For this shoot, I plan to now experiment with people since I feel only focusing on simply writing is lacking my potential skills. I plan to find further styles and photographers where writing is used in photography. I want to find a way to incorporate fashion with writing since I own an interest in fashion and believe this style could work really well with my personal style of photography.
Research
For this blog, I do not have a specific photographer/artist to reference when it comes to my direct intentions, but for the aspect of simply model photography, I will use my past inspiration from the photographer Billy Kidd. I have analysed this photographer's work before in my component one work.
Image bank
Contact sheet
Best Photos
These are my best raw photos for this shoot that I selected.
These are my best raw photos for this shoot that I selected.
Photos that require improvement
For the second photo, the shutter speed is at 1/50, aperture at F4.5, and exposure at ISO 200; flash is also used. I feel the pose in this photo is also unflattering and overall ruins the aesthetic intended for the photo. The action of lifting the shirt is meant to appear natural and simply flow through the photo, but here the arms and action overall appears stiff and forced. This breaks the casual concept typically made for fashion photography, making the photo atmosphere awkward.
AO3: Record ideas,
observations and insights relevant to intentions, reflecting critically on work
and progress.
My Ideas
My intentions for this shoot was to take inspiration from fashion photography and general model photography and incorporate writing into this aspect of photography. I wanted to see how incorporating these two together would appear since I own a passion in this style of photography and feel I best excel in this area. The past shoots were direct presentations of writing and I felt this lacked complexity and challenge that I wanted to give myself, so I wanted to experiment with more abstract interpretations. I believe I was able to incorporate the two things together smoothly, but overall I feel it still lacks complexity and aesthetic that I want to present.
Reference to best photos
This photo owns a casual and masculine atmosphere. The pose appears natural and the body expression is relaxed, it also owns a masculine representation due to the broadness of shoulders and formality of the arms positioning; this would not typically be a female pose in fashion. The clothing itself, simply saying 'standard' could convey attitude and general minimalism in fashion today, the word and it's positioning on the clothes is casual and careless almost, it lacks complexity but it is still able to be aesthetically pleasing.
This photo I feel presents what youth cultural strive to present in their personal style. Over the few years, fashion has taken a turn and is now made a lot more awareness for the youths to take interest in, it is typical in this time now for bright and bold to be desirable, also with crude humour or general childish presentations. This photo when it comes to the clothing presents what is desirable to be displayed on youths. The pose is casual, but the casual that is admired, presenting an attitude that is content. The word printed on the hoodie 'childish' can suggest this is what the model defines themselves as, what they want to be understood or remembered for, while the pose appears very mature, this contradiction though doesn't clash, rather the irony is admirable.
This photo I feel presents a defining of oneself through clothing. This generation owns a desire to appear independent and solitude is admirable by many. The writing 'anti social social club' presents irony that can be seen as humorous, the living in contradiction seems to be a trend when it comes to current fashion. The pose is once again casual but also elegant, there is mild hostility since the body is leant back, getting further away from the viewer, but this only makes the viewer more enticed.
AO2: Explore and select
appropriate resources, media, materials, techniques and processes, reviewing
and refining ideas as work develops.
Use of Camera
I used a Nikon D3400 DSLR camera and a tripod for every photo taken. The camera was in manual mode, shutter speed at 1/50, aperture on F4.5, and exposure at ISO 200; I also used flash since the general light setting around was poor, and flash better revealed the details on the clothes and shadowed the body better.
Shoot Process
Since these photos were taken of myself, I had to capture myself using self-timer while my camera was on a tripod, I used someone else to make sure all the camera settings, focus, and alignments were right. Once making sure everything was set right, I put the camera on self-timer (taking a photo every 5 seconds for 5 photos each time) and captured myself in various poses presenting the clothes in different styles. I decided I wouldn't present my face in these photos since I purely wanted to focus on presenting the clothing.
Experimenting
My inspiration is Billy Kidd, renowned for his monochromatic photos, but a lot of fashion photography is in colour since it is presenting clothing and its creativity within that. So I thought I'd experiment with enhancing the colour in the photos.
With my pre-edits of these photos, I used the 'spot-healing tool' to remove the creases in the clothing.
Firstly, I opened an adjustment layer of 'hue/saturation' and brought up the overall saturation in the photo.
Then I selected the specific areas of colour and adjusted their saturation to best enhance the photo and remove any clashing colours heaviness.
For this photo specifically, since the shirt is blue, I enhanced the blue tones in the photo, to make the shirt more eye-catching. The reds and yellows in my skin were slightly clashing with the blue, so I lowered them so the photo wasn't as harsh.
Final Pieces
After experimenting with the option of colour, I decided I will continue with having my photos appear more like Kidd's work. If the focus of this shoot was more on the actual clothes rather than the writing than I would choose to use colour in the photos.
With majority of the photos taken, the clothes were creased in areas and it makes the photo overall less flattering, so I used the 'spot healing tool' to remove unflattering creases in the clothes.
Then, I pressed CTRL+SHIFT+U to remove all saturation from the photo.
Then I added an adjustment layer of 'levels' and increased the dark and light tones to create a deeper contrast.
AO1: Develop ideas through
sustained and focused investigations informed by contextual and other sources,
demonstrating analytical and critical understanding.
My past research into Kidd's work has helped me to better experiment with the composition created with fashion photography/portraiture. His work has helped me to better understand my passions in photography, being the darker and elegant way of presenting people, with a minimalist style and composition.
AO4: Present a personal
and meaningful response that realises intentions and, where appropriate, makes
connections between visual and other elements.
I believe I successfully met my intentions for this shoot, the photos present writing incorporated with fashion and follow the style of my research photographer Billy Kidd. These are my final pieces.
Progression
Overall, I feel this experiment helped me further my creativity into progressing in the topic writing. Although, I don't believe fashion will be furthered as I felt this experiment lacked something in complexity. The writing itself is too simple on the clothing and it owns a lot of negative space which I personally think is not visually pleasing for my work. It has still though represented cultural representations in clothing and can theme well with youth culture. Also conveying how people choose to present themselves with clothes and what the simplicity of the words can suggest of a person. I will not further fashion in my work, but this has helped with potentially working with portraiture. I will next look into incorporating people fully.
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