Goodbye "Making Strange!"

Well, the "Making Strange" project is all done and dusted now. Here are my final images and my evaluation for the whole project!

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Evaluation

I am quite happy with how eye-catching my final prints are. I think this is because I used a mixture of darkroom printed images and hand-drawn elements which are not typical of photography degree work. I have also noticed that I have significantly improved my ability to step back periodically and evaluate recent tasks. I usually struggle with gathering my thoughts and putting them onto paper but because I made a personal goal to work on this attribute, I believe I have made a special effort to do so and I hope to continue this through my future projects.

Unfortunately, I do not believe my final prints are of professional standard, which saddens me. I think this is because I lack knowledge and a lot of skill in darkroom practices as I have only done similar work once before. I know for a fact that if this was a digital project rather than an analog one, that I would be so much happier with my final prints and they would be more visually effective because the majority of my photographic knowledge and skill lies in using a DSLR and Adobe Photoshop. On another note, I don’t think I spent enough time in the research and ideas process, therefore I didn’t find or was inspired to create a sound project idea. Because of this, my project changed at least three times as I was adapting to analog limitations and generally not finding past projects exciting enough to proceed with.

The visual effectiveness of my final prints is heavily affected by my skill with a new film camera. I have not yet managed to focus an image with it so it becomes tack-sharp, therefore all my prints have a slight soft-focus look to them. Although I do like the appearance of soft-focusing, I don’t think it fits with the idea of my project. I do however quite like the contrast between photographic image and pen-drawn elements, and I find their visual effectiveness quite striking.

Ideally, I would’ve liked the mask of lines to be part of the darkroom process, but I lack the knowledge on how to communicate this idea effectively with darkroom tools. If I were to do this project again, I would research into methods where I could gain crisp black lines on the photo paper without scratching lines into the negatives or other destructive methods. In my next project I am going to set another personal goal to make an extra effort to go out more often to shoot and trying to record as many ideas as possible. This way I believe my next project will be of a lot higher standard.

From my Making Strange project I have learnt an abundance of darkroom techniques which although are only basic, they are a firm base for me to expand my knowledge on with the next project. I have also learnt that the work process for an analog project is different to that of a digital one. I believe this is because analog projects are limited by the cost of resources and the amount of resources too, whereas digital projects work best when you make use of the seemingly endless memory card storage and digital experimentation in photoshop. The most important thing I have learnt is the sheer importance of the brainstorming/research phase at the beginning of a project. I rushed into this one excitedly, thus making the rookie mistake of not building a strong enough knowledge base for my ideas to build upon. I will definitely remember this throughout my future projects and will make an extra effort to do this thoroughly.

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