Final Evaluation

In conclusion of my project, I have completed ten shoots which explore the theme of youth culture. These include a range of location and studio photoshoots, as well as some that focus on objects as well as people. As a whole, I have found that my later shoots are the ones that are most successful as they are the ones that represent the work that I originally intended on shooting. Shoots six to ten show a candid, documentary style body of work and truly show the everyday nature of the youth I was following. This also relates to shoot one. I feel that these shoots are clearly influenced by the work of Musa N. Nxumalo and Bruce Davidson due to the use of black and white and they way that the images focus on everyday, realistic youth rather than an extreme and exaggerated culture of partying/rebellion. Shoot six had my favourite outcome as I feel that it is the closest to what I wanted to get with my images. The setting was relaxed as it just showed to girls hanging out, however it still conformed to the stereotype of youth as rebellious as it showed the girls drinking alcohol. As the setting of the shoot was so relaxed and the girls felt comfortable, they were completely natural in front of the camera, which helped me create the candid look of the images. I also really enjoyed the outcome of shoot ten, as it was quite different from what I had done in my previous shoots yet it still fit the theme I was going for. It showed youth as quite innocent and fun as the two girls featured were playing around in a playground, as well as showing youth reconnecting with their childhood. I also enjoy how the images within this shoot are more portraiture based than some of my other shoots as it really captures the expressions and emotions of the subjects. Whilst I do not feel that it goes well with the rest of my work and I have not included it in my final 40 images, I really enjoy the outcome of shoot five as I created a photo joiner of different young people, as a way to represent different styles and how unique each individual is. I feel that this helped me showcase some of my editing skills, as well as clearly representing each person in the image. As stated previously, I did really enjoy the outcome and hoped to include this in my final 40 images, however when I did include it the work did not look cohesive as it stood out against the rest of my documentary work. This is why I have decided to leave this out of my final images. The editing process carried out was quite simple as all I did was make the images black and white, increase the contrast and add a vignette to the picture. I feel that this simplicity works well with the theme of the project as I aimed to make my images as realistic and as natural as possible, and any additional editing, I feel, would have started to make the images appear manipulated and therefore not a true picture of events. On the other hand, the fact that there has not been much editing done to these images has meant that I have not been able to fully explore different editing techniques and therefore develop upon my skills.

Shoots two to five, however, were studio based and I feel that these are not the style of photographs I wanted in my project. I carried out these shoots so that I had explored all of my options and, due to timings and availability, they were my best option. I feel that they do document youth today as it does represent their style and what their interests, however I preferred the look of my location shoots and felt that these better captured todays young generation. The location shoots were also the style of images that I originally intended on capturing and so I feel that by using the studio, I strayed away from my concept. The only exception I found with these shoots was shoot two, as I did manage to gather some candid images from this shoot. This is due to the fact that I set up the camera in the studio, but asked the girls in the image to act natural in front of the camera and do whatever they want. So, although these images were taken in a studio setting, I feel that they still go well with the other shoots and look good against them. As a result, I decided not to include any images from shoots three to six in my final 40 images as they looked extremely out of place and my work did not look coherent with them included.

As a result, I do feel that I have created a cohesive body of work within my final 40 images, as I have solely focussed on the documentary shoots and have not included the studio ones. When looking at my project as a whole, I feel that it is not as cohesive as I hoped it would be and, if I were to do it again, I would not explore studio work and would purely conduct documentary/location portraiture shoots. My reasoning for why I believe my final 40 are a cohesive body of work is that all of my shoots explore the same theme of youth, whilst each having their own unique setting and 'plot'. For instance, shoot six shows two girls sat together in a house, drinking and having fun whilst shoot nine features my own perspective of life from a hospital bed. Whilst these two shoots are, on the surface, completely different, they both tie in to my project and represent youth in different ways. With shoot six, it shows what you would expect to see with young people - hanging out, drinking and playing games. Shoot nine, however, shows are more serious side of youth and carries the message that being young is not just having fun all of the time, and that negative things can happen to anyone. Shoots seven and eight are both linked to the work of Adrienne Saligner, as it focuses on the bedroom of a teenager. Shoot seven focuses on the actual person in their bedroom, whilst shoot eight focuses on the bedroom itself and the belongings that are within it. These two are clearly a coherent body of work as they are both inspired by the same body of work. I feel that the main aspect of my work which makes it seem so cohesive is the fact that I have used the same editing techniques for all of my images - they are all black and white. This has helped tie all of my work in and make my final images flow.

Furthermore, my work has been majorly influenced by the photographers that I researched when starting my project. My exploration into Bruce Davidson's work is what lead me to wanting to focus on the more everyday aspects of youth than trying to portray an exaggerated and stereotypical youth culture, as I felt this would be more raw and would perhaps make the subjects of my images appear more relatable. I also felt that by doing this, I would create quite a unique piece of work as many people tend to focus on the negative side of youth, rather than the positive. Musa N. Nxumalo also majorly inspired my project as his Alternative Kidz series was shot within someones house and showed the group within the shoot having fun and being themselves in a relaxed environment, whilst still drinking and doing things that are stereotypical for young people. Therefore, stereotypes have been followed but in a realistic way. I found this interesting and wanted to include this within my work, as the stereotypes set for young people do have some truth to them, and it would not be realistic to not include them to some extent. Not only did my research into photographers give me themes and aspects that I wanted to include in my own work, but it enabled me to figure out my own style of work and figure out my own unique aesthetic. For example, within this project I focussed a lot on creating contrasting tones as I enjoy the way this looks in black and white and I feel that it can really make certain aspects of images pop without the use of colour. Also, by conducting research before carrying out my shoots, I was able to find out what I did not want to include in my shoots. For instance, whilst I enjoyed Andy Richter's work on Taiwan youth, his work focussed on this specific youth and how their location effected their culture. I found this very interesting and liked the photos he created, however I wanted to capture youth as a whole and not focus on their heritage/location.

From completing this project, I have been able to discover my own personal style of photography and work out where my interests truly lay. Before conducting my shoots, I knew that I had an interest in documentary photography as I enjoyed the work of other photographers who had created documentary series. However, I had not fully explored this myself and only had minimal opportunities to create documentary photo series. This project enabled me to explore this genre of photography fully and, from this, I discovered that I really enjoyed shooting documentary images as there was much more freedom than a studio shoot would allow. I also felt that I was able to capture more unique and natural images as the scenarios in which I took my photos were comfortable for the subjects. This gave me candid images, which is a style that I really enjoy. I also discovered how unique each individual is, and that 'youth culture' cannot have a single definition or specific conventions as each person is different.

If I had more time, I would have explored the exaggerated and stereotypically rebellious side of youth as I feel that this would have made an interesting shoot. I also feel that, by shooting this, it would have been interesting to compare a shoot of that theme to one of my more natural, everyday shoots. I would also possibly explore a different way of taking photos, for example, with a polaroid or disposable camera as I feel this would have given the images an interesting, vintage look.