Final Evaluation

Final Evaluation

In my opinion, Shoot 1, 8 and 9 worked the most for me because I felt that those photos helped me develop further and really portray my message of people should be reflecting about our own and the worlds action against nature. Shoot 1 helped me by allowing me to experiment the most in Photoshop and experiment with different methods on how to create. This shoot set me in my tracks and made me more focus on where I want to end up in later shoots. Also, I liked how my final photos ended up because I feel that when the flower has been reflected in multiple ways, the images as a whole kind of looks abstract and unique, and due to each flower being different, each photo looks completely different from each other even thought they follow the same technique. Shoot 8 helped me expand my thinking even further by diving deeper into my title and presenting a series of photos that express a deeper meaning and is very relevant to today's society. I was able to experiment with multiple methods in Photoshop in a way to create these final images to get the most affective results. I found Shoot 8 very personal to me because I was able to express my feelings about the current events on the environment a lot more clearly and hopefully get people to think about their own actions as well. Shoot 9 helped my tie all of my ideas and projects together because I was able to use the techniques I learned in Shoot 1 and combine them with my newer view of Reflection in Nature that I demonstrated in Shoot 8. However, in my opinion, Shoot 2 was my least successful shoot because I found that creating reflection using water did not demonstrate what I was trying to portray clearly enough and did not impact my final portfolio in any way. Also, I found that these images did not stand out because they look boring and a bit flat.

I selected my final portfolio images because I think that they help portray my message of reflecting about how nature is slowly disappearing from us. I also wanted to show how I have developed over the course of my project because as I found how my photos became more and more personal to me, my photos had developed and expressed a more deeper meaning towards to viewer. Therefore showing as how I grew, so did my photos. I structured my portfolio in a certain way to present how I have developed and show clear stages of my progress. In my opinion my last few photos in my final portfolio helps ties everything together because I was able to link my first set of ideas to my last ones. I managed to do this by using my first few edited photos and edit them into the model to create a double reflection of nature.

My work has been influenced by multiple photographers but my most source of influence was from Imogen Cunningham, Laura Zalenga and Christoffer Relander. Imogen Cunningham influenced me when I was taking pictures of flowers. I liked how she framed most of her flowers up close so you were able to see the detail and texture on the petals without any distracting features from the background or anywhere else. Also, I like how she makes the flowers seem more fragile by having a strong light going through them, kind of making the petals seem transparent. Zalenga influenced me through my editing process, I liked how she created interesting and abstract final images with a simple photo. I wanted to create something similar with my first few shoots because I thought that this editing process would add extra elements of interest which would draw the viewer in because they would have to figure what the true photo was. Chirstoffer Relander influenced me a lot by helping me expand my thinking a lot further and diver deeper into my project to produce a series of images that have a powerful meaning behind them. Relander combines both people and nature pictures together. By using the same technique I was able to portray that people need to stop and think about the environment, our own actions are slowly damaging the planet but government and transnational corporations decisions are damaging the environment the most, such as the BP oil spill and the Brazilian government allowing companies to cut down trees in the Amazon rainforest.

Doing this project I have learned more about my own photography and the world. When creating reflection for this project I learned a new technique in photoshop to create an abstract illusion. I was able to create reflection using multiple settings in photoshop to reflect the photo multiple ways to create a kaleidoscope photo affect. Also, I learned how to manipulate two photos and combine them together to create an interesting affect of a nature photo blended into a portrait photo. I was able to learn how to balance the two photos together by manipulating the opacity to create a clear composition of both the person and the nature image, and make sure that one photo wasn't overpowering the other. This helped me clearly portray how as a generation we need to change something to save our future. While I was doing this project I was more conscious about environmental issues and I found that more or less everyday there are more problems that are going to occur due to if we do not change something and we have until 2030 to change otherwise the damage will become permanent. Also, the most damage caused to the environment is developed countries, such as the UK and America, but the people who suffer the most due to this are developing countries, majority are countries in Africa. I feel like some people and the government do not take this seriously enough, therefore, this causes risk because the environment may be permanently damaged to some people's reckless actions. Therefore, I wanted my photography to emphasise this message to help even get a few more people aware of what we are doing to our planet and what we can do to help.