Firstly the ideas that I had for my final major project were thought out well and had thorough idea generation forming the idea. I had a various amount of ideas which I thought was a better idea then having only one idea as I could experiment more as I shot and planned but also because I would result in having more experience shooting in different areas and aspects of this genre. I had ideas that included taking images of silhouettes which were lit from an outside light e.g. a sunset, which I didn’t end up using as it was winter and I was dependant on the weather which was a bad idea. I then had the idea to shoot in the studio creating silhouettes by using a light e.g. a snoot to light the background and having my model stood quite far away from the background, creating the black silhouette of themselves, I used this within experiments several times with models and still life which I thought went rather well. When shooting in the studio I had the idea to shoot rim lighting as rim lighting connects to the idea of silhouettes, I started trying to test shoot, at first it wasn’t going right but as I continued to do multiple shoots in the studio trying to get this rim lighting technique right it finally went to plan and was resulting in the way I hoped, seeing the models outline, I did also try to do this within still life, using flowers but that was difficult and I couldn’t figure it out. The other idea I had was to shoot on location and capture double exposure images, which I also thought was a great chance to experiment and see if these could be used for my final images, but they resulted in just being test shoots.
I settled on taking rim lighting images and silhouettes images in the studio with still life and models in the end, which I chose for my final images. Using the studio was a good idea for this project, I could control the lighting I was using and where the lighting was so I had more control which was great in my circumstances as I wouldn’t have a lot of time shooting silhouettes with a sunset as it isn’t going to be there for long and I cannot stop it from moving. The outcome of silhouettes and rim lighting in the studio was surprisingly achieved, I didn’t think it could be that difficult at first as they’re quite simple techniques but as I tried them and I found out they weren’t so simple, I got it wrong and worked on it and finally got it right, it made me feel as if I had achieved this goal I had set myself out to do with my final major project which made me proud of my images. I thought that my images look quite successful and effective as I added colour which added emotion and personality to the images which I thought made the images more honest, eye catching and attractive.
For improvements with this project I would have definitely got my film developed in time as I couldn’t get them processed in time, which isn’t a massive loss but still some work was missing from experimenting. I would probably choose a different area of photography all together, some people might think that my idea was too simple and boring, I don’t think this, I think it was very experimental as I had never done this kind of photography before, I was starting from scratch, experimenting and working things out for myself, teaching myself along the way to correct my mistakes and improve myself constantly. I thought that my idea was intriguing but I did have other ideas e.g. portraits and shooting on 120 film that I would have liked to pursue. For improvements upon the silhouette ideas that I decided to do, I would have improved the planning and had more ideas of where to shoot, what to shoot, lighting, backgrounds, what models would do when I was taking images of them etc. I would have also liked to do more experimenting with each of the ideas I had so that my final images would have been made up more of a variety of images and not the same idea over and over e.g. having silhouettes in the studio of still life and models, rim lighting of models, double exposure within the studio with models and still life and location double exposure images, and I would have liked to have more ideas to build up more final images.
I am proud of my images outcomes I think they’re all effective and have a meaning behind them, showing personality and meaning as well as simplicity and subtleness. I used Photoshop to manipulate my images, I didn’t use Photoshop excessively, I only used the contrast and levels layers to made the images contents e.g. the model/still life darker, making the images look more like silhouettes and better rim lighting images. I also used colour balance layers within the majority of my final images because I wanted to add colour to the images to make the images more eye catching and show meaning.
