BA (Hons) Photography – Portraiture

Evaluation

This project was a great learning curve for time management / digital workflow and I feel as though I broke the given timescale down into manageable sections to suit me, alleviating any pressure I would have put on myself to hit the hand in deadline.

I would have preferred to have been able to allocate myself more studio time, but there was a lot more to learn with Lightroom, managing raw files and actually editing my images down to the correct number before processing them ready for printing.

The first step was learning how to set up the studio and using the equipment, getting comfortable with everything to allow me to best utilise my allocated time within the studio environment.

There was a lot more research with this project as there are so many different ways for lighting techniques and could probably take a life time to master them all, so keeping the lighting simple was my best option and I feel as though it worked, allowing me more time actually taking the photographs.

Lightroom has now become the main software I use for all my images – importing, adjustments, creating a library and preparation. This again will take time and practice to master, but I find myself using it more and more, becoming more proficient with each session.

Although my home prints will still be acceptable to a certain degree, after seeing the quality of the c-type prints for presentation purposes, the quality was an eye opener.

I do believe that the images I have produced are of a higher quality than could have been achieved if I had used my Canon 550D. The equipment used does make a difference, as does the format of the image by which I mean shooting in Raw and not compressing the resulting data into “jpeg” format.

In conclusion I feel I have produced some of my best images and I can definitely say I learned so much and will continue to do so as I find myself researching more photographers each week. I really enjoyed this genre of photography and would like to pursue portraiture and studio work further, maybe trying to take it down the artistic route rather than the commercial and hopefully one day getting some of my prints on to a wall in a gallery or on to the cover of a magazine such as Hotshoe.