Thursday, 6 November 2014

Editorial Evaluation


For this Editorial project I have looked at how people are changing as they become active on social media sites.  I looked at how people portray themselves online: many people edit their lives down and only show the best of themselves because they do not want people to see their real lives. My photographs look at how people are becoming lost to the version of their world they have created digitally and I feel that my photographs show this through the use of shallow depth of field with the focus on the mobile phone.

I have been influenced by society and modern culture: it is acceptable to take a ‘selfie’ during any activity and all ages can be involved; the only limit is the length of your arm. Many celebrities and powerful political people are becoming involved and the genre quickly became instantly recognisable by the simple styling of the photograph. Personally I do not understand the obsession with taking ‘selfies’ throughout the day just to post online for fun but exploring my own self-image during this project was intriguing.

I feel that my final outcomes have been successful in showing that people are losing themselves to technology, the depth of field showing the person through the phone was a symbolic way of showing people online because many social media sites have apps that can upload photographs straight from phones. My first idea I tried for this project was not as successful as I hoped for because when I showed people my work they did not see the image in the same way that I did so this made me stop and rethink my idea to find a way that people would be able to see my idea more clearly.

My images could have been improved if I continued with studio shooting as I feel these are more successful in showing the person becoming lost to the social media sites because the plain background makes them appear as though they aren’t in a location anymore and have been taken into the digital world.
I have used many different techniques for this shoot as I have explored a few possible ideas for my project. I enjoyed being able to develop my technique from in the studio to going out on location; in the studio I was shooting on ISO 100 and this meant the shutter speed was slowed down so in many of the images there is slight movement with the phone so the screen looks distorted. While I was on location I was using the natural lighting available so I raised the ISO and this allowed me a faster shutter speed that stopped the motion blur.

I did not encounter any major problems however one slight problem was that I struggled to manually focus the image so that the phone was sharp as the person could not remain still and each model was stood in a slightly different position so the focus point was constantly changing, to try and get the phone in focus I took multiple images changing the focus each time.

The weekly group critiques we had helped me to focus my idea as people did not understand what was I was trying to show with my first idea as I think I took the idea too far and did not make it literal enough to be easily understood. In a tutorial we discussed ideas how to improve my technique so that I was not getting motion blur, this helped me to greatly improve my photographs, as the focus of the image is more obvious.

I think this project has helped me improve my studio skills as I do not use the studio often and trying a new technique in the studio was difficult at first but once I got back into the studio I really enjoyed it.

This project as challenged my ability to work with models who I have never met before as the many of the models from the studio shoot were from around the university building and I have never talked to them before.  On location I was challenged again because I was working with younger models who did not want to sit still and pose for long while I was struggling to focus manually.

If I had the chance to start this project again I would not spend so long trying to make my first idea work and go right ahead with my second idea because this worked faster and easier and I feel that it gets my idea across that people are becoming lost to technology and social media sites. 


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