For this project i decided to work towards capturing childhood memories and nostalgic images. Locations can hold a lot of memory and i wanted to explore this through revisiting places that i had been as a child and capturing them how i would've seen them. This included shooting from a low perspective to achieve a child-like viewpoint and also utilise natural light and specifically golden hour to enhance the nostalgic glow and vibrant colours. For my final 2 images i have shot opposite perspectives of one location. I found an old photo of myself and realised that i could recreate this to construct a narrative. I used old shoes as props and placed them in the same position i was stood. One shot is from the child perspective - what i would've been looking at/ how i would've seen the scene when the original was being taken, the second shot is the opposite perspective and is the original scene but instead of me being in it, it is me who is taking the photo. This links to the location project because it shows how locations refuse to change despite the people who have visited changing constantly. The scene is exactly the same as it was 15 years ago, and instead, i have grown and changed. With editing - i decided to enhance the colours and dehaze the child's perspective, as a common theme of nostalgia and childhood memories are bright colours and and incomplete focus. Children are known for being drawn towards bright colours and we tend to remember those years as colourful and bright, therefore, enhancing these colours in the image allows me to showcase and emphasise that it is a different perspective and a different time. Whereas, i decided to edit the mirroring image to be black and white. I did this because it contrasts the child's perspective and shows a finish closer to reality or just the difference between what we remember vs what is really there. 

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For my other 8 images, i wanted to focus on aesthetics rather than narrative based images. They are a collection of visually cohesive images each reflecting the idea of a childhood memory, they each have an orange or warm glow and i edited each intentionally to lower the clarity and dehaze the images for a softer finish. Additionally, i added time and date stamps to each photo - i did this to highlight the fact they are supposed to be dated, old, and memories. Ranging from 2009-2012 i chose dates that matched the aesthetic, lighting, and content in the images to better create a convincing narrative. The time stamps on my final 2 images are reflective of each other - for the child's perspective i chose the year of 2010 and added the same timestamp to the old photo of me to showcase that they were the same moment in time just different views. For the 'older me' perspective, i have dated it as the day i took it to show the time progression and also show the way in which the location has remained unchanged. By having the correct timestamp i think it enforces the narrative that the girl in that picture grew up, returned to the same spot, and took the most recent image. 

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Overall, i think this project went well and i am proud of my final images. Aesthetic wise, i think they match my idea well and help to tell the story. Narrative wise, i think i could improve upon - the idea is strong however i think with more time and more photoshoots i could've better conveyed it. Either through more props, different locations, different techniques, or something entirely different. I did run into a few obstacles - like weather difficulties - i wanted to make the most of golden hour and that warm lighting but with it being autumn, that time coincided with a lot of rain and early evenings and made it a little harder to plan dates and timings, additionally, being more prepared with props and intentional planning would've helped me know exactly what to do on each shoot and i think that confidence would've passed into my images too. Something i was already confident on going into this project was editing and post production processes. I have a developed personal style of warm and glowing images, often with orange tones and effective colour grading, so going in, i knew that even if i couldn't manage to capture golden hour like i planned to, i could rely on editing and specifically using lightroom, to make my images closer to the intended finish. I focused a lot on colour grading, saturation/vibrance, clarity, dehazing, and masking. I often used radial masking to manipulate my own rays of light onto the images when i could not capture them on location, and i also depended on colour mixing and grading to achieve that orange glow when that was missing from the raw images. So, despite the obstacles and difficulties, i am happy with the finished images and think i achieved what i set out to do.