Michaela Spinks-Evaulation
for Personal Project.
For the personal project, I really wanted to push
myself with my final outcome, as I feel my previous ones do not show off my
full potential. I wanted to create a travel book full of photos that I take on
my way to college, or other places on my travels I see often. My essay
was about expressing the beauty of those places that are not seen as your
'typical' beauty, so I thought my local area was best at representing this. New
Addington and Croydon are not seen as the most glamorous of places, however
because I have grown up around them, I get to see their beauty and bad days.
I want my travel book to look full and messy, like my own personal scrapbook
that is full of different creations and different materials.
I started off doing collages in my book of different
images, and then went on to do a themed collage of pictures I associate with
London. I really enjoyed this because I messed around with the composition and
also used different fabrics and materials for the backgrounds, which I thought,
worked well creating a more textual piece. Once I then took photo's, I edited
them on Photoshop, however I didn't do anything dramatic because I still wanted
them to look natural. Therefore I just exaggerated a few of the highlights in
each picture by manipulating the colour balance, which I thought brought out
more tones and gave the overall photo a slight filter. This was how I tried to
bring out each photo's individual beauty. I also experimented using the filter
gallery, as some of the effects on there could create a more textual look to
the overall picture. Some of the effects however took away the natural aspect
to the pictures, and either highlighted areas I didn't want to be highlighted
or decreased the focus on the areas I wanted to be shown. Some of the pictures
I did like in black and white because they created more of a sophisticated
look, as I do feel the colour took away the focus of the actual content in the
pictures, that’s why I preferred it black and white.
When it came to experimenting with my final pictures
and the final outcomes I wanted for them, I used personal materials such as my
own collections like cinema tickets, receipts, appointment cards etc, but I
also used twigs I picked up from my garden and a few things I found at the bus
stop outside my house. For my final outcome book, I have looked into the
technique of combining the pages together through binding. I really liked the
personal handmade, yet sophisticated layout of sewing the pages together as it
looked personal and experimental.
What went well with the design process was that I knew
exactly what I wanted. All my experiments linked in with each other, there were
no random experiments that I didn't learn anything from. From my experiments I
learned that less is more when it comes to expressing images in a more
naturalistic way. I knew what I wanted to achieve and I did everything I could
to achieve them. Finalizing my final layout for my book was a big moment for
me, because it's one of the few pieces of work I have completed and actually looked
at it and thought, yes, that's exactly what I wanted. I went out of my comfort
zone and pushed myself to achieve my work to the standard I did.
I looked into three artists when completing my essay,
and they were James Griffioen, Marchand and Meffre and Lin Osborn. What I loved
about all three of them was the freedom in their work, the way they expressed
the beauty of places that others may see as 'ugly'. I liked how Lin Osborns
work had this sophisticated final layout, whereas James Griffioens work was
more relaxed and less finalized. I feel this made his work more relatable out
of the three of them, however I preferred how Marchand and Meffre's work was
clearly more planned out and showed their intentions.
What I feel didn't go so well was relating my work to
the artists I looked at in my essay. I loved all three of their photographs,
however none of my pictures looked like any of them. I don't think I took
enough time when it came to taking photo's because they're not at the standard
they could have been. I didn't pay much attention to leading lines, or the rule
of three, or other ways to capture the viewer’s attentions. On the other
hand, a part of me is glad that my pictures were not that technical, that some
of them were at a slight angle, or did not have straightforward composition,
because my aim was for them to look spontaneous and relatable. I don’t think
they would have come across as relatable if they just look like a photograph
with no meaning or story behind it; I wanted my pictures to make people think.
If I had more time, I would have taken photo's of the same places, however I
would have thought more about the time of day I took them. The building in East
Croydon for example, I took in the morning on my way to college, however I
didn't think about taking the same photo, in the same place later on in the day when
it was darker and all the lights were on. This made me think I could have
represented my daily travels a lot better than just showing all my pictures at
the same time of day. I also would have experimented further with different
materials because I feel I could have gone to a shop and bought more objects to
put on the pages instead of just finding stuff on the ground outside.
The new skills that I learnt were believing in myself
more, and pushing myself out my comfort zone. I feel this is what made me happy
with my final outcome, compared to previous times before when I would create
the same old things and not feel any pride towards them.
