Over the course of the year I feel that this project has taught me a huge amount about working as a photographer, both artistically and professionally. Initially, the project started off as a way for me to discover more about how other people live with facial birthmarks; using photography as a device to hear about my subject’s stories and experiences, but has expanded hugely to provide me with opportunities which have extended my skills as a photographer.
Firstly, the knowledge I have gained from working directly with the Birthmark Support Group, and their design agency, Flag, has been absolutely invaluable. Both organisations treated me as a professional working photographer, requiring me to follow their strict brief, keep to deadlines and constantly keep in touch to keep the relevant people up to date with my progress. What this did was give me a taste of what it is like to work in the challenging world of professional image making, and I now feel that I have gained a huge amount of key skills which are very important to have when finishing University.
The challenges I have faced during the project, from arranging travel and accommodation to difficulties with subjects have forced me to become a good problem solver, and have improved my organisational skills exponentially. Importantly too, my own personal confidence was enhanced by doing the project; I begun to realise the importance of making the subject feel comfortable, and my own professionalism and confidence did this. I needed to get to a stage with the project where I felt like I knew what I was doing and what I wanted to produce from each shoot. To achieve this I first visited subjects I had met before, in order to prepare me for visiting strangers. This technique really helped me, and I feel improved the images.
Artistically, the brief given to me by Flag has meant that I am now experienced in producing work to fit in with someone else’s ideas and styles, not just my own. I had to produce a product in return for the funding I received, and this was a brilliant learning experience.
With regard to my own personal project for the University module, I feel I have gone through a great development process and over the course of the year created some work that I am proud of. Initially, I wasn’t happy with the quality and style of the images I was producing. Following a number of tutorials and group feedback sessions I begun to experiment with other ways of lighting the subjects, moving from on camera flash to studio lighting. I started to see what worked best when considering posing and location, and begun to gain more confidence in my work as the year progressed.
The main issues I would address given the chance would be to take more time with each subject. I think that because I was nervous when working with a stranger that I may have rushed some of the photographs, which resulted in some poor results. One print in particular is noticeably out of focus due to an un-calibrated lens, which lead me to replace that particular lens, but if I had taken more time over my work I would have noticed whilst still on the shoot, rather than when printing my final pieces.
Also, technically I would have paid more attention to getting consistent lighting across all of the shoots and subjects I visited. Some of the images required a fair amount of post processing to boost the brightness, which I did not like to do. I should have used studio lighting from the beginning of the project. Usually, I would reshoot, but due to the costs of travelling to each subject I could not charge the BSG twice for my mistakes! However, I feel that I have learnt a lot from this, and given the opportunity to do a similar project would definitely ensure I had every possible bit of equipment and plenty of time to produce the best possible images.
With regard to my research and development, I feel that although compared to some projects, mine does not show a large amount of stylistic development, my image making skills have come a long way. It was very difficult for me to experiment between visits, obviously because each shoot had to be right on the day so I had to quickly find a style that worked and run with it. However, I feel the limited scope I had to try new ideas and develop my work, I did take, and this is represented by my blog.
Overall, I feel that the project was very successful. Given more time, I would have liked to have visited more subjects and taken more care over the technical side of the image making, but I think twelve images is a good number to end on. I am pleased with how much I have learnt about other people’s experiences living with facial birthmarks; the photographs I have produced represent my own personal journey so in this regard the project has been a success. Other than this, I have also learnt a huge amount about working professionally with the Birthmark Support Group and Flag design agency, expanding my skills as a photographer.
