Exam Final Outcomes

Full Exam EvaluationTo begin with, I wasn’t too sure what ideas I wanted to pursue for my exam preparation and the final outcomes for the theme ‘inside, outside and in between.’ Through mindmapping various words and ideas that related to the theme, I didn’t know where to start. I decided to come up with 2 small ideas/examples to help give me further inspiration for the more thorough ideas. I had planned to go on a trip to a wood/park area and thought I could perhaps incorporate landscapes into the theme, particularly the idea of partially blocking the landscape. I wanted to purely experiment with this idea first because I am not very familiar within this subject matter. I used coloured stickers placed on a sheet of acetate which I held in front of the lens and photographed, as well as photographing the landscape itself. Through editing on Photoshop, I managed to combine the two images together to create almost a window that we are looking through. One issue I encountered was that the acetate caused the landscape behind it to be slightly out of focus due to dust/marks on the sheet. Although I was quite pleased with the results, I decided that landscapes were not my strong point, and therefore I did not develop it into a full idea. I did another experiment through creating a short stop-motion animation. It was designed to represent a journey, travelling from the outside of my house, through my house and out the other side. I intended to create a film that would allow viewers to be able to view something from my perspective. Therefore, I included my hands in the shots i.e. knocking on front the door, and opening the back door. Considering that this was purely for inspiration and it didn’t take long to produce, I think the outcome was successful and I was pleased with it.

Overall I think that my initial photographs for idea one and two were effective and of good quality. I was really pleased with my initials for idea two (body parts photographed through the holes in coloured card). This is because I feel that they are quite unique and have a distinctive style that I haven’t really seen before, except for Txema Yeste’s photo of the eye through blue paper which I was inspired by. I feel that the range of body parts used i.e. ears, an open mouth, a foot, fingers etc. give the set some diversity and are generally aesthetically pleasing. The brightly coloured card contrasted against the subtle skin tones but yet created a balance. For idea one (the fruit and vegetables) I feel that perhaps it would have been good to use macro lenses and photograph much more detailed aspects of the inside and outside of the objects, rather than capturing the whole piece, as it may have been more visually interesting and also may have challenged my skills. I did this with one or two, which I did incorporate into the initial set because I felt they were strong. However, I didn’t go on to develop these further as they didn’t really fit into the set as a whole.

From looking at idea one, it is quite clear that my initial experiments didn’t develop into a thorough idea. This is purely because I felt that I wanted to explore a different subject matter. Also, idea two is really quite different from idea one. After experimenting with objects i.e. fruit, vegetables, cubes, ice etc. I felt that I wanted to explore something quite different with idea two, as I wasn’t sure on how I could take the existing idea further. Also, I did something else so that my ideas showcased different skills photographing different subject matter. I don’t really feel that one idea was more successful than the other because idea one involved more experimentation, but idea two had a very unique initial set in my opinion. With regard to my exam outcomes, they were not a development of idea one or two, as I wanted to channel a third, separate idea. However, my exam outcomes could be similar to the concept in idea two. Within the 12 hours I created collages of people and objects that reflected their personality. This could signify the connection between a person’s outer appearance and their personality. Sometimes there is a link, and sometimes there is not. This is similar to the symbollism in idea two.

For my exam project, I researched several artists including Lynn Skordal, Andy Small, Katherine Du Tiel, Irving Penn and Txema Yeste. Lynn Skordal’s work definitely inspired me with regard to my final exam outcomes. Her idea of exploring a person’s inner personality and displaying this on the outside intrigued me, and I created my pieces in a similar way. However, my collages were created digitally which made the outcomes more contemporary and different. For my first idea, I combined some of Andy Small and Katherine Du Tiel’s ideas and techniques in order to explore my fruit and vegetable theme. I think that Andy Small’s work was beneficial to me because it made me think about how I needed to consider technical and visual aspects (lighting, focusing, colour etc.) in order to create a successful set of visually appealing photographs. Katherine Du Tiel was also an effective choice because I used a similar projection technique to her. By projecting the inside of the fruit onto the outside, this made a strong connection to the exam theme. For idea two, Txema Yeste was a very strong artist link for me. I decided that I would photograph almost identical subject matter. However, I experimented with the different body parts and different colours to create a strong set of unique images.

On the whole, I believe I pushed my creative boundaries in various ways. For idea one I photographed fruit in ice as well as the initial photos themselves in ice cubes. This is something I hadn’t done before and I had to really consider lighting and composition. The use of macro lenses here helped me to successfully capture the details within the ice. The other developmental photos involved making paper cubes out of my photographs, and also projecting images onto one another, both of which were quite new techniques to me, but were linked to the artists I had chosen. Although I wasn’t familiar with these methods, I think they were quite creative and worked well. For idea two, I felt that my experiments weren’t too complicated as they were to create repetition within the idea of inside, outside and in between, by simply re-photographing. If I had more time I would have liked to have been more creative with this idea, but I felt that the initial photos were strong in themselves & didn’t need too many developmental techniques.

In my opinion, the exam itself went well. Despite being 12 hours long, I used all the time effectively. From glancing at my final outcomes, it may look as if they didn’t take 12 hours to put together. However, they were creatively challenging as a lot of intricate Photoshop work was involved which was incredibly time consuming. I had around 200 unedited photos to begin with, including the portrait photos, photos to use as backgrounds/overlays and all the individual objects which I had photographed. I had to edit every single photo that I used in some way, even if it was just basic, and I had to cut around all the objects. However, I feel that it was worth spending time on it, seeing as the outcomes were successful. The only issue I have is that all of the outcomes involve full portraiture (mostly head and shoulder shots), but one outcome is slightly different and perhaps doesn’t fit within the set as well. I created this as almost an extra outcome which I had planned to do if I had completed the others. If I had more time I could have produced a similar outcome to this one, focusing on a specific body part e.g. ears as opposed to the whole person. Nonetheless, I am still pleased with the outcomes.

If I had more time on the exam prep, I would have liked to have explored further with an additional idea. Although I feel that landscapes isn’t my strong point, I perhaps would have looked at cityscapes or street photography, focusing on specific areas like alleyways, doorways, holes and arches etc. that relate to the inside, outside and in between theme.