Evaluation

For Holly Smiths photography project she chose to photography fine art,
focusing on reflection. She was influenced by photographs she had seen by
Laura Williams, Guillaume Amat and Cody William Smith. These photographers
use mirrors in their work, combined with different locations, this is something
Smith wanted to do with her own work. She liked the high contrast of the images
and lighting and wanted to bring these aspects of their work into her images.
She decided that her project would work best with nature as a sub-genre;
therefore, her first shoot was photographing reflection. She went to the woods, to
the river and photographed trees, water, grass, leaves and landscapes.
Then she asked Abby to be her model and photographed her against a white
background holding a mirror. Smith learnt how to edit the inside of the mirror out
using Photoshop and the lasso tool. Using Photoshop proved quite challenging
but she was satisfied with her final images and overall believes her skills in
editing using Photoshop have improved over the course of the project.
Smith asked her peers what they thought of her final images and received some
useful feedback. The good points were that she followed her theme well, her
images were creative and enigmatic, there is a great use of colour, they are of a
good quality and the lighting and contrast works well. Negative feedback she
received was that her images were slightly inconsistent in the backgrounds and
the contrast.
Smiths work slightly resembles her inspiration; Laura Williams work from the
manipulation of reflection and the model holding a mirror. However, Smiths work
uses more colours and instead of using an outdoors background, the nature is
reflecting inside the mirror and the background is just a plain white. She felt this
doesnt distract the viewer from the content of her images.
Guillaume Amat photographs the mirrors in various locations, reflecting people
into them, mine as
In her final images Smith has used shape through the round mirror and the water
reflected inside the mirror. It has lots of water shapes and patterns and variations
of colour as the current helps it flow along the canal and the light bounces off of
it. The model uses shape in the image by making the most of the space she has
with her legs in the air and the body resting on the ground which surpasses
conventional portraits. Smith thought that the lack of colour in the background
draws the viewers attention to the mirror because it has the most colours in the
whole image and stands out against the white background and pale dress. The
texture of the water reflection is very noticeable against the very plain and
contrasted background; the high contrast makes the detail less visible so the
texture in the water really stands out.
Smiths final images show juxtaposition between the very modern and clean
studio background with synthetic light contrasting with the raw nature scenes
that are taken with natural light and are not man-made. The model looks very
glamorous, someone who you would expect to live in the city and not in the
country; therefore there is juxtaposition in the photograph between the model
and reflection. It could represent that deep down the subject is a country girl,
masking this with her sophisticated style.

The social group that might buy Smiths images are groups B, C1 or C2 because
they would need to have money to spend on luxury items but wouldnt need a
really high paid job. They might be into art and design to buy Smiths
photographs. Any race or religion might purchase Smiths images because they
wouldnt offend anyone, they are neutral images.
Overall, Smiths work reached her intentions in what she planned to do at the
start of her project which was to photograph reflection and nature. Her images
look quite similar to the photographed she studied in her LO3 planning sheet.
Her photographs fit the purpose of fine art photography images that you would
sell in a gallery to individual clients.
Smith responded to her feedback by removing the shadows from the background
as much as she could and increasing the contrast to make her images more
consistent. However, she should have changed them even more so that they all
look exactly the same because there is still some inconsistency between the
photographs and how they are edited.
The focal point is on most of the images because I used a high depth of field so
everything is in focus. The flatness of the background and model makes the
image reflected into the mirror appears more dimensional. Throughout the
course of her project Smith has greatly improved her Photoshop skills through
her use of the lasso tool to remove the background, the stamp tool to duplicate
parts of the image, dodge and burn tool, layers, and general adjustments of the
images, e.g. contrast, colour or brightness.
Smith managed her time very throughout the project; she planned what she had
to do each week so she could be sure it would be achieved by the end of the
project. She worked quite well technically, rising to challenges she faced and
found that it came quite naturally to her. Creatively, she planned quite early in
the project what she wanted to achieve and followed her ideas through to get
her desired outcome, her classmates agrees that her final images were creative
and aesthetically pleasing.

Smiths image is relatively similar to her inspiration because they have both
included female models holding mirrors and have distorted the reflection. They
are both turned with their back to the audience and are wearing dresses. Both
shots look quite glamorous from how they are wearing dresses and both mirrors
look quite fancy. Both images are quite contrasted, but not too much and similar
brightness. However, Smiths image looks lighter than her inspiration and there
is an obvious difference from the black and white image and Smiths photograph
which is in colour.
Furthermore, Smiths image includes the nature element within the mirror
reflection, whilst the inspiration is nature in the background as it looks as though
it was shot in a forest.
Apart from a few differences, you can clearly see than inspiration has been taken
from the image on the right and Smiths image. For Smith to progress her image
further she could experiment with adjusting her image to black and white too,
possibly leaving the mirror reflection in colour, she could also adjust the contrast
and lightness to make the photographs even more similar.