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.