What I have learnt going through this project: what I expected in comparison to how it turned out

When I started my FMP I planned for my project to be heavily based on fashion history through out the 20^th century however by the end I have realised I created a book showing how family present themselves through tout the 20^th century in photographs.

At the beginning of my project I was focused on involving as much fashion history as possible and planned on focusing all my efforts to the fashion side, I had originally planned to shoot in digital and to create highly styled images focusing on the clothing, as my planning went on I decided to shoot using original cameras and film, this gave me a whole new aspect to my work. When I started looking at film and cameras, I started to learn a lot more about photography and how people presented themselves in photography.

When I started looking at family photographs I learnt even more about not only my family history but also how people used photography. I have family photos from the beginning of the century to modern day and this has helped me a lot in moving forward in my project and developing my ideas.

My ideas started to change when I started planning my shoots, I realised that I wasn’t focusing on the styling but the atmosphere of the photograph, although I did plan the outfits in great detail I realised they were not the most important part of the photograph. The first shoot I did was the earliest photograph in my book, this was the main point where I realised that the mood, atmosphere and camera I was using were the main and most prominent elements. 

As I went on with my shoots, i focused on getting the models into the correct moods and made sure they understood the atmosphere of the shoots. I tried to use friends and family together in shoots to get the most realistic and natural relationships between the models. A key example of this is my 90s party shoot, shot with two best friends, their behaviour was natural which meant the photos came out well as they were actually enjoying themselves and not acting for the camera. 

When i shot my photos i made sure to tell the model the life i had created for each person, and the story that would be accompanying them in the book, this meant they knew what emotion they had to portray and were able to play a character, the 1930s woman in the doorway compared to the 90s woman in the doorway are both the same person but they were told completely different live stories so she acted and posed how she would if she had been the character i gave her to "play". 

I am glad that my book and project turned out to be a lot more based on how we present ourselves in photography rather than fashion history as i think it is a lot more interesting and something very personal.