Final Evaluation

The theme for this project was named 'The light Project'. Our brief explained that though out this project we would be looking at different ways you can use light in photography whether that's light painting or just dramatic lighting, also this project would enable us to use digital cameras as wells film SLR's if we preferred. To come up with ideas for this project I produced a mind map and took inspiration from other photographers

For my final outcome I produce a range of different darkroom prints of a model I had token using dramatic lighting. 

My range included solarisation, reversals and a reversal of a solarisation as well as original un-tempered with prints. I produced 4 large A4 prints of my final outcome and on the side did a little photography book of all my little A6 prints.

As a whole I found the whole experience temperamental I had a lot of problems with producing my final piece and in actual fact although I did a lot of experimentation with portraits and dramatic lighting, my actual intention wasn't to do this for my final piece instead I was planning on doing some light panting with a film SLR camera some would be in color whilst others black and white as I find the contrasty black and white more interesting than the coloured version.

As time progressed I started to experiment with this initial idea and produced some small black and white light painting experiments with a model, in the style of Patrick Rochon but they weren't successful enough to use as my final piece. I then tried to do the same idea but with coloured film these were completely unsuccessful as only one out of 30 was able to use and the one which came out wasn't at all usable so with a week until the exam I began thinking of other ways I could produce a final outcome and I began looking through my sketchbook.

 This is when I saw how successful and professional my dramatic lighting prints were and I started to look back at my analysis of David bailey and began to really get inspired by his use of dramatic lighting and his role play with he's models that links into this, so I started to experiment with some more dramatic lighting portraits and started experimenting in the darkroom with different techniques which is where I produced some solarisation’s and reversal prints.

I really liked the way David Bailey choose his lighting carefully depending on the pose and model he chose for example the image of Jean Shrimpton is really flattering he conveys style and sleekness with just using black and white film or an effect The way he has captured the light bouncing of her hair and got that jawline shadow is amazing he really motivated me that there is more to do with a SLR camera and if done well it will look really good.

To improve my final outcome I think I could of done some prints in where I put two pictures in the negative carrier this would have been successful because I could of then played with the opacity of the overlapping image on photo shop and it would of linked into Roni Horn's Clown piece from the contextual studies unit as well as been dramatic lighting so linked into David Bailey.

To conclude I found the project stressful at times but however I am happy with the choices I made regarding my final piece and I'm happy with my overall outcome. In the future I would like to pick up a technique in which makes light painting on a SLR film camera do-able.