MEDI 263: Critical Evaluation

For my final narrative I decided to focus on the story of me learning how to make sushi. My initial idea was originally focused around autumn in the city and the initial shoot for this had some good images but nothing that was very eye popping so I decided to go for the sushi idea. My first sushi shoot was full of fuzzy, ill focused pictures so I had to do a re-shoot. I think the blurriness of the photos may have been due to a few important yet un-obvious settings on the camera I was using. I have since developed a greater understanding of the more intricate settings on the camera being a Nikon D80. I have gained valuable knowledge into how important the very small details on the camera can be and how dramatic a hidden setting can affect a photos quality so much. I set the camera to a large image and on fine detail so that I could capture far more detail and thus have better images. Also on the off chance that the blur may have been due to camera shake I used a tripod for my reshoot thus minimising the risk of having images blurred. I wanted to show a step by step almost comic style story of me making sushi and then I wanted to show an Onigiri being eaten an have a kind of cartoon face on it at various stages of being eaten to show emotion. Both the comic strip theme and the cute personifications of the Onigiri (Rice Ball) reflect the Japanese culture and especially the ‘Manga’ or ‘Anime’ that inspired me to want to learn to make sushi and indeed started my love for the food. Id like to think that it is fairly light-hearted and fun also I do think food is a narrative all in its own. The final images I have taken very great care for them to be in focus and very clear and sharp. I have decided to exhibit them in a series with the comical three pictures in the centre at the bottom as an aside. I really like the warm colours and did not want to normalise the lighting level as yellow light makes people hungry and I feel that the images being food should achieve this. It’s a tactic used in supermarkets to make us buy things and it does also say something about consumerism and the two different cultures merging together.  

I had a lot of problems initially with my project and getting it off the ground, however I feel that I have developed a much stronger technical knowledge and also a much more critical eye in photography. Overall I feel myself that I have dramatically improved. I am overall fairly pleased with the images although I do feel they could be perfect if I did a few more shoots. I am very pleased that all of my final images are in focus as I made every effort to ensure this. I have in myself however made dramatic improvements in my skills.  

To sum it up I would like to think my project is well structured with clean crisp and nicely framed images I wanted to include a lot of influences in my images and I do think that they carry the narrative fairly well.