For my personal study project I have chosen to explore the theme of faith and religion through documentary photography. As I had grown up in a completely atheist household finding my way in faith is very special to me and has been an incredible journey as it’s one I’ve had to navigate by myself. Within this project I aim to present my journey with faith and how it has changed my life but to also represent how much things can change and the emotions surrounding these changes before and during my walk of faith. I intend to create a series of both landscape and portrait images of both myself and anything to do with the events in which I attend as a Christian.

I will experiment with different positions, angles, lighting, weather conditions and other factors and will use post-production editing skills to capture both the outside picture but also the deeper emotions that come with each individual image. I am particularly interested in looking at symbols through drawings I will do during the editing overlapping the images to represent the emotions. The main centre theme of my study is religion and faith both which hold very different meanings yet also very similarly bond together.

For my project, I want to focus on capturing emotions through natural light and also added drawings in post-production and exploring how it can completely change the mood of an image. My goal is to experiment with different times of day and weather conditions to see how they affect the atmosphere and feel of my photos. I also want to push myself to get better at presenting a story through my images. Perhaps by using dramatic shadows, soft lighting or even artificial lighting to create contrast. Overall I want my work to make people feel something through my photos whether that be a moment of connection to my work or even just a second of curiosity.

I am really inspired by the work of Henri-Cartier Bresson and the way he uses documentary photography to tell a story and represent certain emotions and situations. I have also been looking at Arnold Newman and I love how he uses Environmental portraiture to again represent a personal story behind every individual he photographs. For my project, I want to take all of these ideas and experiment with them in my own way. Ill research more about their techniques and figure out how I can apply them to my theme of work whilst also making sure my work feels personal and unique to me.

For my personal study I am going to be using my Canon camera because it gives me the flexibility to experiment with different settings and lenses, especially when playing around with the depth of field and lighting. I will also be using editing software such as Lightroom to enhance the mood and the colours in my images. I also really want to experiment with using natural light like doing shoots during sunset and also whenever the weather is foggy and gloomy.

With my shoots, I am planning to focus on a mixture of portrait and landscape images depending on the type of images I need for the specific shoot. I will end up with a variety of different formats and sizes with my images. Ill probably shoot in a few different locations for example, my local church, my actual church, the forests, nature walk areas, beaches, my own house and possibly even more to get a variety of different settings and moods. I want to experiment with different compositions; some wide shots to capture the context and some close ups to get every little detail.

By the end of my personal study project I hope to have multiple sets of images that not only show how much I’ve improved with all the technical side of photography but also to tell my story and create meaningful feelings through the photoshoots. I would like to be able to look back on this project and see that I have done it to my full potential and pushed myself to try out new techniques and ideas, even if some of them don’t work out perfectly. This personal study project gives me an opportunity to step out of what I am comfortable with doing in photography and explore something I’m genuinely passionate about and I am very excited to see it all come together within the final photobook.