Conclusion
To conclude this unit of work I am going to go back to the very start and ask again if a picture is worth a thousand words then why not use pictures to tell stories? I believe that through my work and not just in my final piece but also in all my projects through this unit I have done just that. Whatever story I was trying to convey I have conveyed it through pictures and not words. In other words my photography has spoken for itself, it is for this reason that none of my pictures have been captioned and are not presented as singular images but as an entire photo essay.
Alternately to the norm and to how I planned out my work before starting this unit, my final piece is not just my best unit showing how and that I have improved from the beginning of the unit to the end as I do not believe that my work is so much the steps to an improved and generally better final piece as I assumed I would create at the beginning of this unit, instead I have worked so that all of my pieces of work throughout the unit are equally good. I have not cut any corners and taken all possible measures to make sure each project is exactly as I wanted it to be this has included buying specific film, getting up at 4am to shoot before a city awoke, scouting out many locations around Leeds to make sure I had the perfect one, waiting for weeks to get the perfect light conditions to convey mood in my images, going out on shoot after shoot after shoot sometimes three times in a day and many more things that have all added up to make all my photographs worthy of being my final piece. I did however choose dead space as my final piece as I believe that it lends itself best to being exhibited due to the minimalist nature of the photographs.
I believe that the extent of the planning and work that has gone into this unit of work to make each of the photographs that I have shot as perfect as I can possibly make them in camera more than makes up for the lack of gimmicky editing and demonstration of photo manipulation. The lack of this also makes sense as my researched photographers used no such techniques and much was even shot on film as some of my work was.
Due to the extent of my planning and the time that I have spent on this unit of work I would personally not do anything major differently if I were to re-do this unit as I am extremely happy with how it has come out. I do however believe that I have grown as a photographer through this unit and have learnt something from each of my projects. I also believe that coming up with my own original ideas for social documentary projects about certain issues and then following them through to a fully formed photo essay has helped my photography mature no end, making me more confident and decisive and ready to tackle the next unit of work.