Inga is a 3rd year student who is studying Jewellery and silversmithing at Ulster university, where before she was studying ceramics in her 2nd year. She is a lovely person to work with as well as talk to.

I am very pleased with the outcome, I feel like I didn’t get a good variety of images as Inga didn’t have much work with her that day as she just started her new project. Apart from that I am happy with the shoots, the angle, close ups etc. I feel like they really show how much work they put into creating their work but also shows the stuff they have to do before the final product is made. The steps that they have to do with so shortcuts to them.

From those images I think that these are the best ones.

I feel like they show what they need to show. Even though looking at them now I feel like they are little bit dull compare to the other people that I photographed. But I don’t think that this should be a reason to why I shouldn’t use them as this is the environment that she works in, quite dark with a light and a magnifying googles to see more up close to what they are doing as small wrong move could create a lot of damage.

Zara is a 3rd Year student studying ceramics, she is extremely nice person to work with and great to talk to. She was very prepared for the shoot as she also wanted images for her social media and was extremely happy when we arranged the day to take this. It was a very easy shoot and even it was photographed just under two hours it didn’t feel that long. Since me and Zara were working together to get the best we both needed and wanted – it was so easy setting them up but also trying to rearrange some things like moving some stuff from the background i.e. bins, big cardboards that weren’t visually pleasing.

These are the final images that I have chosen and sent to Zara.

From the images above my final and favourite photographs that work well for my project are:

I think that these images work really well, they show her environment and her studio she works in but also portraits of her finish products and the project she is working on. I really like the way they are all different from extreme close up to mid range I feel like this variations work really well. Overall I am extremely happy with the outcome.

Erin is a student in Ulster university studying jewellery and silversmithing. I met her when I was doing Inga’s shoot and when Inga had to go to her tutorial meeting and I was almost done with her shoot, Erin asked me to take so images for her and I was happy that she asked me as I’m pleased with the outcome. My favourite shots are the ones where is she posing with her final product especially the necklace, there is just something about that photo that I just love could be the pose or the product. Could be the composition of it I just don’t know what it is but that is my favourite image of them all.

I also really like the close ups as that just shows you how they focus on their work and on the detail and it has to be include as it tells the full story.

The below three are the ones I really like, but the only thing is that they are missing that one portrait to show her, they show her environment really nicely but its missing the portrait to finish the story of. I didn’t really like using the portrait of her and the necklace as it just didn’t tie in. But I still like those but I don’t think that I will be using them in my final edits but I will see.

Matthew is a third year student studying jewellery / silversmithing at ulster university. I was delightful when i received an email from him to say that he would want to take part in this project. Once we scheduled a day and time and suited us both for this shoot.

Taking photographs and thinking about everything that i read about improving the environmental portraits. While having that in the back of my mind i started to do my shoot. Unfortunately the work that Matthew was working on was mostly drawing as he had to plan out what he was going to do but also how to use copper without wasting the material- this included sketches, measurement, cutting out the shapes out of paper and see if he would be able to form it into the shape he had planned. I didn’t included this images down below as i didn’t like them – the composition was off, i couldn’t find the best angle that would work as his working desk is quite close to his class mates which made it little bit hard especially since they were there trying to work and asking them to move nicely wasn’t an option as i was got told i will not be moving or you can come back at a time where he would be alone in the room. I understand that i could face difficulties like these but i just didn’t expect it. I overcame it as I was able to convince Matthew to do something else for me to get the images and then he could get on with his work.

I feel like i could’ve pushed myself more to get even better images, but i just didn’t knew how to talk to Matthew – I wasn’t able to direct him where i wanted him to be or do. I have had done this for some of the images but i just feel like they could’ve been better compared to all the other shoots i done i feel like this one is one of the worst one – i was still able to get good photos of out if but I’m just not happy about it. I just be more confident and take more control and be able to talk and direct with the person – I was able to have chats with him but i just wasn’t able to actually tell him the pose or anything like that – This shoot made me feel quite powerless which I’m not a fan of feeling like that.

As well as taking the environmental portraits of Matthew, he also asked me to take some images of his work – which is something i was doing for the first time, i felt little bit nervous about it as i didn’t exactly knew what i was doing. But i think that they turned out pretty okay as Matthew was satisfied with them. It is something that i might be interested in now to be possibly taking images of finished products. The whole process of turning the pieces about looking at what works and what doesn’t work was a very enjoyable, trying out different composition to taking it at a different angles. I feel like this just increased my knowledge and confidence.

Currently studying Photography with Video at Ulster University in Belfast, being a second year student and already thinking about my final year next year. The question I keep asking myself is what to do I want to do after my final year or even what I want to do now.

I ask myself a lot of question when it comes to my future. Should I take a year out and maybe do a placement – that could be a very good opportunity in my opinion as I will be looking into this one as I would like to gain more practical skills and work more on the ones I have but this would also let me know what its like in the working world.

Should I do my third year graduate and then do MFA. Lots of questions but not many that I can answer as I am still very indecisive to what I really want to do. One thing I know is that I do want to graduate.

There are lots of opinions that I can look at and will consider when making my decisions.