FMP Evaluation
This project has been my favourite to work on by far. Setting my own brief and having the freedom to challenge myself to see what I could achieve in my final university project was something I had been looking forward to tackling. I knew from the outset that I wanted to utilise my photography within the project somehow but I didn’t know how big a part it would take up. I also knew that I wanted to take the opportunity to visit somewhere and try my hand at documentary photography, something I hadn’t ventured into before. I felt that having a mental plan of what I wanted to achieve in this project early on meant that I had time after the trip to develop and push the project as far as possible. This allowed me to create the typeface and do multiple variations of book layouts and styles.
There is an immense amount of pressure when your entire project is resting on your ability to shoot on film. If something were to go wrong, then I would have nothing but phone pictures to fall back on. Luckily it all went smoothly and the photos came back better than I could have imagined. When photos have proper context and meaning behind them it certainly comes across, as the images I’ve taken have definitely been my favourite to shoot. Having visited the city before, I knew my basic whereabouts and some of the sites I wanted to visit, however it was still daunting being in a foreign city by myself.
Certain areas of the project didn’t go as planned and certain connections fell through, but something that I learnt was to not wait for others in order for you to progress. If something isn’t working find a new alternative and move on with that. I would’ve liked to have more voice recordings and find out more about the refugees stories, but it just didn’t feel right to ask them about their life story while at an event that is supposed to be a celebration. This did allow me to have a far more personal experience and get a much fuller understanding of the situation in Bulgaria. Playing football with Arash at the football event was by far the highlight of the trip.
Another thing I learnt was that things move much slower when working in another language, especially one as complex as Cyrillic. Not only do you have to get your head around the basic lettering, but being a blond English man in the capital of Bulgaria certainly makes you stand out. It felt odd at first and I felt very out of my depth but as long as I was confident I could end up getting the result that I wanted. It’s pretty intimidating asking someone who doesn’t speak your language to take a photo of them.
There were many points within the project where I was worried I had bitten off more than I could chew, but this definitely pushed me on to achieve as much as possible. I have met people I would have never have usually met if it weren’t for this project and it’s given me the taste to do more similar projects in the future.