Eat 5* Evaluation

The brief of this project was to create a series of photographs of the city of bath, to the specifications of the shop in which they would be displayed. I began by working with Fresh milkshake and smoothie bar, but due to unforeseen circumstances I was required to find a new shop in which to display my images. I found this difficult as I needed to start the whole project again. Luckily I was allowed to join another person in Eat5star, where the requirements were already discussed so I just needed to the guidelines that had already been set. This was the most productive way to continue in the project, however this then limited me to someone else’s ideas instead of my own. The brief et by the shop was to take black and white photography of bath and then inject colour into them to match the walls of the shop. I would have liked to have used film photography and added colour in the way that John Lowings did with his images but this technique is time consuming and expensive so I was limited to using Adobe Photoshop to give the same effect.
Initially I thought it would be easy to take some strong images of bath, but the requirement to add colour was limiting as this required me to think a lot about what I was taking pictures of as I had to think about what I could add colour to. The obvious choice was to take images of trees and grass so this theme is repeated in my final pictures. The image that does not follow this idea is the picture of the pig, which was originally blue. I think that if I had more time to think about what I could take pictures of, the majority of my images would be a successful as the pig. Another requirement within this project was to create an adverting poster which would be displayed in the shop window and featured on the leaflet for the photography trail; Unlike the posters that other people created, we decided not to use one of our images as part of the poster as this could either put people off the show before seeing it if they did not like the image displayed, or ruined the exhibit if we gave too much away. We decided to just create a simple poster placing the information onto a dark background. Framing the images was simple as we did not have frames to work with so were not limited to a certain size. We decided to make all the images A3 as there was a lot of space to fill and I feel that if we made the images any smaller they would be lost among the other work that had been hung on the walls of the shop. Taking the feedback we received into account I feel that if I had to go through the process of putting up a show again I would work closer with the owner of the shop to understand fully what he wanted to achieve from working with us, as visitors felt that the images were not in keeping with the shop. Having a higher budget and more time to create this exhibit I would have taken images at an event that the café holds as I think the owner would be more inclined to permanently display these as they would be more personal. Overall I think the show was a success taking into account the time frame I was required to work to. I think the images were successful and I think they looked strong when displayed. I have been asked to be a photographer at the café’s events and create more work to display on the walls so this shows that the owner also feels my show was successful.