evaluation

Evaluation

I am going to analyse and strictly evaluate my magazine photography to the best of my ability in this essay. During my evaluation, I'll take into consideration my preparation work (magazine research) and my final piece, discussing what I excelled on and on areas I could improve on.

During my preparation work I originally had a different idea. In my original idea the atmosphere was completely different to my current and final idea. I named my original concept "Vapour Wave", a title inspired by the bright lights and lively mood of nightlife. I compiled a mood board and mind map for this project, but after reassessing all the research that I did, I realised I did not have a feel for the project and decided to change my idea.

My new theme is the complete opposite to my original theme - it details the loneliness of being abandoned, which is a huge contrast to the hustle and bustle of nightlife.

I then had to find what subject i can highlight this theme upon; i then thought of cars and house hold objects but then thought they would not be as interesting and have enough depth as an actual abandon building which can have a lot of context. i was originally going to take the photos around my area as there is a couple of abandon buildings but as i travelled to France in the half term i thought it would be good to shoot my photos there with a friend as its quite a rural area and has a lot of characteristics. i took a vast amount of images in the area but i chose the best one that represented my theme for the magazine.

Before taking my photos I looked up abandoned buildings on google, this helped inspire me to capture the certain aspects I was able to take. it inspired me to capture the destruction and overgrown nature that has invaded the environment and to take it in different angles to capture it in an artsy light. also it made me want to highlight certain things I found throughout my urban expedition. in the photos I found there was a lot of black and white images; I wanted to have the urban rubble and nature have a different contrast as I wanted to make the nature stand out more to show that its more lively.

Throughout my preparation  I have gained various skills such as a creative eye for little detail, and also different types of compositions that I can do to creative different types of photographs.

I was very proud of the outcome of my final images for the magazine; the whole look and atmospheric feel of them, but I think that i also have stuff that i can improve on. I felt that I executed the concept of loneliness and abandonment through depicting the location in different angles and compositions. I wanted to make the images have a sense of mystery to them to let the audience try and pick out different things from the photos; to discover what happened to the location. I also got positive feedback from my peers such as, the angles that I took the photos in was good and also the  that every photo was different and created an edgy and dark mood. additionally the use of rule of thirds was used in an exponential way.

 I tried to differentiate the nature and the urban rubble to have contrast between each other as it shows how old the building has been untouched for as mother nature consumes it; I used magic bullet looks to try and make the colour green stand out from in the pictures to show the nature compared to the dark, creepy environment its surrounded by; this was done by using the colour correction software called ''Magic Bullet Looks''.

 In magic bullet looks i used many settings such as:

-Crush
-Pop
-Saturation
-Vignette
-Cosmo
-Curves
-Light Flex

And many others...

I chose the effects for my colour corrections that would give the best contrast between the dark and bright colours, Also i used effects like; pop and curves to bring out some colours and details such as the cracks in the floor boards and the blacks around the graffiti. Furthermore I added light flex and levels to also give the image a professional finish.

I am happy with my final images, but there is things that I would like and could improve on.
in my final images some of my photos had some distractions and were not cropped accordingly such as the image of the window and the leafs (this is bad as it distracts the viewers attention to that main part of the image) also i could of colour corrected my images better and make the graffiti more defined as graffiti plays a big part of the story telling of the photography. My colour correction wasn't the best that it could be; I could of made some colours more definitive and make them stand out. Additionally, I regret not taking enough in-depth photos to reveal the locations personality as i was using my friends camera and we only had a limited time there. This limited me in my finalisation of picking the right photos that go into the magazine as i didn't have a wide variety of picture to depict my theme. I feel like i could of incorporated more compositions while i was taking photos; a shallow depth of field would be very good for my type of theme and also large depth of field to show the decay of the location.

In conclusion I think my photos are of a high standard and have an interesting location to back up the camera techniques to make the images intriguing, i used colour correction to give the photos more depth but they could be improved on. Also readjusting/cropping my images can make a great impact on how to image comes out, but i also should incorporate more compositions to help add that professionalism to the photos. All these things i mentioned, plus improving on colour correcting can help me drastically improve on the outcome of my images and make them of a professional standard.