I Ordered My Book!

Today, I finally finished the editing of my book, and finalised all my decisions. The book cost me $90 including express postage, which I don't find too bad considering that's usually how much books like these cost. I'm really excited to receive it in the mail, I'm just hoping it arrives in time. It's set to arrive on October 4th, which is cutting things really close since the PP night is the 6th, but if I doesn't arrive, I guess I will need to come up with a backup plan. I can't wait to see my final product!

Film Pictures

A few weeks back I went and picked up my pictures from my disposable camera. So far I've decided to use only one of them in my book, because the quality is obviously really bad. But personal project for me has been an experimental thing, so using the disposable camera's was just a fun thing to do.

Here are the few photos from the camera that I took for PP:

Written

Today I had to decide what I was going to write in my book, obviously because its a book dedicated entirely to photographs, it doesn't require a lot of writing. But in the flap of my book I need to write something, I looked at some of the coffee table books that I owned and, usually the flaps spoke about the content of the book or the author, so I decided I'd write something very small combining both these topics, I wrote:

"Filled with images which I have taken over the past 12 months, this book is  a true INSIGHT into my love for fashion and photography. Having loved fashion since I was young and developing a interest in photography as I got older, this book aims to incorporate my love for both fashion and photography and produce beautiful images."

I thought it was simple and to the point, and gave a bit of an insight into what the book contains.
On the first page of my book I wanted to incorporate a quote, I looked through some interesting ones, but came across the following and thought it would be perfect:

“ Beauty can be seen in all things, seeing and composing the beauty is what separates the snapshot from the photograph. – Matt Hardy

I feel like this quote relates perfectly to my book. I'm pretty much at the stage now where I can order it. 

Overall Reflection On My Pictures and Process

Overall I'm really happy with the outcome of my pictures, before the Personal Project, I would never have thought I would be producing pictures to this quality. Looking at the pictures has also made me realise over the 12 month period, that heaps of practice can really improve the quality of how the pictures look. When I look at my first shoot and then my last shoot, I noticed how much has improved, not only with the quality of the pictures, but also the editing and styling. This entire process has definitely been a big learning one, and I'm so glad I did this, because I think if I hadn't, then I probably would never have gotten to it. Personal Project has made me really confident with taking photos now, initially I was scared and embarrassed to take photos anywhere in public, but by the time I got to the photoshoot with Adriana, I couldn't have cared less, Bond Uni is such a busy place, but that did not bother me when we were doing the shoot there. Personal Project also lead me to find hundreds and maybe thousands of inspiring pictures which I collected into an album over the period, and often found myself looking back onto this album when I was in need of some inspiration, it also allowed me to find so many different amazing bloggers! Before personal project, I probably would have had no idea how to use the 'curves' function in photoshop, but now I think I could use it with my eyes closed. It's all these little aspects that make me so happy that I completed personal project, because as much as I love photography, sometimes I just don't have the motivation to go out there and organize photoshoots, but personal project was really a motivator for me, and now I'm ready to do as many shoots as I can, especially after looking at all the teenagers like myself who have such incredible careers already.

Even though I'm really proud of my work, there are some things I would definitely change if I had been given the oppurtunity. I feel like all my pictures were too 'modelled' and I blame that mostly on myself for not directing the models myself, in my eyes I just wanted to let them do whatever they felt most comfortable with, but after looking through so many blogs, I wish I directed them more, I would've loved to have more 'natural', carefree, action shots that didn't make the pictures look so 'posed'. I also wish that I had planned some of the shoots to more detail, because sometime's we'd turn up, and just kinda went with the flow, which often lead us to be out of time etc, whereas if I had planned it more, It would of gone more smoothly, plus I would've been able to have created some better pictures. I also wish I used more props in my photos, because one simple prop can add so much to the pictures. But having said all of this, it's just like the saying 'practice makes perfect', this is just a lesson for me to realise what to do next time, these were the first 'big' photoshoots I'd ever done, so I wasn't really sure what to expect or how things were going to go, I just wanted it to be perfect though considering I was going to be displaying it to so many people. I think the process I used was reasonably good, and it managed to get the job done. I really enjoyed personal project, it was stressful at some points, but I feel like I've gained alot from doing this.

Making the Book.

All the time spent towards personal project the last 2 weeks has involved me just creating my book mostly, I want it to be perfect so I'm making sure that I've chosen the pictures I love the most and the layout etc is all perfect. Along the way I've also re-edited heaps of photos because some didn't look as good once I had put them against other photos in the book. It is a much more time consuming process that I had expected, but that's probably because I want it to be of the best quality. Luckily, the program is super easy to use and I can save it and come back to it later. 

Photoshop Curves!

Today I spent the entire day practically re-editing half of my photos with the photoshop curves that I downloaded from Julia's blog, I am in love with them, I think they really make a picture look better. It was a very time consuming day for me, but it was worth it, because I like the way some of my photos look now alot better. I started by editing the pictures of Adriana from the shoot the other day, because I hadn't even begun to edit them yet, I feel like the curves worked amazing on these pictures, mainly due to the beautiful colours that was incorporated into these photos.
Here's a Before & After shot once I had applied one of the curves:

After I had finished doing all the pictures of Adriana, I was so happy with the outcome, that I definitely wanted to test out the curves on the rest of my photos, I ended up using them for my photos of Jenna, Alesha and Meya and Brook and Phoebe. I didn't edit all the photos using curves, only selected ones that I felt looked better edited with curves rather than the way they had been previously edited. With the curves that I downloaded, in most cases they didn't work perfectly with the picture , because obviously when Julia was making them she was designing them for her own pictures, so this meant I had to adjust the curves a lot myself to make them suit my pictures.

At this point in time, I'm pretty much 100% happy with the way my photos look, I'm ready to complete designing my book so I can order it.