I have came to the end of my project and I finally have to make the decision to what image I will be using for each sitter. I feel like this will be although decision as I like all of them and picking two or three images will be very hard.

The First Sitter is Amy Higgins from QSS.

For Amy I decided to pick these two images as I feel that they work really well together. They show her environment – studio place but also the outcome of her work – portrait against the work. I decided to have the two images beside each other as i couldn’t find one image that would’ve spoke that much as those two. One image wouldn’t be a successful way of showing her as fine art artist in my opinion anyway.

Second sitter – Anna MFA Student

These are the images I picked out for Anna’s, as i feel that they portray Anna’s work really well, she said it herself that most of her work includes a lot of research and then actually planning to what she is going to do. That’s why I decided to have one image of her at her table in her studio working away, (I do have an image of her at her desk and looking at me, I didn’t include it because it wasn’t as strong as this one) and the other image of her holding a page with information about her work and with a digital printed visualization of her work which show that she plans out it a head before going ahead and doing it as she prefers performance as a style of her work. That is the reason to why i picked these two as i also wanted to show what type of person Anna was and i wanted to show her in the best possible way.

Third sitter is Emily Fine art student at Ulster University.

Emily is a fine art student who specializes in the photography, using her creative mind – she takes images of something she sees while walking past something (her way of photographing is different to my way of photographing we both have different styles and approaches to it.) The reason to why i used these two images as i feel that they show her creative profession – her in her studio place with her recent work in the background is very nice way of showing/ telling about her location and the environment she is in. I included a photo of her trying to take an image as I felt that just say more about her. But looking at it now i feel like the one image on its own would work as well i will include it below for comparison.

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Looking at it now i think that this image on its own works really well and shows everything it needs to show. I am proud of this one. The only thing i would change is to have it against a white page to have a border just like every other image has.

Fourth sitter is Erin from jewellery at Ulster University.

I think that this set of 3 works really well with each other and that one single image wouldn’t have this effect. I like how the set tells a story which is something i was going for. From the beginning to the end. I absolutely love the middle one the close up as i feel that it breaks it down and actually focuses on the detail which is very important in jewelery and silversmithing. As one small wrong movement made and everything goes bad. I also picked the one where she heats up the copper as a way to show more to her work, that she uses other tools and equipment which in some cases turn out really well.

Fifth sitter – Inga Jewellery Student

What can i say – I think that this set of 3 works really well with each other and that one single image wouldn’t have this effect. I like how the set tells a story which is something i was going for. From the beginning of preparing the ring to filing it. I feel like the portraits portray her profession really well and i wouldn’t change them for any other ones.

Sixth sitter – Lauren MFA Student

This is another set of images that are my favorite – there is just something about them that would make me fall in love with the work and maybe being a painter myself. There isn’t much to say about this as they image speak for themselves in this series. I am very proud of this ones and the ones I done of Zara. The composition of the image is very good, the angles capturing everything that needed to be capture. What else can i say apart from that i love this.

Seventh Sitter – Martin Marks Silversmith at Ulster University

This one is a very hard choice for me to make as i cant decide on which one looks better the set of 3 or the set of 2. Thats why i have included that both as im unable to make the decision even when asking other people they werent able to decide either. I think that these images work really well, I absolutely love the composition of the images as they really can bring you into his studio and his work. I feel like that important when showing a profession as that will make you decide whether you want to do it or not.

Eighth sitter – ZARA ceramics student

Zara’s all images turned out really beautifully and im proud of that which made it really hard to chose what images to use. I decided to go these ones as i feel that they portray her as a ceramic artist really well. Im showing the process she does from the start to the end – i dont have them in that order as they didn’t look that good and they looked so much better one by one this way. Also this is one of my favorites one from all of them. I think that the composition of it and how the Zara’s movement and face expression changes. I chose the 3 images as having just the one didn’t show her environment as a creative profession, the one image needed a back up to make the overall image to look stronger and better.

Ninth sitter is Grace McMurray from QSS.

I’m not too happy with those one and I don’t think that i will be using them but i wanted to include them in this as they are good images i just dont think that they are good environmental portraits – as to limited space i wasnt able to move about freely in the room but also wasnt able to get any images of her from the front which im not happy about as i should be able to push and go the extra mile to get those shots that i needed. I know that these arent the best but i wanted to include them as i will know now for the future what to not to do again – learning from my failures.

I came across Mandy when I was looking for different headshots of painters, jewellery and silversmithing. I found her work she done for Kristin Llamas fine art painter session in her art studio. (The images from that shoot are at the very end of the post.)

I decided to look more into Mandy as I found her other work very interesting. Her story was very unique to me. It showed me that she slowly was following her dream, setting her self goal and goals that she was able to achieve as that was driving her to do more. That in my opinion is very inspiring and wants you do to the same. She is an good example to say that it takes time to get to where you want to be. Meaning its okay to give your self time as it can be a very slow process. She also set a bucket list for her photography which just says what she wants to achieve in her photography career but also the ones she already achieve – I think thats is important to let other people to see your goals and aspirations.

This is the timeline that is available on her website – showing how she got to where she is now. I think that this a nice way of laying out your progress as you can see that you are achieving your goals – from buying her first camera to doing her her shoot ‘father and son’ to getting her work published in a magazine to finally realising that she wants to do photography full time and she decided to quit her 9-5 job. This is very inspiring as it shows you that it will take time to make decision so its okay to work part time or full time and doing photography on the side until you are ready that its something you want to do full time that your heart desires it and that you enjoy it.

These are the images from the painter headshot session in art studio. I absolutely love them the composition, the lighting everything is so natural. You can see that the sitter is very relaxed and that Mandy made sure to show that through her images. This piece of work is a massive inspiration to me as its that good that I just keep on going back to it before each shoot as that is the quality of images I want to create.

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I am very inspired by her as I just love her images and her story. There is a lot of people like her out time so Im not stressing that much as I know now it will take me a lot of time to get myself in a position and career that she is. From reading about her I know I have to set my self goals and achievements to push myself but also to slowly be getting my name out there, trying to stay active on Instagram so people can see my most recent work. To be sending my work to magazine and newspaper to try and see if they would be able to publish it for me as they do a lot of competions which is a good to see what people think of your work and whether its good.

Martin is a lovely, funny guy that is in his final year in silversmithing at Ulster University. He is quite shy in front of the camera so before taking any shot i had to make sure that he was relaxed and calm as you were able to tell that he was uncomfortable in the photographs. This took a while but it was so worth it in the end as I got some really good images and I’m really happy with the outcome.

His working space was little and small which made it very limited to move about even with a 24mm to 105mm lens. It was pretty hard and i had to move about even stand on a chair to be higher or even on the other side of the tables so that i would be able to take a straight portrait of him with his wall of work behind it as i felt that they would look really good. They did turn out quite well and im proud of that as that just means that my hard work and unsafe standing on chair didn’t go to waste.

Picking out the images was little hard as I had to keep in mind the images that Martin wanted but also the images that i needed for the project.But after spending some time looking over the photographs i was able to narrow it down to 42 photographs out of over 200 that i that took. Now i will have to pick my best ones that i will use in my final edits.

As i already said that I am happy with the photographs and the outcome, Martin was happy as well and that made me feel good about my work.

Lauren is a MFA student at Ulster university, she is extremely nice person and her work is extraordinary. It was so easy to talk to her and easy to work with her.

While I was talking with Lauren and she keeps her social media quite up to date she asked me whether i could do some black and white images as she prefers them and i obviously agreed on doing that as its important to give back. These are the black and white images she wanted.

I personally don’t really like the black and white, I feel like the colour ones work better but that’s just my opinion. That was what she wanted and she got that.

Here is the screenshot of her posting one of the image on her social media account – Instagram and nicely giving me the credit for it.

From looking through all the images I feel like these ones fit the criteria for the environmental portraits.

I feel like these 6 are the best ones in my opinion as they show her environment as well her working and them being quite good portraits. I was very pleased with the outcome and the fact that Lauren was also happy with them – that made me feel very good about myself and the fact that the work i created was good in someone else eyes.

After Oonagh passing over my message about looking for artist to photograph, I received a message from Anna who said that was very interested in this and really would like her photographs to be taken.

Anna is more mature MFA student, a very lovely to talk to as well to work with her. Anna’s work more involves research, once she has all the research she has then she creates work, also she is more of a performance artist.

I really enjoyed taking the images and i was delighted that Anna decided to show me one of her performance piece and she performed it – as part of the project she had to create a performance to the music they were listening to, she found a really nice book which showed some of the dance moves they down in the history, moving pieces of your body – which some of it looked like gymnastic poses, stretches etc. Which i really enjoyed watching as well taking some images of it. As part of the performance she didn’t want to show the face therefore that why i don’t have a photograph showing the front of her – only side and back and some close ups.

I also photographed her at her desk and tried to get as much of her working environment – like the studio place she works as she has another 3 MFA students beside and behind her.