Fashion Constructed Image: Critical Appraisal

Looking at my progression throughout this project as an individual, I feel that at the beginning of the project I was proactive, excited and hard working. I put the research I wanted to do for this project before other work at the time, I was excited for everything to get moving in the right direction, I was looking forward to tutorials where I would get a chance to express my work, ideas and hopes for the project and I was inspired by our original idea and concept. As the project moved on and began evolving I stayed very excited about he project and loved watching our ideas begin to take form. Around this time when we were having tutorials with Sam Chick and Jonathon, sometimes we got quite a lot of negative feedback, I think because I was so involved in the project and was so happy with it I took the negative feedback badly and didn't look at the feedback that said we also had very strong areas to our concept etc. At the point that the project began getting a little more real, in the sense that it wasn't just researching and developing our concept anymore and got more into the time where we needed to be planning budgets, buying materials and getting and group of people extremely organized in a short period of time I began to get quite overwhelmed and unorganized. Overall, I think my contribution was as it should have been, I was highly involved in every job I was given, and did everything the group need me to do, however I am aware that my involvement fell through towards the end, as my attitude toward the project had turned a little negative due to a few reasons.  

Looking at the progression of our group throughout this project, I feel that there were several factors that set us back, divided us and made some aspects of the project quite negative. Nearer the beginning we lost two of our group members with very little notice, this was after the point that we had assigned jobs and organised ideas, research and management. So it was quite a blow and I think that as a group we were disheartened and from then on found that what was hard with 6 was twice as hard with 4.

With any group of people put together to work on one thing, there were of course differences in personalities and opinions. Nearing the end of the project our organisation fell through completely. I don't think any one member of the group can be blamed individually for the fall through of organisation, it came down to differences in opinions causing disagreements, personal issues and communication issues. I think even though the aspects we as a group had a big affect on our project, when it came down to it, we produced an exciting concept and followed it through to the end with determination and positivity. 

Fashion Constructed Image: Research Aids

Throughout the project, as we all had different jobs to be focusing on, it was useful to have lots of images from our own individual research that we could all look at and begin forming images in our minds that became more and more similar as the project went on. 
I looked at several photographers nearer the beginning of the project to help me to characterize, cast etc.


Rankin.


I looked at Rankin for his sexy, cheeky, naughty shots of beautiful, confident women.


Gregory Crewsdon for his domestic narrative on women..





We also looked the the photograph above when looking at composition references.


Peggy Sirota for the strong characterization she builds of her models in the photographs she takes.







And Sebastian Faena for his skills in capturing sexy with subtlety! He always takes photos of beautiful women, in beautiful places doing beautiful sexy things.







These photos also made us address the idea that we could have the images in black and white as well as colour to experiment with the effects on the scene.

Fashion Constructed Image: Composition References

We began looking for composition reference later on in the project, once we had ideas of what the set would look like, what the models would be wearing, what would be on the set, the lighting etc. We firstly turned to the first photographers we looked at, at the very beginning of the project, when we were still developing our concept; photographers like Tim Walker.




However, none of these images fitted with our set now we had created it so we began looking elsewhere. 





This is a photograph from the GHD adverts. we looked at these pictures a lot for reference, but throughout the project the group was divided on the importance of them on our project.




This is a photo taken by Gregory Crewdson. We looked at this for the reason it fitted to our set better, and a lot of the group liked the lighting. 


These are some images for the composition of our model the Wolf. These images gave us, as a group, inspiration and visual aids to visualize our final images, and on the day also gave our models help when it came to taking the photos, as they were given visual aids to base their positioning around.

Fashion Constructed Image: Lighting References

When it came to lighting I was not hugely involved, obviously as a group we all had the final say, and I saw the lighting plans, lighting choices etc throughout the project. So I found the images we chose to use a lighting references very useful to help create images in my mind of what the final lighting would be, this also helped when looking for composition references.
These are a few of the images we looked at for lighting, and based our final lighting ideas on. The photos are taken by Sebastian Faena. These images were also on the wall around our photo shoot on the day, for us to refer to.

Fashion Constructed Image: Casting

Following the characterization of the our two characters we began thinking and finding potential castings for the models. 

Little Red.
Originally, before we started looking realistically at who we would use for Little Red, I found images from model websites of the ideal red, although in these four images bellow the men are too old for our character so this was more for the overall look than for the age.

These are photos we took of boys we found on the street and around uni that we liked the look of for Red. 

              

               

We collected a wide range of boys/men for the role of Red above. Some we decided were too old, too young, too good looking, or just didn't have the right look overall. 














Wolf

 

These were the possibilities for our Wolf, who was our most important character within our concept. 


These are our two final models: 
we chose them because as a group we thought they were the best fit for our characters.

              
 Wolf                                                                  Red

Fashion Constructed Image: Characterisation

After having a tutorial with Sam Chick in which he focused on the importance of defining strong characters for our concept I created a information sheet -type thing about each character to try and give the group a clearer picture of what we were looking for when we were casting the models. 


WOLF
Female.
Late 20's early 30's
Beautiful, Sexy, Strong Independent.
The human version of a wolf, in the sense that she is a true predator. That hunts down men/boys for enjoyment.
Her hobbies most likely involve competitiveness, a chance for her to win. 
Sexually she prefers younger men, as she likes that they are impressionable, curious and teachable.
She is spontaneous and doesn't like to plan ahead, she doesn't see the point when she could be having fun instead of worrying about the future.
She gets constant attention from men as she is tall, beautiful, toned, sexy, confident and quick witted. This makes her fussy when it comes to men, as she has a lot of choice, but she likes the chase and therefore goes for the shyer young man. 


LITTLE RED
Male.
Between 17 and 21
Naive, young minded, impressionable, clever.
Still lives with his parents.
A typically younger, slightly studious man.
Excited for the adventures he will encounter now he is getting older.
Eager for his period of sexual awakening and experiencing things 'grown ups' do.
Goodlooking but in a slightly geeky way; a little lanky etc.
His hobbies evolve around sporting activities, football, rugby, boxing. Playing computer games, xbox etc. He reads, but not a huge amount, he prefers magazines to novels.
As any young boy, he likes the prospect of being with girls now he is getting older.

Fashion Constructed Image: Jobs

I was given the job of casting and characterization and also contributing the fashion, hair and makeup aspects of the shoot.
I am in charge of finding the models to play our two main characters, and defining the characters of each one. As a group we had a strong idea of what we wanted for the models from the beginning, when we were developing our concept.   

Fashion Constructed Image: Concept and Ideas

At the beginning of this project we were given a choice of several starting point from which we could begin developing a concept for our projects; for example, film noir. We decided as a group to chose Folk Lore and Fairy tales. We began brainstorming folk lore and fairy tales, thinking about the stories we remember from childhood and researching the less known stories too. 
After, as a group, taking a journey through brainstorming and researching fairy tales and folk lore throughout history to the modern day. As a group we came to a conclusion of the following concept, which of course as any concept does altered, improved and sacrificed throughout the project when needed. 
We took the 14th century story of Little Red Riding Hood and decided to bring it forward into the 21st Century but following the original path of the story which after researching turned out the be a lot more explicit than we remembered it being as children. Also after research we realized that this story had a lot more layers than seen on the surface and therefore we took a lot of the story away leaving a much more accessible story that was easier for us to transform into our own, for example we decided to use only two characters in our portrayal of the story which we 'Red' and 'Wolf'. We also changed the sexes of our two characters, Red becoming and boy and the Wolf being a woman. the characterization stayed the same however, we kept Little Red and a very naive young boy and the Wolf became an older woman but we kept her as a hunter, and predator. The main thing about our concept that became the most important to our group was, from the set to the characterization it was extremely important to keep the the original story whilst twisting and changing it to make it our own, and ultimately creating our own story.  

COMMISSION: Artist Research

Melissa Moore

After being shown the work of Melissa Moore in one of our lectures, I loved the concept of her series 'Know the Edge', and started looking at the series for inspiration for my own projects concept. 

I find her photos from this series can be quite sexual, or at least have hints of a sexual nature within them. For starters the concept of being in someone else's house without them knowing, the idea of dressing up, and the hints whereby she stands in bedroom, squats down in the photos etc. I thought this was really interesting, and think this is where my love for her concept came from. 

I knew from the start that I wanted to focus on the reuse of waste, but in a positive light. So to look at how society reuses waste for gain. It is almost 'trendy' at the moment to recycle and reuse so I thought that this was an area that I could find a lot of inspiration for my work from. 

These are my favorite photos from the series 'Know the Edge', for various reasons, mainly for the composition, which I've found really interesting in all of Melissa Moore's photos.  

I like that her face is not shown in any of the photos, obviously stemming from the reason that she is doing something against the law, but also I think makes the photos that much more interesting and inviting. I almost feel as though I want to be there with her, what is she looking at? Where is she in the house? What does the rest of that room look like? Where has she positioned the camera? Its that sense of ambiguity that makes this series so exciting. 

COMMISSION: Critical Appraisal

I knew I wanted to incorporate portraiture within my project immediately. My concept for this project began as a series of photographs that documented what happens to our household waste once it is taken from our homes, I wanted to capture images of the people that deal with it on waste disposal sites etc. However, after looking for visual references I found some that inspired a slight changed to my idea. My photos are meant to capture people that use waste to make a living, not work with it but selling it. From charity shops to flee markets, waste for one person can always be turned around to become another person’s gain.
The two visual references that I began looking at and that have now at the end of the project still had the biggest influence on my work/ideas are Pieter Hugo and Melissa Moore. Pieter Hugo; an incredible photographer created a series called “Permanent Error”, which gave me the idea of capturing portraits whilst the person is surrounded by the waster they have transformed. I looked at Melissa Moore because I have seen one image by her before from her series “Know the Edge” and fell in love with it, I loved the concept of her work and how she pulled it off. Her work is the reason I settled on using a 2^nd hand clothing store as my final images.  

 These are two of my contact sheets; these are the ones that I picked my final images off.

My three final images;

When it came to choosing my final images I knew I wanted to have one portrait and two or more other photos surrounded the portrait of where I found that person. I went into bookshops, charity shops, skip yards etc but my favorite was this woman in a second hand clothes shop. She goes to yard sales, house clearing, antique markets, jumble sales every weekend to get the stock for her shop. She wasn't the easiest person to photograph as she was nervous but i really love the composition and colours of the first images (the clothes rail). Im not sure how brilliantly these three images go together as a set but I like that the two environment images frame the portrait, surrounded the image quite like she surrounds herself with this transformed waste.
I think the reason I’d like my work best in an exhibition is because even though I can see it as quite commercial work and therefore suiting a magazine publication etc, I think that with an exhibition there is more freedom for your work to be viewed as its own piece of art rather than a visual aid.
My studies for this project, I feel have improved greatly from my first semester, however not completely as this project was running alongside the fashion constructed images project and I found myself getting overwhelmed at times and confused at which project to put first. I also reshot a lot more for this project which I am pleased about, as when printing came round I was confident in my three final images and could make logical connections as to why I chose them! So far, research was my most challenging hurdle, I found two visual references that I carried with me for the whole project as I adore them but I find talking about them difficult and finding strong connections to my work hard as well.

ENVIRONMENT PRESENTATION

The environment units, where the two that I struggled with the most. Not because I am not interested in this area of photography, but it is one that I don't have a lot of confidence in. It also took me a while to find inspiration and develop a concept for these units, and because of that don't think I really developed a personal connection with the projects.
For the pastiche element of this unit I chose the image by Jem Southam called Seaford Head. The reason I chose this image to pastiche was because it was the image that inspired me most, I liked the composition of this image and had pictures in my head of ways I could draw inspiration from the visual language to pastiche it. I was pleased with my pastiche as I felt it captured the visual language that had drawn my to the image I was making a pastiche of it in the first place. 

My concept for the Landscape Environment unit, was focused on the history of the environments around us. I live in Rochester and have always loved being so close to the castle and cathedral as I love to go into Rochester and walk around the historic sights. My concept came from my interest in history and the history of my surroundings. I wanted to try and show, through my photos, the importance I think the history of a place has on what it is now. 
I struggled to find a visual reference that I could draw inspiration from for my concept and my photos. I came across a painter called Susan Brown, who I wasn't actually looking at for my project but I really liked her paintings and noticed the theme of historical architecture in her paintings, but more interestingly the way she always painted these historical buildings in a modern context. 
I went up to Rochester castle to take photos for this unit as I thought it was the perfect place to try and capture the idea I had had for my concept. 

Contact sheets..

I took two films up at the castle, and unfortunately not all of the images I took came out well due to bad exposure. When it came to printing, I found that some of the images were too dark because of the way I exposed them, so due to this, my prints aren't of the best standard. I don't think this reflects on my skills when printing, as i really enjoyed the printing aspect of these units but more to do with the fact I haven't quite mastered the skill of shoot outside and exposing correctly.
I chose the three images I have as my final prints because I think that they are the most accurate representation of what my concept was aiming to achieve.. Unfortunately some of the images were not good negatives as I overexposed them when I was shooting them.

Looking back over these two units, I know that my time management let me down for both projects and had my management and organization been better I would have had more contact sheets to choose from when it came to printing, meaning that it wouldn't have mattered as much that I overexposed some of the images.

The City Environment unit also proved a little difficult for me, as it took me time to develop a concept I was happy with and found it hard to find visual references that I really connected with and was inspired by. 

For the pastiche I chose the photograph by photographer Brassai called Paris after Dark, No.27. I chose this photo because I thought it was beautiful. I have always wanted to experiment with night photography as well, so this seemed like a good choice. I went to London to do this pastiche, and walked up streets of youth hostels and hotels near Kings Cross Station to find an area where I thought I could create a similar photo with the same visual language that had drawn me to Brassai's images. I had a lot a fun shooting this image and was looking forward to seeing how the images came out as I have never shot in the dark before. However, printing was a different story. I struggled hugely with printing this pastiche as I had to control so many different aspects of the image in order for it to be perfect. I think in the end my final print is nice, it is to me very aesthetically pleasing which is what I loved about the photograph taken by Brassai but it is not a very successful print as there are some errors on the image.

My concept was to do with the question of, what makes a city? I had a conversation with my Dad around the time we got briefed for this unit, we were talking about the fact that anywhere that has a Cathedral is classed as a city. I started to think about what other things make a city a city, but not literally. I thought about why people visit cities, and thought of course about sights, usual those sights being some kind of building. For example, people visit New York and go to see the Empire State building or Paris to see the Eiffel Tower.
I looked at a few photographers for this aspect of the unit, for example Alvin Langdon Coburnn and in particular Alfred Stieglitz. Stieglitz doesn't relate to my concept but I drew inspiration from his visual language, especially when it came to printing as I really like his contrasted images and the effect they have. I also like how linear and structural some of his photographs are without being too architectural.  

Contact Sheets..

Again, with these images I badly exposed some of them which limited my chose of final prints, I like the photos I now have as my final prints, but I know that they are not my best and as mentioned before, I know that my time management let me down hugely here, if i had organized myself more I would have had time to take more photos and therefore have more to chose from so that if some of my images were over or under exposed it would not matter as much. 


The thing I have learnt hugely from, during both these units is that my organisation and time management needs to improve massively so that I can utilize the time I have and use it to fulfill everything that is asked of me during projects.