A start

Perhaps an appropriate way to start 'this' is by forming a small culmination of my works and break down my process of improving as a photographer/ creative. That's not to say I am going to start flapping off about how good my photos are, quite the contrary, I will deconstruct the process of taking the photo and then criticise the shit out of, what is essentially, my baby.
A more specific start will be this photo of my friend Tomás.

For me to say that this was THE photo. The photo which acted as the catalytic single clap that activated the avalanche of passion for visual creativity would be an untruth. To be honest there was no clap in the first place, more like a slow oscillating wave of ups and downs and gains and failures. Laborious but worth it, for I could get lost in filmmaking, photography and creativity.
No, this photo was the one photo I took which I was genuinely proud of. Becoming proud of something that I...ME...Have made has been a slow and laborious process in itself, So on a personal note, this photo in all its simple glory was a mini-win for me.
Now for the criticism. Seeing as this was the near the start of my photography experience there was a lot I did not know and a lot I was yet to feel comfortable with for example camera use and lighting. A shining example, shining ever brighter for me, glaringly bright in fact, would be how the main focus of the photo, the deep cut jawline and rigid shadow, is not entirely in focus. What is in focus is the ear... Not quite what I intended, well In reality very little was intended by this photo, its purpose was to look nice. The beating question that I um and ah about on a daily basis is: Is that intention enough? Should I put more thought into my photos? More control? To me, the fact that this photo was taken on a whim felt like a negative, but now, with the blessing of hindsight, I see that perhaps the whim based nature of the photo is what made it. Like film photographers having one chance to take a photo and not knowing how it will turn out until it has been processed.

The ulterior motive has begun to break the surface of the grave. The grey veined hand of immediate self-improvement feels the ground as I write this. So this is not only for the purpose of introduction but also so I can improve from what I find, as I write.

Photo number 2:

As you may have noticed, By photo number 2 I mean there are 2 photos that I will talk about in this second segment because I feel that two can speak as one. What I mean is that the correlations between the two enable me to talk about the two as a category, these correlations being; Street photography and Story...

(Quick key: The man = Picture of man reading book; The Policeman = Policeman with horse)

My first ever involvement in photography began in secondary school, at an after-school class, in which our first assignment was street photography. This was akin to throwing one angsty blind mole into a life drawing class, at least that's what it felt like to an anxious youth thinking 'I have to take pictures of other people?! I might have to ACTUALLY interact with somebody! Gasp, woe is me, woe is me'. Thankfully the project was awesome. It opened up my world to other people which showed me: 1- how people are vast abyssal holes of mystery unending 2- People are quintessential to joy/emotion. Woah....Deep. Aside from that wishy-washy 'personal growth', I found that I love taking photos of people because they are different from me, and I think at this point, I was fed up with being in my own mind.

The photo of the policemen was not the first photo of another person I had taken, but it was one of the first notable photos in which it will have had to have been taken right then, in that moment, for the photo to have come out as it did. This showed me that 'good photography' (whatever that may be) isn't synonymous with meticulous control. There are no rules as such, just guidelines.

Now, in the taking of the policeman, I could have thought about many more things to make the photo more complete. Lighting was not a consideration when taking this photo, as with many of my other photos, and that lack of focus can mean that I may miss something or the photo could have been made a little or a lot better by considering THE major thing in photography. Light. Like THE major thing Jesus christ...

So lessons learned from The policeman are akin to that of the man and his book, except now I decided to pay more attention to light in 'the man'. I realised what section of the photo I wanted to be my focus and adjusted the exposure accordingly, so even if the background is overexposed, the focus is correct in HIS exposure. I experimented more in the way I played with light, and experimentation is always good (usually)

A combining criticism would be the composition, In laymen's terms, I'm talking about the ingredients of the photo, what it is made of. It just isn't enough to centralise my consciousness to where the focus of the photo would be positioned e.g. the horse or the man. What I need to drill into myself is the importance of the whole frame. Look at everything before the photo is taken. Repeat repeat repeat until technique becomes habitual.

Photo numéro 3!

I choose this photo as the 'In nuce', the summary. One of the most recent photos I had taken was on an extraordinarily rare BRITISH SNOW DAY yaaaaaaaaay! I mean holy shit I cannot contain my raw unapologetic excitement for this most magical of days, in which the sky both opened up for snow and closed itself, and us, from the sky. It was a day that I felt I had to make the most of, so I grabbed my camera and headed to the most beautiful place in Bristol... The clifton suspension bridge. I shared this ethereality with my buddy Conrad, one of the most talented of buddies I have the pleasure of knowing x
We galavanted around the top of the hill all the way through dusk, traversing through the snow, freezing our bristol tits off, We britz are not accustomed to any weather really.
On the way to the bus stop was when I snapped this picture. It was a photo in a moment, because I knew that Conrad wasn't the biggest fan of me taking his picture I knew I had to be quick. I thought about what I wanted my ingredients of the photo to be, the snow and lights, and I thought about how I wanted my focus to look, strong and human, which was gained by the low angle shot and the spontaneity of the photo. Many of the lessons I aimed to learn through my previous pictures are symbolised in this photo. Thus a culmination of photos becomes a culmination of photos that includes a photo which acts as a culmination of the prominent lessons I have learned through the other photos involved in the whole culmination malarky. In other words.

The end.... x