evaluation

Evaluation

Choosing the theme for my minor project was something which I had little difficulty with. Following my natural interests I chose to focus my project around documenting what is familiar to me. Over the summer I chose to document Durham Miners gala, a yearly event held in Durham which I have attended for almost all my life. The images I produced from this were something I was greatly proud of. When relating to this particular brief my images worked well as they were images which when presented as a collective told a story. During this project where I have had to capture images with a narrative and produce a photo book, my main influences have come from the work of Peter Dench, Paul Graham and Martin Parr. The reason I would say my work shows influence of Martin Parr is through the way I seem to naturally seek to capture unusual shots, where I may focus upon objects or people that most may not usually notice, or I tend to capture shots with bright ‘in your face’ colours. I feel my approach to photographing Durham miner’s gala is unique and shows my own take on the day’s events. Rather than traditional and posed shots my work tends to present a more relaxed and care free style of documentary photography. This is where I feel my work shows the way I have been influenced by Peter Dench. The project ‘Alcohol & England’ by Peter Dench is something which really inspired me in my own work. When I first set out to produce this project I not only wanted to focus upon Durham Miners gala but I also wanted to capture more everyday images of the working class people of today in their own environments. However I came to find I had to narrow my ideas down for my minor project as the time I have had has only been limited. I came to face some difficulties during this project when it came to the actual making of my maquette book. I had been greatly influenced by several books by Paul Graham, where I found images were laid out across a double page at a time. As the brief only required a maquette photo book I chose to make this by hand. The making of a book has been something which is new to me, so the whole process has been a learning process. During the making of my book I decided I would have to temporarily drop my original layout idea, as for now, printing across two double pages successfully and professionally would be something I would want to take more time to perfect. I therefore settled with a more simplified layout which I could achieve during the limited time frame this minor project allowed. I feel my project have been successful and has set me in good stead ready for my major project. If there was anything I could have done differently in this project it would be to be able to produce more shoots as I feel my project has not been possibly as in depth or explored as much as it could have been.