Overall Project Evaluation

To begin with, my project consisted of Street Photography, whereby I visited Norfolk, Leigh-on-sea, Brighton, and London, Spain as well as shot photos in my hometown. These images within these shoots consisted of photos of strangers walking past, as well as the 'tourist attractions' of each place. For instance, in Brighton I shot images of the beach, the Brighton Wheel and the pier, which is what Brighton is best known for. I did the same for each place I visited, as I wanted to express the 'Identity' of each place, through the tourist attractions that they are best known for.

However, after 5 shoots I decided that each shoot was producing similar images, which I wanted to move away from. Therefore, for my shoot 6, I decided to shoot in my hometown, and focus on Location Portraiture. To do this, I focused on different backgrounds and different places within Harlow such as a park, an underpass and Staple Tye. I enjoyed this shoot a lot more as I did capture the places best known in Harlow, but I also had a sole focus of the model I was shooting portraits of. This shoot was also very enjoyable because I was able to experiment with different portraiture techniques, and figure out which backgrounds were best for these techniques.

After this shoot, I continued shooting Portraiture, but used the studio a lot more. For instance, I did two shoots revolving around Emotional Portraiture, whereby I used different types of lighting to depict different moods. For instance, I used multiple coloured gels to express different emotions, such as blue for sadness, red for anger, and yellow and pink for happiness. I also used both black and white backgrounds deepening on the emotion that I wanted to emulate. I also reshot this shoot, but only used dark or high key lighting, to express sad and happy. These shoots helped me discover different lighting techniques, and also work out which lighting is best for different shots.

After researching different Photographers, I came across Gillian Wearing who shot a project titled "Signs That Say What You Want Them To Say", whereby she asked strangers on the street to write down a few words on a piece of paper, and hold them up whilst she shot a photo of them. The best known one being a well dressed man holding up the sign "I'm Desperate", it is because of Wearing's work that I was influenced to create my own Sign images whereby I asked models to write really heart provoking and emotional sentences on a piece of paper, and hold them up over their faces. This follows on my emotional theme, which continues throughout the portraits in my project.

It is because of this Sign shoot that I decided to focus more on Mental Illnesses and sad thoughts. Which influenced my next shoot, whereby I shot self-portraits of myself pulling at my face, with tape over my mouth etc. I also used different editing techniques to make these images more thought provoking and shocking. For instance, I used different blur filters to blur everything out of the images apart from my face. I also used black and white to emulate the depressing and dark feelings that the images were indicating.

I have completed to shoots experimenting with water, whereby I used two different models, one of which was in the shower and the other was in the bath, followed up this shoot. In these shoots, both models were "drowning" in the water. I did this to portray the feelings of frustration, numbness, emptiness and overload of emotions and thoughts that come with suffering with a mental illness. These two shoots were the most experimental out of my entire project, and I believe the final straight images came out very well. I also used the black and white effect as well as different colour toning to depict dark, light and cold feelings.

All of my portraits are thought provoking, and each portray a different emotion which should make every viewer think about the models story, or why they feel that way, or what made them feel like that. I wanted my photos to create questions, and to really show what Mental Illnesses are like and how people feel when suffering with them. Overall, I have enjoyed shooting both street photography as well as portraiture as I have been able to explore two completely different and unique sides of 'Identity' and have been able to experiment with all of my images, as well as learn new skills with my camera and in the editing field.