Conclusion

For my major project I decided to travel to Berlin and Paris to take photographs. During my journey I learnt quite a lot about myself as a photographer that I didn't know before.
Being away from home and travelling with just one other person, has helped me grow in terms of being more independent and confident.
As a photographer I have learnt how to plan and prepare myself for mistakes that can be made whilst being somewhere unknown to home.
The reason I chose this as my project topic was basically simple, I like travelling to new destinations and I like enhancing my photographs in a painterly style.
New york was the location where I realised that I like documenting and exploring new places, My personal emotional passion/attachment began when I travelled to my Hostel in New York by taxi, I instantly wanted to document this new place. The Architecture and sheer size of the monuments and buildings are so overwhelming and fascinating to me.
Since I have been to New York I have taken thousands of outdoor images in England, Italy, Spain, Holland and now Germany and France. I intend to strive and continue my travelling journeys and pushing myself to create new styles and books.
I always enjoy developing my work after I have been to the destination, when I was creating my book online I felt as if I was reliving being there at them moments. The development of my book and final prints show a reflection of how I was feeling during the making of it. It reminds me of a roller coaster, in slow motion passing through tunnels, whizzing down banks, swaying left, then right, being scared, then laughing.
In fact the whole array of emotions, which I hope, the viewers can experience when they look at my images. Every time I re-visit my past travelling photographs it takes me back to that particular moment through the happiness and the sadness in fleeting moments captured by me visually on camera. This is the power of photography in invoking real feelings and this is why I chose photography as a pathway to my future career.

Final printing images

Here are my final 5 photographs which will be printed on A3 glossy paper. Although I did travel to Paris as well as Berlin, I have decided to use these 5 photographs of Berlin Wall as my final 5 prints. ( I have still included images from paris in my travelling book), the reason I have decided on these five photographs is because of the use of colour in particular and how good they all look together as a set. These photographs are all took of or around the Berlin Wall, therefore the images as a collective tell a story.

Looking into the historical context of Berlin I found out some quite amazing and interesting information, which has enabled me as a photographer to appreciate what I actually am documenting and how much something can mean to a country as a whole. 

By this I mean the Berlin Wall was a wall that was basically separating the Eastern side of Berlin from the West side. By this I mean the East side was controlled by the German Democratic and the West side was controlled by France, Great Britain and America. The wall was basically a symbol of hostility which is a representation of what was called the 'iron curtain;.

Families were torn apart whilst this wall was up, and people lost lives and it took a lot of time for the Berlin to actually be recognised as a country once again.

The battle of freedom lasted all the way to 1989 when it was official that the wall was coming down. 

After the fall of the wall, the wall was basically a playground for artists, not only are the walls painted with bright capturing colours, but also a deep dark meaning lies beneath each painting, known as 'graffiti'.

Creating a book

I used 'Social Printing Studio' to create my book which is located in America. I liked the styles and options that you could choose to create a book. I decided to use photographs from a lot of places in which I have travelled to to take images. My true passion for photography is deeply rooted in taking images outdoors, whether its in the heart of the countryside or in busy cities.
After previously creating a photo book, which I named 'a journey' I felt as if I developed something that meant a lot to me, as it was something I enjoyed doing and found it great I could make it into something I could flick through. (Just my personal preference over a print)
Below is a few images of my book.
I am quite happy with the layout and how their is a variety of photographs from my travelling journeys. I hope to take many more photographs in new destinations in the future, and create a lot more books.

Adding colour

As I began editing my images on photoshop, then reverting them to a cropped square, I began to see what looked like a collection of images that belonged together. Not because all of the photographs were taken at the same destination - because they weren't - but because they all looked good together. In regards to the use of brash colour. And also because they tell a story of my journey as a photograph travelling to new destinations. 

My mind was much clearer in regards to where I wanted this project to go, I am going to create a book of my travel journeys... not only including my travels to Berlin and Paris but to other places I have ventured too. However, I am going to produce 5 final prints also of 5 photographs I believe explains my project- Travelling with colour.

I think the main reason why these images come above together is because they all sort of share a distinct style in relation to the exaggeration of colour.

Editing

Here is two of my images taken near Elwick Village during night fall, the first one is unedited but as you can probably see by the saturated colour the second one is enhanced.

I like the use of brash, unnatural colour. Maybe its because I love painting and using bright acrylics, When I'm using social media such as instagram I always find myself editing my photographs in a painterly unnatural style.

I like the blue and pink contrasting colours against the black trees, and the trails of the plane cutting through the sky making different shapes. 

When I look into the image I see different shapes and colours all blending together, when you look closely into an image I think about the photograph as an object rather than a place, to me it's just me being in a certain place at a certain time creating a moment that I can keep, even if I can not remember it mentally it can be printed from a computer and viewed again and again as an object.

Shooting

These images again are raw unedited files, however, they differ to the previous shoots as these were taken midday. You can see the weather is beautiful with only a few clouds in the blue sky.

I feel like the colour of these images would not need as much editing as the other photographs as they already are full with bright colours.

I quite like the composition of the second image with the half sky to half ground/trees combination.

More shooting

Again these landscapes are unedited, taken from the Nikon D3200, I found it better to go out during sunset, as the weather this week had been quite grey and the clouds seemed more prominent against the sky. This was good for my images as there is more of a contrast in the sky in terms of colour, as a grey sky is quite negative, and not linked to what my project is looking at which is colour. 

One of the downfalls that you cannot plan as a travel photographer is the weather conditions, so  you can'e exactly plan to have hundreds of beautiful sunset images on a certain date as the weather can be extremely unpredictable.

I quite like the images above, however, I feel they would look better with a slight enhancement of saturation to exaggerate the colour a little more, also the buildings and trees are pretty dark particularly on the bottom image .

Nikon D3200

I took the camera almost everywhere I went the week before I was going to Berlin and Paris. Mainly just to feel comfortable with the camera and get used to it. As you can see below are a few snaps I took whilst driving around Hartlepool during sunset.

The photographs below are unedited, for my final major project I will be editing my final images to enhance colour saturation and experiment with the use of editing software in more intense detail.

Planning the trip

Me and my friend Steph organised our flights and hotels online not long after deciding our major project plans, We booked flights for March 11th - 16th 2015, which would allow us two nights in Paris and two nights in Berlin.

I decided to buy a 32 GB memory card for the camera, so that I was able to have enough space to take as many photographs I needed whilst walking around these new destinations.

Martin Parr

I feel that Martin Parr's work has been quite an inspiration to me over the years, particularly because of his use of composition and colour. He also looks into our society critically, photography our modern day consumerism, foreign travel and tourism, family, food and relationships.
His brash use of saturated colour allows the viewers eyes to dart around every area of the photograph, keeping his images very busy and interesting. I find myself looking at his images for a long time, the use of colour allows the viewer to be captivated.

Which camera to use?

I found it difficult to decide which camera to use for my travels. I thought about using my Pentax film camera, however, I thought it could be quite a risk as the photographs may not have worked for some reason and I can't exactly travel back to Berlin or Paris.
I also needed to think of something efficient and not to heavy as I will be doing a lot of walking.

After talking to the technicians at University, I came to the decision to us the Nikon D3200 digital SLR camera. The main reason I decided to use this particular camera was because it is reliable as well as quite light.

Using a digital camera can also enable me to view the images immediately after capturing them. 

Berlin

Here is some of the images from Berlin, again raw unedited files. When I got back from the journey I found it really hard to narrow down 2000 images, I think I must have spent about 4 weeks looking, feeling confused, wondering what will work what won't work, what will fit together, how they can link.

I decided to not look at the images for a full week then go back to them, when I had a fresh mind I felt as if I knew which photographs I didn't like straight away or which ones didn't exaggerate colour in a certain way or my travel journey.

I enjoyed Berlin a lot more than Paris, as there was a lot of graffiti allover the walls and lots of colour everywhere I looked, the only downfall was the grey weather the full time I was there. However, There was colour all over to make up for the unpredictable weather.

If I was to describe Berlin, It would have to be 'under construction', as everything seemed really arty (If I can use that word), and undeveloped. I just found the place amazing and extremely interesting in regards to historical context - especially the Berlin Wall.

I think as a budding photographer I would quite like to work somewhere like Berlin, as the artwork and photography scene was great.