As a whole, I would say that I’ve learned a lot about photography on this course so far, improving on my technical skills such as editing images and creating compositions, and my more practical skills, for example, using camera settings to my advantage and using lighting to establish tone and mood.

A lot of themes have been covered on this course, but the two that stick out to me the most as powerful and inspiring would have to be identity and nostalgia, as I feel they both link together, but they also provide plenty of personal experiences that make me who I am that I can reflect on and use in my work.

I’ve found myself more interested in the medium of film as a means of expressing my work, but I still prefer the idea of photography and feel that my skills in this area are more advanced and varied.

Conceptual and documentary photography are the two approaches I’ve found to be the most intriguing as I believe there’s a lot more that I can do and explore with them, as opposed to tableaux photography, a genre that doesn’t really appeal to me all too much.

My favourite artists that I’ve looked at/studied are Henri Cartier-Bresson, Alec Soth, and Ansel Adams.

I feel that Cartier-Bresson’s style had an incredibly large impact on my work, as it has completely changed my approach to street photography and improved how I put together a composition in the frame. His influence has also provided me with a lot of confidence toward shooting at ‘the decisive moment’ to capture an interesting and lively piece. This example above

Alec Soth has inspired my work in the sense that I try to create compositions that focus on the person as a whole, so that their personality and aspirations are evident within my presentation of them, through their body language and even the use of props. His work has definitely made me more thoughtful about the message and implications of my own work.

Ansel Adams was a very powerful artist to study when it came to landscape photography. It taught me different methods of adding drama and romanticism to my photographs, which gave them a stronger overall composition to make them stand out better.