Final Evaluation

Image from Discussion of exam paper blog post.

When originally looking at the exam paper, I really struggled on what topic to explore. However, after looking into a couple of different ones- Manufactured Structures and Everyday objects, I discovered that I may find that everyday objects may become tedious for me to complete a whole project on. So therefore, I decided to commence my project on manufactured structures. The exam paper massively helped steam the framework of my preparatory shoots, thus leading on to my exam project. For example one of the key terms on the exam paper that stood out to me was Architectural facade-  The building is often the most important aspect from a design standpoint as it sets the tone for the rest of the building- it's as if the front of the building is the face of the entire building, when looking at the front of the building you are able to build up a mental image of what  the rest of the building looks like- from inside. This then gave me an idea of experimenting with different churches within Waltham Abbey. My initial shoot ideas consisted on; Churches, old houses, war structures, historic remains, shops and pubs and then finally “before and after”. If you were to look at my final pieces on my preparatory unit alone, you can see that the initial ideas were not consistent across my project. This is because when conducting the project, I decided not to use certain ideas because some of them were not approachable. For example, I was going to allocate a whole shoot just on war structures which would have meant a visit to Waltham Abbey 

Image from Unit 2 shoot 6.

Gunpowder Mills, which in the end I never ended up conducting because alongside having to have the time to go when it was actually open was quite hard because the availability was restricted but also when I thought about the final images which I could gain, they wouldn’t have been very successful because it would have been behind a fence and I would have been able to position the framing as I would like to. As the project progressed, I focused on not only the Architectural aspect of structures but also the term of a Facade that symbolically has the meaning of a decepted outward appearance- this term therefore helped the framework of my houses and shop front shoots. This is because it showed me the symbolic meaning of structures that is doesn't matter how "pretty" or "nice" the outside of a building looks like, the inside could be completely different. 

Image from Lewis Baltz- Discussion of exam paper and
photographer research blog posts.

Image from shoot 3
on exam shoot

As a whole, my photographer research and research log was very useful in helping the creation of this project. For example, Lewis Baltz was one of the key photographers that helped influence my work. Firstly, I discussed his work in my exam paper discussion and then completed a detailed photographer research on his work. In my research, I learnt how his work was included in the group called the New Topographic, which defined the work of photographers with very similar aesthetics with the composition of head on, and the simplicity in editing through black and white. This project also taught me how Baltz’ work was also inspired by different painters which I find is quite clear in certain images. Examples of how Baltz has helped influence my work from the preparatory shoots include my houses shoot- a head on approach including the front stretch of the house, making it much more appealing for my audience than just a standard house. Then continuing on Baltz’ work rolled over to helped complete my exam shoots because I took the experimentation of his work style in my test shoots to complete my shop exam shoot. The image I have shown here, I find very useful in 

Image from William Eggleston in Unit 1 blogger research,

displaying how my work was influenced by Lewis Baltz but, I also believe that I have been able to take my learning from my photography course as a whole- from AS all the way to now as I have learned a variety of different famous photographer who's work I keep in the back of my mind. For my image here especially, when I went out and conducted this shoot, I saw these two doors together and I automatically found symbolism which has also been used in the work of William Eggleston.

Image from Jason E. Powell shown in my research log post.

Moreover, photographers such as Jason E.Powell combined with the style of Bernd and Hilla Becher massively helped influence my work of my Old Vs New shoots in both my preparatory shoots and my exam shoots. I found the test shoots really successful in teaching me the technique of how to approach this idea. For example, the work of E.Powell included holding up the old image directly and taking a photo of the photo with the rest of the location surrounding the frame, however, I attempted this outside the shoots before actually conducting any of the shoots and struggles with it because there was too much I had to focus on. Therefore, I produced shoots of images that were edited next to the old images- directly showing the difference. I then used Bernd and Hilla’s work to help blend these images together because I wanted to make my “new” images, very similar to the older ones in terms of the editing style. Therefore their work continued to help me in my exam shoot because during my test shoots I came across different techniques which did not work, for example the use of a tripod in my test shoots was unsuccessful because I struggled to get the same height and angle as the original photo; therefore in my exam shoot, I deiced not to use a tripod for my new Vs old shoot as it was 

Image from Shoot 2 on exam blogger.

much easier to complete similar images with a hand held camera instead. Furthermore, through experimentation I discovered different ways of editing to help my creation of the final pieces. An example of this is that to start with, I tried to recreate the colour edit from the older image onto the newer image, which I found very unsuccessful because the old images were different colours that were quite hard to recreate through Adobe PhotoShop and was therefore not happy with that outcome. Therefore when I came to editing my work in my exam, instead of doing this, I made them all black and white- making the old one the same style of black and white as my new photo as apposed to tea stained. Furthermore, to make as equal photos as possible, my experimentation in my test shoots showed me that in my exam shoots, I should place the images on top of each other, lower the opacity and then aline the photos. This had a much more successful result. As shown in the image here of my image, I think it is clear how my work was influenced by Jason E. Powell but also when looking at the editing I think it has very successfully highlighted my influence of Bernd and Hilla.

Image from Vivian Maier from my
photographer research in unit 1
of AS photography

Image from Robert Adams from
photographers research in A2 unit 2
blogger.

Furthermore, an aesthetic in which I found successful when completing my test shoots was the use of framing in an image. Framing in a photo was an element which I learnt in the first unit in the first year (AS Level) which I hadn't really touched upon since last year. However, as a whole, I found this aesthetic when combined with the aesthetic of a "straight" head on composition of an image really successful because it was almost as if my work was creating doors into the other world. Originally, I completed this in my first shoot in my test shoots and approach this element purely through coincidence however found it worked really well so therefore decided to use this style when completing my exam shoot. Moreover, I believe this therefore shows how the work in my first year was helped influenced and has extended the worked of everything I have learnt during my photography course because I used the famous work of Vivian Maier. Maier's work also links with this unit of work of Manufactured Structures because within my photographers research I researched the work of Robert Adams (another New topographic photographer) who in some of his work also captured framing in a  photo which I found really interesting and successful- this is because it gives the audience more depth to an image, they are given the main meaning of the structure but then if you look deeper into the image you are presented with something else, as if it was a completely different image. When you look at my image shown here, I think it is very successful in showing two things. One is how my photographer research helped the creation of my final project in my exam shoots. Then a second factor which I believe this image presents is how my test shoots have successfully influenced my final shoots for my exam because if you look on my component 2 blog of my preparatory shoots, I created a very similar image which I found really successful so I decided to revisit this location for my exam shoot. Moreover, I decided to improve on the image in my test shoot by extending my exploration further through interlinking the work of Henri-Cariter Bresson who's work was useful in my unit 1 of my second year of photography, of the decisive moment that if I were to have taken my photo a moment later, the subject shown walking between the two trees would no longer be in the same position.


In the section of the manufactured structures, the exam explains a variety of different photographers such as Andreas Gurskey and Lewis Baltz whom carefully frame their images using a similar composition across their whole series of photos. I believe this is one of the main factors of the exam paper in which displays how I have successful responded to the topic that I have chosen. Moreover, I believe I extended the work on the examples given because I gave it my own interpretation for example using symbolism in showing structural facade and personification of buildings- shooting a series of shop fronts and doors. As a whole I believe I have been able to successfully gain a strong final series of images in this project through the help of photographers such as Baltz and Gurskey. Across this project I believe the strongest part is how I was able to incorporate work from my entire course of photography- using influence from work I learnt in AS level but also across this second year. When looking at all three of my shoots, I believe my shoot three of doors and arches was my strongest series of images because as already mentioned I believe these gain the most symbolism but also show how my research across my project has helped the creation of my work. If I were to have more time to improve this project and it were forceable, I would like to extend my project further than Waltham Abbey, using other towns that are seen as historic and capture known buildings there- this way I believe the images would still interlink because I would be capturing in the same style as the photos shown here though there would be more death and it would be more representative- generalisable across the world.