Documentary Photography work diary

What is the story/concept
were I successful
How might my work improve
Not limited to two images
evaluate composition/formal elements, concept, camera settings.

Within my documentary, I wanted to tell the story of my life and what makes up my life, not exactly what I do. Non of my images have people in because I wanted to purely document the nature around my life. I start with my images being in early morning showing the sun rise, continuing onto day lit photos, to dark photos being light by the Christmas tree. The reason for this was because, even though I captured these all on completely different days, you could be non the wiser, documenting how nature is pretty much always the same, it can change in small ways, yet you are still able to capture them when ever you wish to. For example, the buildings I got photos of around my town will/ should be there years from now. The reason I wanted buildings with in my nature photos is because nature is old and the buildings help portray the history- not exactly my own history, but the history that I have grown up with my whole life. I have learnt about the history in my town since I was in infant school. I had a trip down my own memory lane, going to the road where I used to live, to the river I would pass every single day on my way to secondary school. I felt this was important to document because my town is me. The nature I have found interests me. I love and enjoy taking photos of nature as its so pretty and it's such a great thing to vary your angles with.

I think I were successful in photos such as the one (phone) and the (sky) photos because these were actually taken before I went to work. I wanted to take these images because I thought it looked really pretty and thought it was an ironic thing to put in a documentary of "my life" as I am normally not up to see the sun rise when I'm not at college as I'm in sleep. This is also the reason why I captured it. However, I went to edit my photo of the sky (put edit here) by taking out the lamp-post, although I just thought I was documenting the whole thing, so taking away a part of my image wouldn't be documenting the scene. Also after taking it out, I realized how it looks quite pretty with it there as its an almost silhouette, with a small bird on top. This photo can create a wide story, what ever way you take it is up to you, but still, I am glad I decided to not edit it in the end.

A photo I like from the shoot, 

I think this is such a pretty photo and I like it so much, I believe this is because the colours of the blossom really stand out. The foreground is in focus whereas the background is out of focus, I think this is the best way for photos such as this one. I like this for a documentary photo because alongside the fact nature makes up what I love taking photos of, it also documents the damage we are having on our planet as it is slowly warming up. Blossom should come out around spring time, the fact I took this in December shows how abnormal this should be, if we are getting blossom now, what will our spring look like?


A photo I don't like
I attempt this image several times, although the river was rather busy and there was lots of children feeding the swans and ducks. This meant the swan was swimming back and forth and not staying still. Even though this is the best one I took out of the other ones, I still don;t like it because the swan is turned away. I think if I was to get the perfect swan image, I would have to stay there for a lot longer and even take some bread myself to try and get the attention. It would also be better if I had a tripod so I could keep my camera sturdy, instead of hand holding it.




Progression.
A way I would like to improve my work would be to gather photos at certain points of the day, perhaps every morning, every lunch, every night for a few days or so. I think this would be a better documentary on my what I do in my life, rather than the mixed photos I have gathered that make up my life. I would also like a sequence in my photos, there is a slight one now I suppose, however I would like this to be much more clear, with a running theme through out. Family is a key part of my life and would like to document this and could do this by documenting "love" photos, such as photographer Brassi on the "Paris de nuit". I really like exploring his images as they can tell lots of words. I think this would be the main way that I would like the improve my documentary, if I were to redo it.