Final evaluation

Throughout this project I aimed capture the essence of experimental techniques which are featured within photography. Within this project I experimented with a lot of different techniques both within the darkroom and digitally within photoshop. In order to generate the image to work with within the dark room I shot two rolls of film, one black and white and one colour. With the black and white film, I took this to the darkroom and carried out various experimental techniques such as sandwiching negatives, photograms, solarisation and painting with developer. Creating these images was a lot of fun as it meant I was able to get hands on with the editing of these images. Through experimenting with different techniques within the dark room I found that creating photograms was my favourite to do as this was the simplest yet I feel that this technique is able to create some of the most interesting prints as you can use almost anything to aid the creation of photograms and if you use some of your negatives to create the photograms like I did, the detail from the negatives shows up on the photograms and this gives the print a lot of detail which you might not think would be easily created by simply placing items on a piece of photographic paper then lighting up the enlarger for a few seconds. In addition to this, another of the darkroom techniques I liked was painting with developer. I enjoyed this technique as it was very hands on and allowed a lot of creative freedom as you can paint the developer onto any part of the paper and only the pieces of paper with the developer on will be revealed with the image you have printed onto the paper. This technique allows you to be very creative as you could even paint a small picture with the developer and have the photograph show through this. My least favourite technique to carry out within the darkroom was solarisation. This is because although the effect of this technique was very unique and different, I found it very tricky to get this technique right as you have to work very fast and as there was quite a lot of people within the dark room at the time and the area where I was trying to work was a little crowded, I feel that my solarised images were not as good as they could have been as they feel a little rushed and this technique is one which you cannot take a lot of time with. I enjoyed experimenting with techniques, however solarisation was my least favourite. As well as experimental techniques within the darkroom, I also experimented digitally with techniques within photoshop. The techniques I used to digitally edit my images include colour popping, overlaying textures, adding borders, panoramic images and creating pinhole effect images. My favourite digital experimental technique to create was definitely colour popping as I love how much freedom was involved in the process of this as you get to choose exactly which parts of the image you want In colour and which parts you want to be in black and white and you can have as much or as little colour as you like. There is a lot of creative freedom within this process and this is the main reason I enjoy this. Another reason I love this technique so much is because when you are creating the colour popped image, it feels as though you are colouring in the photograph and it makes me feel as though I am a child again with a colouring book or something. My least favourite experimental technique which I created within photoshop was the adding of borders. This was my least favourite as I feel that when I added the borders to the image, it did not really add much to the image and the images looked a little boring to say quite a bit of effort went into making them. I have physical prints from my roll of black and white film but unfortunately I was not able to get into the colour darkroom so I do not have any prints from this shoot however the negatives from this shoot are included with my darkroom folder even though they never got made into actual prints as I was not able to get into the colour darkroom. By doing this project I have learnt about a lot of different techniques both digital and within the darkroom which I did not previously know how to do so I feel that this meant that my project was a success. Overall I enjoyed this project a lot as I love changing the way my photographs look and that is what this whole project was about. This project was a lot of fun as there was a lot of creative freedom throughout the entire project which I like a lot. I really enjoy being able to put my own spin onto my photographs.  This means that overall I am happy with the way this project turned out.