Final Personal Statement
I am choosing to study a degree in photography as for the last few years I have become more and more involved and immersed in trying to provoke emotion through the use of media whether that is photography, film and even music. Not only do I really enjoy the more personal/fine art aspect of photography but I love the challenge of the commercial side, using someones brief to create a piece of work that they will use for their business or use personally is quite daunting however excites and interests me immensely.
Having been through secondary school studying art and design, this lead me to photography GCSE which lasted a year and I left excited but throughout the year I felt like I did not know enough especially the technical side of things. So after the year was over I made the decision to just focus on photography academically hence the photography pre degree I have been doing for the past two years which has really made me think about the type of photographer I am and how I present my photos. During the pre degree I’ve learnt about many photographers and photographic styles which I would then view outside college which would lead me onto finding even more incredible photography styles and photographers like Nicholas Bruno for example who bases his photographs on his dreams/nightmares as he has sleep paralysis they make truly incredible images.
This year I have been lucky enough to be able to do much more commercial work than I thought I would. Having only properly started pursuing client work this year. I’ve taken photos of a variety of things from models for their instagram pages, to products for my college Agency, musical gigs with artists such as Yellow Days and Wonky Logic, products for people depop accounts, dance performances and even christian music events. All of these opportunities have improved my workflow as a photographer and I believe made me better at problem solving. Being competent with my camera before attempting any paid work has helped a lot and the commercial work I have done has brought attention to techniques I would like to improve on (like my studio workflow) or try like motion blur style photography and even infrared photography.
As well as working at a gymnastics club I have a few hobbies as I love cinematography and this year I have been making short films to go along with my final pieces as well as my own personal projects and they are heavily music based as I also play guitar and piano and for the last few years have been making music to go with my films as well as traditional songs just to listen to. I believe these things tie in with photography really well as photography and cinematography are becoming more and more interchangeable especially within the commercial side of things and with my favourite style of photography being music photography at the moment I think that having a unbelievable amount of interest in almost all genres of music helps too.
To conclude, I believe that my passion for photography, music, film and other media would really suit the photography course as they all link together well and I also think that the course will challenge me in areas that I need to work on and haven’t faced yet. I believe the skills I have learnt already are very appropriate for the degree and I think that I would make a great addition to the course.
ZAKARIAH 