For my FMP I am
choosing the theme of equine photography, as this is what I want to do for my
career. I am going to be producing a couple of book and a couple of singular
images for my final work, I am going to photographing equine events and also
portraits of just horses and riders with their horses. The first book I am
going to create will be a series of images following someone getting ready for,
during and after an event, I would also like to create a book of different
people with their horses, however, I will only be able to achieve this if I can
find enough people willing to model for me.
My influence for choosing
this idea is that it is the field of photography, which I eventually want to
get in to, therefore I want to develop my skills in it more than any other
subject. By choosing this as my project theme, I am able to experiment with
different genres of photography and presentation techniques so that in the
future I know what I’m strongest at and I’ve got a wide range of images in my
portfolio. I am going to be researching equine photographers such as Bill
Parrott and Mark Beaumont, I will need to research both event and portrait
photographers to have a wide range of research images to work from. I will use
books and magazines to find source material as well as research the personal
websites of specific photographers.
For this project I am
going to be shooting on mainly digital however I would like to try a few shoots
on disposable cameras to achieve an experimental effect of my images. I will
not be photographing events/ridden photos on a disposable, just portraits, this
is because I don’t think the disposable image would be a high enough quality
for movement photos. I am also going to
be experimenting with location lighting and going out at in the daytime and night
time to get some portraits with just a spotlight on the horse; this will help
develop my skills of using lighting outside of the studio. I am hoping to have
photoshoots for approximately the first four weeks as I have lots of people who
may be willing to model for me who are only available on certain weekends, this
then gives me around 4 weeks to edit and finalise my images.
In order to critically
review and evaluate my work I will be asking people who own horses to take a
look at my books and final images and see if they would buy them and if not
what I could improve on; I will be doing this throughout the project so that I
can improve my images and get the best end result I possibly can. I will ask
these people write down my work’s strengths and areas for improvement so I have
written evidence of the critiques. I will also be asking my classmates for
their feedback on the more technical aspects of my photography that
non-photographers perhaps wouldn’t pick up on.
