Self Evaluation

Professional Frameworks Evaluation – Laura Parkinson

I found this unit very interesting; I especially enjoyed assignment one and two with the keyword brief. Having to capture keywords with a certain colour was especially helpful as I found myself in a routine of just capturing portraits; so having to capture objects and landscapes was a challenge.

Assignment three was the hardest, due to my lack of confidence. I find it hard to talk to people in my class, so having to walk up to people in the street and ask them for their photographs was really difficult! It took me seven or eight trips to Manchester, only taking a few photographs a time, to complete this assignment. I have gained some confidence out of this brief, but not enough to do it as a job or larger project. If I had bags of confidence, I could have produced some really well composed images, but the rush and embarrassment of it all was too much for me to think solely about photography techniques!

Assignment four was my favourite brief from this semester by far! I loved being able to think of a concept and produce some images reflecting my ideas. I had always wanted, since college, to produce some post-apocalyptic style images. I watched films such as 28 Days Later to gain an idea of how films execute this idea, and then captured my own cinematic style images. I used two models for this, my boyfriend and me. I think this worked really well as a concept, and in the future, would like to spend more time on this and produce images on a grander scale such as the Manchester apocalyptic scenery that I research on my blog.

Overall, reflecting on what I wrote in my Photo Skills A self evaluation, I think some of the things I slated myself on have developed. My awareness of time and deadlines has furthered, as I had all my needed photographs finished a week before the deadline, which meant I had a week to edit, criticise and take more shots if the time came to it. The way I organise my work (on my hard drive and laptop) has improved too, as I am keen to make sure everything is tidy before I begin to edit, to make my life a lot easier! However, my lack of confidence needs to vastly progress, and I think this is manageable through doing my own personal project of compiling photographs of strangers to boost my confidence slowly; two months was not enough time to gain confidence and complete the assignment to a high standard.