Buddhist temples in Burma, 1984

Photograph by Thomas Hoekper

Practice shot, rose bud Practice shot, scratched paintPractice shot, frustration portrait

Iona Spence-Dingle Unit 9 Evaluation

PART 1

House of Annapurna

Photograph by Daniel Hoshizaki,

Toad River Valley, Canada

Photograph by Michael Christopher Brown

I decided that I wanted to focus on landscapes for my final exhibition after undertaking my research ;my primary inspirations came from the landscape images featured on the National Geographic website, and landscape photographer: Thomas Hoekper.

Although really admire the images on National Geographic, because they are all so visually stunning, I was most inspired by Thomas Hoekper, as his landscapes seem to really capture the atmosphere of the scene he is photographing. For example, in his photograph of the Buddhist Temples, he really captures the tranquillity of the rural Burmesse morning in the lighting and composition of the image.

For my practice shots I predominately photographed macro and portrait subjects, as I was struggling to find interesting examples of landscape on school grounds. I have included some examples of what I consider to be my most successful practice shots. My favourite is the scratched paint photo, because I was struggling to take a truly abstract photo, but I think I achieved abstraction in that particular shot

Iona Spence-Dingle Unit 9 Evaluation

After further researching my subject matter: landscapes, I chose to narrow my exhibition theme down to simply horizons. Here is a collage I created from images of horizons that I found on the internet and particularly liked. These images further built upon my vision of the sort of horizon images I would like to take.

Here are my final photographs. I edited my photographs in Photoshop because I wanted to adjust the exposure, brightness, contrast and offset to best highlight the colours in the clouds. In most cases I adjusted the image so that the horizon itself appeared in black, so that none of the viewer’s focus was taken away by the intense colours and interesting shapes of the sky and clouds.

Gernerally the first step was increasing the brightness of the image as much as I could, without it looking stange. Through this process I learned that sometimes less is more, in the sometimes it is better not to mess with the brightness and controst so much that your image no longer looks real.

The second editing step was tweaking the vibrancy and saturation of my photograph. I enjoyed this step because I think that the small alterations I made at this step were what really enhance my photograph, thus I learned how to improve the appearance of my images, with a fairly simple technique.

Here is a good example of how I have editing can improve an image. As I mentioned before, I have altered the horizon so that it appears very dark, then I increased the brightness of the sky. I particularly like the fact that this image has an almost painting-like quality to it.

‘I like the glare around the edge of the photo

because it brings out the colours around it, which

are nice’

Iona Spence-Dingle Unit 9 Evaluation

Upon completing my questionnaire, most people commented on how editing had improved my images effectively, and that on the whole my images are interesting and attractive. In terms of constructive criticism, some people recommended that I thought more carefully about the presentation of my images, in terms of borders and arrangement.

Iona Spence-Dingle Unit 9 Evaluation

Overall I am very pleased with my final exhibition photos, as I feel like I have achieved everything I wanted in my images; they are all aesthetically pleasing, and really capture the natural beauty of the New Forest. If I was to do the project again then I would perhaps choose a topic that allowed me to experiment with different subject matter, for example macro. In my questionnaire the most common criticism was that not all of my photos were particularly eye-catching, but I think choosing a more open exhibition title will ensure that this is not an issue next time. Furthermore, I would probably arrange my photos slightly differently, maybe with larger boarders, next time.