Work diary - shoot 1

Evaluation

I really enjoyed my first session of shooting Evidence. I managed to come up with some good examples and straight images from this shoot. One positive aspect of the shoot was the weather. It was quite sunny which meant the form, shape, texture and tones could all be seen clearly in my photos. When I had taken a lot of photos outside, I decided to take some indoors as I thought a lot of evidence could be found here. This was really beneficial as I found some books and pens, so created a scene of evidence of someone working or reading. In one photo which I particularly liked, I folded a page in the book to show evidence that someone has been reading it. I think the creativity I used really benefitted the outcome of this shoot as I was able to create my own evidence. Another positive of this shoot is that I took a lot of pictures of the same thing but from various different angles. This was an advantage as I could pick which angle I preferred at the end of the shoot. When It came to editing I realised that a few of the images looked better in black and white in order to emphasise the texture and shape, for example I wanted to emphasise the rough texture on a bench to show evidence of damage, and I wanted to emphasise the shape of a shadow to show evidence of light. This worked quite effectively with some of the images.

A disadvantage of this shoot would be that I found it quite hard to find examples of evidence. At first I was looking for things like rubbish on the floor or damage, but this was limited in the area I was in. Because of the lack of ideas I didn't end up with a lot of photos, and some of them were quite similar. Another problem would be that I had trouble with my camera so a few of the images came out quite blurry, which ruined the quality. Despite these points I did enjoy the session and am happy with the outcome.

Progression

When I next shoot evidence I want to be able to think more creatively and more widely about the topic. For example I want to create more of my own evidence scenes like I did with the books and pens, rather than just taking pictures of what's there. I also would really like to take pictures in a large variety of locations, for example somewhere with a lot of graffiti to show evidence of human presence, or somewhere deserted or abandoned to show evidence of abandonment or damage. This way I will end up with a larger variety of images. Another idea would be to take evidence images in the studio as well. I will bring in some evidence related props and use these for a studio shoot, which would result in very different images from the ones taken during shoot 1. I could also try making a multiple image out of evidence images as this will be a unique and creative approach.