Includes: Research, Proposal and Evaluation
Mini Major Project
Moodboards
Proposal
The name of this project is “Mini Major Project”, the brief is to produce a set of 8 final prints which can be of: An Event, Retro themed set of studio pieces or a photo narrative. My idea is to produce a Calendar of 12 places around Yorkshire. The idea has come to me as I am interested in Layout and design and would be a good chance for me to create a nice, simple calendar which displays my photography oh places around Yorkshire. The reason I am using Yorkshire is I haven’t found or seen any calendars around parts of Yorkshire that I feel are worth buying and I believe now that technology is as strong as ever that people are just using their phones and not using physical calendars for homes and work etc and I feel if designs of these calendars were better people would invest and use them more. The idea is to go visit places such as Leeds, Sheffield, York, Wakefield, Barnsley, Harrogate and more and get 12 final images. Each image only 1 will represent each place for example the Town Hall in Leeds. How I will approach this project is by using a 60D DSLR Canon Camera and use a 15mm - 85mm Lense to capture high quality images but also able to use zoom and still get a good quality image. Also I will be using PhotoShop CC and Lightroom CC to edit my test and final images; also I will be using Indesign CC to create a book for the to display all the work including Research and Evaluations but also displaying my final Calendar design which I hope I can print and develop a couple of copies to display in my final exhibition, also hopefully can get some A2 prints of 2 of my best images at the end.
These places in the list will be the places I will be viisiting around Yorkshire to get the shots I need for the Calendar: 1. Leeds 2. Sheffield 3. York 4. Wakefield 5. Barnsley 6. Harrogate 7. Doncaster 8. Huddersfield 9. Saltaire 10. Yorkshire Dales
Places to shoot
Research
This first image is of bridge water place in Leeds City Centre. I chose to use this image as my idea is undecided on either city shits of places or country. this image catches my eye with the street lights shining around the image to show the main focus point. I feel the
(landscape Photography)
photographer chose a good spot and good camera to capture the image from below him. He has used a fast shutter speed to capture the moving cars aswell as the building which means there is more going on but its clear what the focus point is. The only problem with this image is for me I would have tried capture more around the building so zoom out to get more of the city in the shot but overall i like this piece.
This image isn’t in Yorkshire it is in Derbyshire around Ilam. I really like this image as you get the countryside and the town feel in one shot with the greenery in the background of the image and around the buildings . I like the way the image is taken straight on with the road being the main point of the shot and around it having the nice old styled buildings and the greenery to me the image is strong and a nice shot which would look good in a calendar. the negatives about this shot are like the previous image i feel it needs more buildingss in the shot it feels squished together but it is a strong image and what you do see in ths shot makes up for any negatives.
This image is of Roundhay park in Leeds. This shot is an image I am looking at in the countryside choice of the two. I like this image as unlike the others it doesn’t focus on the city or surroundings it simply focusing on makeing a nice image of the trees and flowers which will have been edited on photoshop to bring the colour out but is really strong and simple image but effective with its colour and composition which the shot has been taken. The omly negative with this image is the actual image which i found of this is quite poor quality which doesn’t show the audience it’s full potential. Overall I do really like this image and may have to do something like this in the test shots.
This is an image in the peak districk in Yorkshire/ Derbyshire. The image itself has not been edited but due to that brings a dark look on the back of the shot near the mountains which makes the focus point of the image of the sheep and trees seem quite light compared to the rest of the image. I like that the image was taken central to the location and definately used with a tripod to get the shot nice and straight and clear. The only negative with this shot is that if it was me i would have like a much brighter image instead of the dark clouds maybe popping it in lightroom and photoshop and chaning the exposure of the shot. Overall i really like this image and would like to try out this type of photography.
Research
This image is the design layout for my calendar, the calendar itself will be a flip design but the only alternate change from this image is that mine will be landscape. I chose my design to be like as it is a very clean design and especially the one on right it is quite unique and like how no boxes are used in each product just the number with the events underneath. The only factor I would alter with this design is the size of the calendar mine will be a desk a5 calendar but hopefully be able to try it in a3 and other sizes to see what works best for my design. My images also won’t be illustrations they will be photography so will look a lot different to this piece.
(chosen calendar)
Evaluation
the name of this project was “mini major project”, the mini major project is a brief to get you ready for the “final major project” a few weeks after this one. For this project my idea was to make a calendar for attractions in citys and towns in yorkshire but only use one of the images i took of each place and use this for each month from january to december of next year. the idea behind the photography was to go into different citys such as Leeds and Sheffield and more to get a really nice area of that city and use an image to represent it. the idea behind the calendar came from the fact it shows different types of design and brings graphic design and photography together in one physical design. The idea behind the design and layout of the calendar was to have a clean design which was a basic layout which would consist of a lot of white but on the white have a solid image and then underneath have the dates of the year from one to thirty one etc depending on the month. Also the calendar was going to be presented in as a flip design for example desk and home calendars usually have the images on a seperate page and then below a page attached for the dates and then keep flipping once the month changes like a normal calendar. That was all my original idea for the mini major project but then I started realising that i didn’t feel i could do the project in enough time and have the funds to get to the locations i listed in my “places to visit” page of the book so i decided to stick to the idea of the calendar but the theme would have to alter but as i really wanted to do the yorkshire calemdar i decided to hopefully bring this idea to my final major and use my enitial idea
for the final major instead so it still is possible to stick to that idea. my new idea was to stick is local until i had the funds for the yorkshire project and photograph places around and in the city of leeds, the theme was decided on “blue plaques” of leeds which are famous buildings around leeds or places that have meaning and history for example blue plaques would be used for famous people who’ve lived somewhere or a historic building like leeds library or the infirmary. i decided to visit these places and photograph the place and the blue plaques to have the bulding with the plaque so people then get to know twelve buildings of my choice around leeds that do have history. i chose twelve locations which were easy to get to and local but also that people may have heard of but i struggled with a flowing theme for the calendar and in my opinion the images aren’t the best of quality and also all look too different so theres no flow in the calendar which makes each image look like like they belong in the same calendar. The images i took were mostly used on a canon 600D with 15-85mm lense but some photo’s had to resolve in a compact camera and are shown by some of the quality in the shots. i didn’t want to just take images of buildings so planned on contacting people so i could come in and photograph inside the buildings and have all twelve images inside of there buildings but didn’t get anywhere with this idea as i tried contacting the town hall reception and leeds grammer school buy with a week gone didn’t get a response so had to compramise and just shoot the outside of the building apart from inside of the library which is for public use and the music hall which is also
for public but didn’t have much use with the others. With the designing of the calendar i stook with the flip idea and had the image at the top with the boxes on the bottom, it took a few attemps to see how i liked the text and where to place the blue plaques which i made the background transparent so you could only see the cut out plaque with the image. I put numbers from 1 to 31 in each month as i didn’t use my time well to sort out each month which i could and should have done but when i do this again i will be doing each day of the month right and writing the holidays for specific days to make it an actual calendar and not look rushed, i know i could have taken this project further but i feel i rushed the design and layout and for that reason makes my images look quite dull and not very exciting. Each photograph for me didn’t come out that well but i had a few issues with the camera settings and my skills in location photography needs to be improved for the final project. some images like cottage road cinema and victoria quarter for me are my strongest set of images i chose from out of the twelve but were the only two i focused on editing the others were just edited with levels and exposure settings on photoshop. I also used lightroom to bring out the colour in the photos as when they came out they were dark and the sky was dull which meant i had to fix the image with brightness and exposure on lightroom and photoshop. my least favourite images were railway roundhouse and ilkley moore train station as those two were used with my iphone to begin with then i went back with a normal canon compact camera.
The positives that came from this brief was that everything that didn’t work with this shoot will be resolved in the final major and i can use this project to help me with that project. in term of the images a few came out quite well and looks nice as a whole image which my favourite would be cottage road but i do like my corn exchange image aswell. the negatives about thie brief is that not everthing went to plan such as location change and the camera knowledge on location photography and lack of research to get inpiration to shoot and lack of creativity wasn’t shown in this the images that was shown in the quality in the shots. what i would change next time is look at the negatives in what i made and develop on them but use them to help me get the most out of the final major project. also to attend my subject and spend more time on the project and to be more motivated for the last brief. i feel it wasn’t a huge failure but it could have been a lot better both design and photographically. overall i believe this is a learning curve for the next project but it has given me motivation and determination to do well for the next project and the design of the calendar was a tester and was enjoyable to work with different sets of design.