Evaluation

Evaluation

I think this project was quite freeing, I had a chance to experiment with different concepts with no boundaries. At first this was a struggle for me personally I couldn't narrow my idea down to something final and for a week or two I was very unsure about where to take this project. However when I decided to focus on the modified community I knew I was onto something. I photograph cars, events and shows for my own personal portfolio and also for personal documentation but in this project I tried to take a new approach and photograph from an outside perspective to offer something different to the photos I would normally take at a show.

I would usually focus on the cars at the show but it was nice to take my street photography influence and combine that with this project to photograph strangers at the show while still including elements of the cars. It would have been nice to get to more events but this was out of my control as there wasn't much on throughout this project but I think I'll carry this body of work on in my own time as it's something I've enjoyed doing and I don’t think this was ever going to be a project that would be 'complete'. I think it will be an on-going body of work allowing me combine my love of motorsport with photography and try and communicate this love with other people through my photographs.

For me this project was more about investigating peoples thoughts about people who were into modified cars, it was nice to talk my ideas through with my tutors and peers as they offered a perspective of someone who wasn't involved in the community and also did not believe everyone to be 'boy racers'.

I'm happy with my final shows however I find it hard to select 8 final images and if I were to do the project again I would try and bridge the gap between the photos of people at the show and the planned shoot in the forest as I feel they are very different in terms of environment, composition and overall look. Overall I prefer the photos in the forest because they were technically challenging and I had several attempts at shooting them where as the photos at shows were very 'run and gun' which was exciting but I found it frustrating when I saw something I wanted to shoot but just wasn't fast enough to snap it. I've achieved what I originally set to do which was to create documentary style photos with my own twist and I do believe my photos are a mix of a few styles pulling characteristics from street photography, documentary and portraiture. I have a set of photos documenting what goes on within the modified community; I've documented strangers at an event and also photographed portraits of friends with their cars. This has been a great project and it was a fresh change to have no boundaries and I found this made me focus much more on my final idea as I wasn't worried about meeting a criteria I was shooting purely to fulfil my own brief and while this was an on-going challenge I feel I've managed it in the end and I'm happy with my final shots.