A LEVEL ART and DESIGN

COMPONENT 2
EXTERNALLY SET ASSIGNMENT
TO BE COMPLETED BY THE CANDIDATE

Centre Name The HENLEY College Centre Number 6 2 4 4 1

Candidate Name Lucy Martyn Candidate Number 2

Critical &
Art, Craft & Textile Graphic
Tick the title for Design
Fine Art Contextual
Design Comm.
3D Design Photography
which you are Studies
entered X

Tick chosen 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
assignment X

LEARNER STATEMENT
COMPLETION OF THIS FORM IS COMPULSORY
Complete and submit the learner statement with your work as it will be referred to when it is assessed.
To place your submission in a suitable context, use the template below:
Explain the MAIN IDEA(S) for the development of your responses
The title I have chosen to explore within this exam component is transformation and investigating the
process of a transformation. I want this process to be focused around the transformation of growing up with
elements of tribute directed towards people of importance. Within exploring this process of growing up, I
want to focus on my own personal experience and transformation as I feel I will be able to apply myself to
the project very easily as it is very personal, therefore hopefully creating more meaningful photos. Within
this I do want to include elements to tribute towards people of importance, mainly my mum and dad and
other people that have supported me growing up.

Within this project I want to produce more photographs in a more documentary style way as I think this will
be more beneficial to my project as I want to document my images in a very raw and blunt way to create an
idea and sense of reality. I think that documentary style photos can capture moments and experiences in a
more effective and raw way, which I think is overall more powerful and links well with the concept and what
I am trying to achieve within my work. Within this project I would also like to work with a variety of mediums
to help further create diversity within my work. I’d like to capture raw moments that convey who I am now
and the relationships that I have with people now.

Outline your PLAN(S) for the development of your work

Date/Week Plans
The idea for this shoot is to produce a self-
1 portrait shoot, I wanted to do this to almost
introduce the subjects/characters into my
work. I wanted the first shoot to be self-
portraits as I wanted to establish who I am
now considering that I aim to produce a
project about me growing up.
I also thought the idea of self-portraits was
a very interesting way to establish who
you are. Due to social media people
posting selfies to try and communicate
What has been achieved? / What next?
I am really happy with what I was able to
produce within this shoot. I feel the images I
did produce achieved all the aims I set out
for myself when doing this shoot. Although I
think the images only reflected who I am
physically and established looks rather than
character. To further develop this I could
explore how to represent who I am in
character. I also had ideas to explore
perspective within this and how I view
myself or how someone else views me.
 who they are. This week I also did further
research into self-portraits and selfies as I
wanted to further look into the significance
of selfies now days. When looking at stats
I found out that about 93 million selfies
were taken a day as far back as 2014 and
this was on android devices alone. One
poll found that every third photo taken by
those aged 18-24 is a selfie.
This week I worked on gallery research
2 and writing up my research booklet. The
gallery I visited was The Tate and I looked
at the work of various photographers. I
looked at a Birdhead exhibition. Birdhead
is a collab of two photographers who focus
on documenting their daily life in
Shanghai. I also looked at Stephan Shores
work which I really like and think is very
interesting. I also wrote up and exhibition
by Nedko Solakov which touches on the
subject of repetition and labour.
In my research booklet I looked into the
work of Stephen Shore and William
Eggleston.
In this shoot I wanted to explore and look
3 at objects that are important to me and
maybe represent more about my character
and who I am. In this I decided to
photography two teddy bears I was given
when I was born and have had since. I
chose this as these teddies held great
significance to me as a child and to my
parents as well and they still hold
significance. I also wanted to photograph
these teddies as I have had them since I
was born so they have been consistent
through my life. Although my project is
based on transformation and growing up I
thought it would be interesting to look at
things that have stayed constant through
my life.
In this shoot I wanted to further develop
4 and work with the idea of colour. I was
really happy with the outcome of my
images from my previous shoot and felt I
could further develop this. Although I
wanted to look at colour that personally
create the idea of nostalgia rather than
creating the general idea of nostalgia. So I
looked at my childhood photographs and
two common colours were blue and green.
So I wanted to include these colours in my
photographs. I also wanted to start
introducing people into my work that have
influenced me in my life. So in this shoot I
wanted to photography my mum (one of
the most influential people in my life) and
I could develop this idea by doing a shoot
that focuses on my flaws or things that I like
about myself. Or I could develop this by
doing a shoot based off of other people’s
opinions of me, my family and friends etc. I
do want to look at perspective within my
work as this is something touched on in the
songs I looked at previously when starting
my work and exploring different ideas to
start my work.
I think this research has been very helpful
and will help to influence a lot of my work. I
find that in depth research really helps me
overall in my work and helps me to think
more in depth about influences and
techniques that photographers use to help
improve and develop their own work. I also
find that doing research like this helps me to
fall more in love with photography in general
and the process people go through to create
their art. I find it very inspiring.
Doing research like this also helps me to
think more about my work and helps to add
structure to my work and make it more
effective.
I am really happy with the outcome of this
shoot. I wanted to use warm toned lighting
toned and neutral colours almost try and
create a sense of nostalgia. For further
research I looked into the work of Uta Barth,
she uses a lot of warm tones lighting in her
images and I personally think her work
creates ideas of nostalgia and utopia. I
wanted to work with this and see how I
could include this in my own work and I think
I did. The lighting worked really well and in
some images looked almost heavenly and
created ideas of new life. I think the use of
colours was really effective and really
helped me to further convey this. I definitely
want to further explore and develop this idea
as I was happy with the outcome in this
shoot.
Overall I am very happy with this shoot, I
think the use of colour worked really well
again and helped to create meaning and
significant within my work. I feel the colour
helped to create meaning and stronger
images. The colour helped to frame a lot of
the images and made the subject stand out.
I feel that I can continue to develop and
work with the idea of colour within my work.
I think that colour has a lot of impact on the
photographs and can really help create
meaning. I think I could further develop this
idea to further push my project. I could
experiment with colour to help me explore
and represent important times in my life, for
 try and include the colours blue and green.
I think the use of colour is very cool and it
can easily create meaning and
significance within images.
I wanted to further look into representing
5 objects and people that are important to
me. So in this shoot I photographed an
object that is really important. A necklace
made out of one of my grandfather’s
cufflinks. I wanted to photograph this as
this is the only thing I really have left of him
and it hold great importance. So I wanted
to use this to convey his importance and
meaning to me. In this shoot I wanted to
use lighting to help highlight this and the
importance of it.
I want to work more on documenting
6 things. When I started this project I wanted
to work on documenting the transformation
of growing up and documenting my life
and relationships with people. I feel I kind
of lost this and I would like to start working
in this style more. This week I did a shoot
of my sister who is another influential and
important person in my life. I
wanted to work on documenting my
relationship with her now. So in this shoot I
photographed my sister whilst we were
having an argument. Documentary photos
are very raw and so I wanted to work on
this in my own work, these images were
impromptu and unposed, allowing me to
photograph in a very raw way. I wanted to
also work try and work on framing and
creating more space and distance within
my images.
In this shoot I wanted to work on
7 documenting my relationships with people
in my family and people important to me.
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example I could use colour to represent
schools I have been to that are important, I
could use colour to represent people and
places in my life that have been influential.
Or objects that have been influential.
I am really happy with this shoot and I think
the images are really cool. I think the use of
lighting helped to produce some very
interesting images as it helped to create
shadows and highlights. Although I am
happy with this I don’t think that this is my
most successful shoot so far. I think the
colour was interesting and kind of links back
to the previous shoot where I tried to convey
nostalgia through the use of warm lighting
(shoot 2) but I don’t feel it worked in this.
I am really happy with this shoot and I think
it might be my personal favourite shoot so
far in my work. I ended up producing over
100 images because it was such a spur of
the moment exploratory thing that I ended
up getting really into. I didn’t really break in
between taking each image either so a lot of
the images are blurred due to moment and
my sister talking to me or shouting at me.
There is a variety of images, there are also
images of her laughing and smiling and
acting very calm. I think this is really
effective as this captures our relationship
perfectly, we fight and then we make up and
then we laugh over the fact that we fought
over something so stupid.
This is more of the work that I wanted to
produce. And I think working like this would
help and allow me to create some really
interesting work.
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Describe the CONTEXT (influences, purposes and meanings) of your work

When starting this project, I initially looked into a song entitled ‘Dear Ben’ by Loyle Carner. The song,
written by his mother Jean explores his experiences growing up and the transformation he has gone
through when growing up through her perspective. The song was written is response to Carner’s song
‘Dear Jean’ which is a song he wrote to his mum to tell her that he was moving out of her house to then
move in with his girlfriend. The song ‘Dear Ben’ talks about going from something to something else, the
first line is ‘I’ve watched you grow, from first kick to first kiss’ another line ‘I’ve watched you hold your own
form boy to man’. So, it explores the transformation of growing up. This was one of my main influences
when starting this project. I felt that the songs linked very well with the idea of transformation and also
opened the idea to look at the transformation of growing up from different perspectives, from the child’s
perspective as well as the parent’s perspective.

REFLECT on your work critically as it progresses and on its completion

Date/Week Evaluation/ What worked well what are you taking forward from here?/ How are you
refining your techniques and ideas?
Overall I am happy with the outcome of this shoot. I really liked the idea of a self-portrait
1 shoot, I think it’s a really interesting and modern way to convey who you are and what
you represent in a way. I think I would defiantly like to further develop this idea, I was
looking at how I could use perspective and different people’s perspective to develop this
idea. I was thinking I could do a self-portrait shoot focusing on my flaws or stuff that I
like about myself. Or I was thinking I could do a shoot based off of people’s opinions on
me, my parent’s perspective or friend’s perspective etc. I think I would be really
interesting to look at other people’s perspective and options as this gives a range of new
ideas and things to base my shoot off of.

I think the research was really helpful, especially the research booklet, I try to do my
2 normal research in as much detail as possible, a research booklet helps to do this and
more. I think its comparing photographers work and techniques that really makes me
think about my own work and how I can develop it and use different techniques to
achieve good results. Doing work like this also helps me plan a lot more for my own
work and make me think about how I could better my own work. I really enjoyed the
Tate exhibitions, there was a work that I found really interesting and going to exhibitions
really helps inspire me within my own work.

I think this shoot was very interesting, I really enjoyed experimenting and working with
3 colour to try and help me convey the meaning and create significant within my images. I
feel I could definitely further work with this idea to help develop my project. I had ideas
to use colours to represent important things in my life, like schools I’ve been to that that
been important in my life or places and people that are important or even objects that
are important. I think I could use colour to help convey a lot and create meaning within
my images.

This week I wanted to further explore how I could use colour to create meaning within
4 my images. In this shoot I also wanted to include someone Important to me and
 someone who has been influential in my life. I chose to include my mum in this shoot.
Im happy with the results of this shoot but I think I can further develop this idea a lot.
The idea of using colour to create meaning and using an influential person in my work.

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