Final Project Evaluation

Selecting my portfolio images was quite hard. Throughout my project I had taken a wide range of

images to explore every aspect of a destructive world that I liked. 

In order to create my portfolio I had to limit my images in order to create a cohesive body of

work. So first I decided to go through all my shoots and take out the images that did not fit, this

included my work records 3,4,5,6. These images-even though I believed some were good

images- looked at a more conflict side of destructive world and didn't focus on waste and

pollution, like the rest of my portfolio. This left me with my images from my work record

1,2,7,8. Next I had to decide which order to organise my images and if I wanted to have any

transition pages. I believed that starting with my work record 1- the cellophane images- would

start the portfolio of at a high and would instantly portray the message of pollution and world

destruction that wanted to highlight. I then realised I wanted to have two transition pages, one

with plastic on and one with burnt squashed cigarettes in order to make the portfolio to go ore

smoothly.

Research of my project has been extremely influential in my work. Looking into other images of

a destructive world and photographers, I found ideas that influenced me to take my pictures in a

certain way. For example, my first shoot in Work Record 1 is my cellophane mages. In this shoot

I had a vague idea of the message I wanted to portray of the poisonous air we breathe, however, I

wasn't sure how to create it. When I researched by photographer of Brandon Seidler, I was

influenced to use physical manipulation of my images. Seidler uses harsh chemicals that were

found at the site to soak the film of the images. The developed film become corroded and show

"bubble like" film, as if it was burnt. I liked this idea, however, It would be very hard and unsafe

for me to use this to create my images. So, instead I took inspiration of Seidler and came up with

the idea of using plastic to create a "film cover" for the camera to show a similar image of

poisonous gases and air we create in our everyday lives. 

As mentioned above, throughout this project I used a lot of experimenting- not only in editing,

but through the way I produced my images. The first example of this was, as mentioned, my

cellophane shoot. This shoot took a lot of research and experimenting before I could start the

shoot. In both my experimenting blog post and the Work Record 1, you can see the process step

by step of creating the film. This ended up being one of my favourite pieces of my project as it

was very bout of my comfort zone yet created a simple but inspiring image. Another time I

experimented was with my editing. Firstly, I edited in my work record 2 with an experiment of

different filters on my images. So I sat down and just fiddled with different aspects of Photoshop

to see what I liked vs what didn't suit my investigation. In this process, I changed the photo to

look like it was painted by watercolours. I then went on to add curves to add highlights and then

burn and dodge to make the curves only effect the pieces of rubbish. All this together makes the

picture look more dramatic and pop art like. The sharp effect became really attention grabbing

and made to photo look more interesting as the harsh waves and sand create a dark message
This project has made me realise my full potential of editing and experimental ideas. In this
project I have learnt how to make a cohesive piece of work and pick images out of the many
images i have taken. This was important as it made my photo book run more smoothly and look
more effective