For my Senior Capstone Project I will be dedicating my time to working on my photography Instagram page. My sophomore year of college I took a digital photography class and that is when I found a new hobby of taking pictures. When the COVID-19  pandemic hit spring and summer of 2020 I decided to work on strengthen my photography skills and created an Instagram page to showcase my work to my close friends and other followers. Looking into the future of when I graduate, I plan on using the love I have for photography as a freelance or side job. I also feel that having a place to put all my photos is a great way for others to get to know myself, interests, and passions for those who do not know me personally.

Form

My goal for my project is to completely revamp my Instagram page into something more professional that I can use when someone is looking for a photographer. During my meeting my consultant made me think about having a “meaning” or “Ikigai”. To do this she provided helpful videos and a worksheet to help me think about what I love, what the world needs and what I am good at that can help me in the future. In my meeting we also discussed that my Instagram has a theme or a meaning to it. This was something that I really wanted to incorporate into my project because I want something that would separate myself and my work from other photographers. With that, I plan on completely changing my page and adding more of a theme to my photos. I really want people to see one of my photos somewhere and immediately be able to recognize that it is one of mine. I would also like to show people who I am while capturing the positivity in this world especially with the pandemic. I plan on taking pictures of places/things and even portraits. 

Photo from: @positivityphotos

Audience

My primary audience for my page would hopefully be potential clients who are looking for me to take pictures of them. My secondary audience would be people who are curious about my photography work and who just want some positive inspiration in their day. I feel that this project is necessary because it would be a great profile to showcase my photography skills and gain a potential side job in the future. I also feel that this project is important to show others a little bit more about myself and to engage my audience with positive or interesting photography.

Prior Experience

I choose this proposal for my project because I felt that this would not only help me after I graduated but also will help showcase some of the other skills that I learned while being a COM student. My sophomore year of college I took a digital photography class where I learn the skills of a camera and how to take photos with different uses of light, color, and perspectives. In my COM and photography classes I learned to work with photoshop and Lightroom. They will be what I primarily use to edit photos, below is an example of a photo on my Instagram that edited in two different ways. I also took a COM Multimedia writing class and

The original photo

The photo after I edited it

Research & Resources

I will not be needing to use many outside resources or research for me to complete this project. In my consultant meeting we discussed about looking at other photography pages and referencing them to get more ideas. For example, I really admire @madauer Instagram page. You can tell that she uses the same color scheme and aesthetic throughout her whole profile, which is something that I would really like to replicate into my photos as well.@lcphotographic is also someone who I admire their photography work. I think she does a great job of capturing different emotions and makes her Instagram site very welcoming to her audience.

Obstacles

One possible obstacle that I may run into is not being able to pick or choose which photos I will want to post. I also might run into the challenge of not getting the right photos or me not liking them after spending hours working on capturing them. This has happened to me in the past where I did not like what I took pictures of after downloading them off of my camera or even editing them. I always need to make sure that my camera is fully charged and my SD card is empty so I have no issues when I am taking pictures.

Timeline

I plan on working on my photography every week. My goal would be to try and post new contend once or twice a week but being realistic there are going to be times where I do not like my work or want to try again. I want to make sure I am working on it each week and providing new content to build a new photography portfolio page. My first step this week is figuring out what photos I would like to keep and also creating a new instagram name. I also want to make sure that I am getting a mix of portraits, winter, spring and other original photos up on my instagram site.

Week 6: Finish working on design persona and finalize preset/theme.

Week 7: Plan out locations for the photo shoots and the specific people.

Week 8-13: Each week shooting at the different locations, editing photos and posting them to my instagram.