LO4: Evaluation

The brief has asked me to produce a range of photographs based on the theme of identities. So I decided to study the identity of Salik Nawaz by asking I'm about his interests and reaching a conclusion that he is really interested in sports, especially basketball. I took inspiration from sports photographers in order to gain motivation/ an idea of what I could produce for this piece.

Andrew D. Bernstein gave me quite a lot of inspiration for my shoot. I think the main reason why I enjoyed viewing his work was due to the fact that he could capture the most perfect moment of in motion action where that athlete is preforming a move or a play during a basketball game. When it came to my shoot I made sure I was equipped with the Canon 650D camera, I changed the shutter speed to sports mode which allowed me to take a large range of in motion pictures capturing the motion of each move my mode made within the shoot. I also made sure I captured some photographic features such as centre of interest and composition, whilst maintaining the genre style of still life in order to create a sense of verisimilitude for the viewers. The reason why this project has ,managed to stick to the brief correctly is due to the fact that I have looked into my models personal interests that help create his identity and included them within the shoot in order to also show the audience how passionate he feels towards the sport of basketball as part of his identity.

My intenstions within this shoot were to capture the emotion of Salik in different whys through editing my photographs, this is becauseI believe that I could be able to make the target audience feel different kinds of emotions and feeling when looking at the photographs. I believe that the target audience would understand the meaning straight away when they viewed my pictures by denoting my model playing basketball and enjoying himself. My belifs was that they would connote how much he loves basketball and would feel that love of basketball within each individual photograph. However my intensions were to change the moods sometimes by editing the colours of the environment in some type of way.

Looking at my portfolio of the finished product from my shoot I have come to an understanding on why I had chosen these pictures. Personally I believe the reason why I have used this photographs is due to the fact that each individual picture gives the viewer a certain feeling either based on the colours used or the effect of saturation or change of HUE within the picture. This is also due to the fact that I wanted the audience to be able to express some sort of emotion when looking at my photographs either through colour connotations or environmental connotations.

I believe as the photographer it is my responsibility to give life to my photography, and for my the best way to show that life was through the expression of colours and motion captured pictures.

The tools i mainly focused on using whilst on Photoshop were: select took, magic wand, magic eraser, layers, colour layer, paint brush,saturation, HUE, contrast and black & white. These are quite simple tools to use, but the way in which I used them helped compliment my pictures for my portfolio in quite a unique way. I believe when it came to editing my pictures on Photoshop, each one got better with experience. This was primarily due to the fact that quite a lot of the things I have done on Photoshop you have to learn on the spot, which I felt was very exciting for an inspiring when trying to tap into creative genius.

I feel like I could've took my shoot at various locations to meet the brief more but I am still pleased with the outcome of my shoot. thinking back to my shoot now, I believe a photographic technique I could've used to improve my photo would be the idea of leading lines, this to help focus a centre of interest within my pictures. I believe I could further develop my skills on Photoshop in order to produce high grade and good quality photographs further along the line, this can be done through practice within my own free time in order to get better familiar with the tolls and different settings and features of Photoshop.