Going into university today I was quite excited because today I planned to do my photo shoot. Once into university and speaking to my model I talked her through my idea and my concept so she could understand the attitude and mood I wanted my photos to carry. I also decided it would be best to take the photographs later in the afternoon when there were less people around and as I was unable to book a studio I wanted to take advantage of natural light. However avoiding the over bright sunshine I waited until about 4pm. I think that by doing the photo shoot at this time I would have a really good natural light that would compliment the garments well.
Whilst waiting for the perfect time for the photo shoot I carried on with other work such as finishing off my CAD designs, which was just editing my final line up and adding final touches so it's ready to be printed out. As well as cutting the loose threads from my garments and checking that it needed no last minute adjustments and finishing touches.
By this time it was ready to do my shoot. Therefore I began to prepare for it, first I needed a white screen and luckily I found this by a large window which was perfect because I had a large white background and good natural light, also it was out of the way so there would be less people to distract me or the model. Then I started styling and dressing my model. I chose my model specifically because I thought her aesthetic would compliment my garments really well as she's thin and tall, this allows the garments distortion to be exaggerated as well as her red hair also adds another element of colour that compliments the garments.
I styled her quite simply mainly because I wanted my garments to be the main focus point. I simply dressed her in the skirt and jacket with a pair of purple frilled socks worn underneath a pair of sparkly socks. I wanted these because they really complimented the shiny textures and frill on the skirt. Also the layered socks made for an interesting aesthetic. She also wore a pair of black platformed trainers. I believe that their clumpy look worked nicely with the distorted body idea as my model looks like she has abnormally long arms and legs and a hunchback. Next I did her hair and make up and as I wanted to work in more of the dreams aspect of my project into the shoot I put a white shimmery eye shadow around her eyes and across her brow, then I added glitter to her eye brows, this look was really interesting to look at because it is very unnatural looking. The next thing I did was cover her eyes with a thin piece of matte PVC because this linked back to some of my earlier developments with translucent fabrics and the hazy vs bright dreams element. It was also one of the styling looks I created in preparation for this shoot along with a collection of inspiring images.
Once covering her eyes I looked back again at the variety of different styling ways, I chose to go for bringing her hair over the fabric. This worked really well as it looked very dramatic and refereed back to my dreams and DMT research which I was was eager to portray and highlight within my final garment. Furthermore as her hair is a rich red colour it complimented the colours in the jackets print and actually clashing with the purple parts the garment which would normally clash however I believe that it strengthened the look because it added anther colour and worked very well with the distorted body, making the overall look odd as it clashed but strangely worked as well.
Therefore when it came to shoot the images my model was really interesting to look at, especially with the different colours and textures. I think it gave my images depth. I had planned for my images to look distorted and unnatural, so I made my model pose in a variety of positions that looked uncomfortable and odd looking, particularly with the hunched back and lengthened arms. After taking a variety of images I showed my model so she could get a better understanding of what aesthetic I wanted. We then worked together on suggesting new poses and positions, at one point working with props such as her sitting on the chair. I liked the images of her sitting awkwardly on the chair but felt that they weren't as strong as the images of her standing up. Also with these shots I had changed her hair to it being in a high ponytail, and looking back at these images I was able to identify that this was not a strong look because with my whole projects concept her face and eyes being covered emphasised this so much better so I put it back however changing the fabric around her eyes to the purple shimmering fabric that had also been used in the skirt. This was another good look and I think it was important that I changed her styling a bit because it made the images a bit more interesting and added more variety especially as there is little miss en scene with the images as they are just taken with a blank background.
Additionally I also tried to take some pictures looking through the knit sample like I did before when I developed a print off of those images. For this I had to change the camera settings to manual focus because the knit was so close to the lens it couldn't focus. I only took a few photos like this because they came out quite bad and not like they had the first time I tried this technique. I moved on because I knew that they wouldn't create the effect I wanted and I already had a variety of strong images and if I really wanted to use this technique I could always digitally edit the images on Photoshop and create a very similar effect. Therefore moving away from this I tried a few more shots of my model standing and bending awkwardly.
Overall I really enjoyed doing my photo shoot and I am really pleased with the results because looking back at the unedited shots I know I have quite a few strong shots that sum up my project really well. Tomorrow I want to select at least 4 of the best and begin to edit them so I can print them out in anticipation for mounting my board next week, in order to avoid getting behind just in case I need to reprint.
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