished this project and I have enjoyed it from the beginning. At first, I was a bit confused an unsure on where this topic was going to take me but after doing a couple of shoots, I started heading towards a documentary-style project, allowing me to portray society and highlight some social issues in our community. As my shoots progressed, I explored more cultures and started comparing them in my work, this allowed me to be analytical and critical of my own work, enabling me to find what to improve in future shoots. This has helped me develop my Photography and plan my shoots ahead so I knew what I was meant to do in particular shoots. Furthermore, I have become more familiar with the aperture settings on my camera, as I experimented on my shoots in order to find out which aperture was best for particular images, I began to see the difference this made to my work, allowing me to manipulate the brightness and the lighting as much as I wanted to, so that it suited my images. Although, I didn't spend much time on Photoshop as my images didn't need much editing, apart from my James Russell Cant shoot, I spent some time on the computer experiments, which meant I could practice my Photoshop skills and discover new tools - I also came across some new ways of editing with my James Russell Cant shoot, as I had to learn how to add scanning lines to my images, so they look like they've been taken from CCTV footage. Overall, this project has made me more critical of my work and has forced my to plan my shoots so I knew what I was doing - in the future, I will be more organised so that my shoots are done at their best. If I had the chance to do this project again, I would have spent more time in the studio, allowing me to concentrate some more on emotions and personalities found in our society.

Mid-project Action Plan

• I would like to more on to culture with my project now; I am planning on exploring the different cultures that can be found in our society in the UK. This will allow me to experiment with colour and angles even more, letting me spend more time framing my shoot and thinking about how the scene would look good when I picture it. 
• After this, I would like to focus more on individuals in society - this can be done in the studio as well on location as it will mean I can experiment with the different lighting and learn how to manipulate my subjects according to what I'm trying to achieve with my picture.

Mid-project Evaluation

As we reach the middle of our projects, I feel my images have been improving as I have started experimenting with the exposure, the lighting and the angles. My shoots have mostly been at night so far, meaning I have had to adjust the exposure of my camera each time I took a picture as I had minimal lights on some of the scenes I took a shot of. I think this has given me more experience in using my camera and I have definitely become more familiar with the different settings, such as the shutter speed. As well as this, this project has also allowed me find ways to link my work together and work with different techniques in order to produce good images. At the very beginning of the project, I found it hard to plan my shoots and even come up with ideas for my shoots. I knew what I wanted to concentrate on but I did not know how to do this and explore; my topic was 'society' but I wasn't sure on how I could look at the different social issues like I wanted to. After doing my research, I decided to do this through comparison - by shooting different aspects and opposites in society, I thought I would be able to show the differences in society and highlight them in my work. For example, I have been shooting different residential buildings and parks nearby at night. I think this will show the different between the social classes and how the upper classes live in different communities, which more luxurious housing. Overall, my project is going well and I am happy with the images I have produced so far.