Evaluation

Evaluation

I thought it was pretty funny when we received this brief because most of my group were really dreading this last section because it was all about the self-portrait but I wasn’t really worried, luckily for me. I didn’t go into this project with many ideas but once I got a few pieces of research done and advice from my tutor I felt confident in the direction I was going. This led me to choose, what I think were two good ideas that had personal meaning to me and strong links to each other through their lighting and framing. The last image I had to do was a self-portrait which I struggled a bit with because I limited myself to black and white, high key lighting and waist up framing by choosing very similar hero and villain images. I ended up taking inspiration from a student I used to go to Sixth Form with who produced a portrait where she overlaid images and morphed body parts to create freaky mutations of herself.

Starting the project I never thought I would actually embrace it as much as I did because I knew that it would be really difficult to  try and source all the gear I needed to wear especially for the John Wayne image, as well as all the abuse I would get for dressing up as a cowboy by my brother. With all this said it was probably the most enjoyable project I’ve done this year as well as being the most educationally rich with the studio lights/equipment and the fact I would make an awesome gangster, I need to go suit shopping more often, and I need a twin! However it was a bit of a challenge getting the posture and head position right which added a great deal of time and stress to the process but I eventually achieved success without killing anyone.

I think it’s easy to say that my main influence was David Bailey because I’ve tried to tailor every aspect of my photos to mimic his own work. The idea of this came from my tutor who first introduced the idea of the Kray Twins as my villain and then secondly with the idea of using skinny black frames for the presentation method. This led me to challenge myself to try and recreate in his style, especially in the lighting department. Strangely in this project I found a crucial bit inspiration from work I saw years ago that proved to be the major part of my self-portrait. I think the combination of their work.

Now the project is complete I’m glad the dressing up is over but I did really get into studio photography again. I think it was the task of trying to recreate the lighting that gripped me and ultimately made me enjoy it, however there’s one major thing that I would have done differently if I had to redo the project. This would have been getting someone to help take the photos. Even though I managed pretty well on my own it would have allowed me to focus on my posture etc, therefore making the hardest part of it all easier. Apart from that the project went smoothly and I’m pleased with the end product.