Fashion:Constructed image - group 11

On Monday 30th of January we chose the groups that we wanted to be in for this project and were then set the task of making a presentation (for tomorrow) to show the ideas that we had come up with.


Mood boards. The start of everything. We came up with all of this in under a day.

Our mood boards consist of 1920's-40's black and white films

More contemporary films

Psychological films and fashion photography

The idea of hoarding and OCD

 Make-up and characters

Styling

But having so many ideas and only creating one image at the end of this project meant that we had to narrow things down, we came up with the idea of looking into Duality (Donnie Darko, Fight Club and also taking ideas from Dark City, American Beauty and Blue Velvet).
In our tutorial our tutors gave us Gregory Crewdson and Edward Hopper as references which we all found very interesting and gave us all a few similar ideas of how our set could look.

Gregory Crewdson's sets are extremely elaborate and closely resemble something that you would find in a film.
His main influences for lighting and style are taken from the artist Edward Hopper, Ray Bradbury - American fantasy/horror writer, The Twilight Zone - American TV series and then such films as Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Blue Velvet. Using 'the witching hour' with artificial lights like street lights and lamps within the 'houses' he creates a very strange and unnerving feel to his images.

One of the biggest influences you can see in Crewdson's work is from Blue Velvet, Crewdson even states that he was struck by the film and it's dystopian world beneath the suburban America town.

I have also included a few images from http://www.aperture.org/crewdson/ these show behind the scenes of Crewdson's film like sets and give a better insight into the minor details like for instance the second image of a man putting in or taking out some of the dirt on the window.

After the presentation tomorrow we will move on to start thinking more in depth of our set and how to style it and the character that we want to portray.

A few more mood boards that we have created with a narrowed down idea of character, setting and styling.

Written by Salvador to sum up our idea:

Just so that everyone knows what is going on; the concept of our fashion construction piece is looking into the American dream, more then anything the “Dark side of the American Dream”. The focus of the shoot will be to demonstrate how America – The America of small suburbs of white and pastel wooden houses nestled into a soft landscape of gentle rolling hills, with there well tended front yards, a America where everything is close by, where the high school still looks exactly like it did in the 1950’s. The America where everything is brilliant, what we want to unearth is that everything has a dark side.

What has been rolling across our mood boards etc is that I believe would be best suited to look at the American House wife from the 1950’s with her perfect family, perfect house, her perfect husband that comes homes happy from work, her perfect children that are A*** students. (Character)
(Room/set) - would be the heart of the house where everyone comes together, thus I think the dinning room would be best fitting such as the image I posted up not long ago we have the perfect family coming to dinner together.

The duality that we have been talking about, with references such as Fight Club, American Beauty, Blue Velvet, Donnie Darko etc. Is that the this house wife, has gone into delusion, has basically become schizophrenic, has lost her own individuality by forcing on a “Political correct” face to the public and to her self, and that this character has become so in denial of everything that she is alone, has nothing, this perfect would she has built up only exist within her. Thus the family portraits in the room, are not of her family but other that she wishes to have, she lives in a 5 bed room house, alone, she dines on a table that is set out for the entire family, but eats alone.

The Commission.

A quick introduction into this project: There are three parts, the first part we have to use an analogue (medium or large format) camera to make a series of images (at least three) with the theme of waste, around the Medway area. We are able to look into the photographic genres: Portraiture, still-life, fashion or environment.

The second part is to make a pinhole camera using waste products and then photograph something, again using the theme of waste.

The last part is to make a folder of the things that we would do if we were to exhibit or publish our work.


Initial ideas and research.

My initial idea is to look into the fashion genre of photography and the relationship that this has with consumption. Possibly go to a recycling centre or not be so literal and either look into spacial waste or go into the studio with a model and create some images with the theme of waste and fashion.

A few photographers that I will start off by looking at are:

Melissa Moore

Guy Bourdin

Andreas Gursky

Then following off from Andreas Gursky I will be looking into consumption and all the waste that is created from this.

Recycling in Medway

Fashion and recycling (branching out from my studio idea)

Dress made by Gary Harvey who says "Newspapers are one of the few products that get recycled. Currently too much information is printed on paper that does not get read or recycled". 

So with this in mind I am now thinking about constructing my some clothes out of items that can be recycled things like newspapers (local) and look at charity shop clothes as they are being recycled for other peoples use.

Things to look at 'Fast throwaway fashion', more fashion photographers and designers for ideas on clothes. 

'The flood of fast, throwaway fashion on the high street in recent years has inevitably led to questions about where the clothes are being made, who's making them and in what conditions, not to mention the environmental effects of mass production, and shocking waste'. - Belinda White, 2011, Fast fashion: Is the party over? - Telegraph.co.uk

Fashion photographers

Here Rankin Talks about how he experiments with high end fashion and couture by using cutouts to layer the normal 2d image and how fashion is quite shallow http://rankin.co.uk/videoplayer/?file=http://content.bitsontherun.com/videos/U6xrmmHr-424724.flv it is also interesting when viewing behind the scenes footage because this allows me to see the lighting set up and to see how the images are created. We are also shown the transformation that the model goes through from looking 'normal' to 'being made up' with her hair and makeup done. This is also at least the second shoot as the cutouts would have had to be made up for this, so test shoots and re-shoots should most certainly be arranged so that I am able to explore all possibilities in my work.

So looking into some of Rankin's studio work for inspiration I have come across these:

They are all quite different images but there are similarities between them. So firstly they are all fashion images and the models have been sourced specifically for each shot. The first two images we can see that the light that is falling onto the models is rather bright, it almost completely bleaches out any details. This instantly removes any blemishes and then in post production there will be some retouching that will then remove any irregularities.

Tim Walker

Mert and Marcus

Miles Aldridge

Fashion: Constructed image

Task 1

Iconic image

Dovima with elephants by Richard Avedon, August 1955.

I consider this image to be iconic because at the time of shooting this would have been regarded as pushing the boundaries within fashion photography. The contrast between the raw natural skin of the elephants against the elegance of the model is very drastic. The image has also been printed so that the black evening dress (Dior) does not disappear into the shadow of the elephants. The setting is within the elephants enclosure which usually would be off limits to everyone apart from the keepers, this is a dangerous place and the chains around the feet of the elephants enhance this, but Dovima an elegant couture model with subtle imitation in her pose does not show any fear. It suggests that by wearing this dress you will become fearless and able to stand with these giant animals and also gave women an icon, someone to aspire to be like at the time. 

Task 2

Street casting

I took a bit of inspiration from Jergen Teller's 'Go-sees: Girls Knocking on My Front Door' series, but instead wanted to capture a model after a fashion show, when they still have their hair nicely done and make up is perfect. I suppose the thing that inspires me about this person is that no matter how many different clothes she wears or how many different looks she is given by hair stylists and mua's she will still be the same person at the end of the day.

I didn't know this person and felt a little bit awkward when asking to take her picture but being a model she was used to her photo being taken, feel like I should have made her stand somewhere else as the background is horrid but did not want to take too much of her time and looking at other street fashion photos the backgrounds are not much better.

Review - The Environment part 2

In the second part of this assignment we had to look at the urban space, the city. We also had to pastiche another photograph, which was also to do with the urban space.

Firstly, I chose Brassai's 'Paris after dark' as the image that I was to pastiche. Finding the right location during the day was quite difficult because you are unable to see how the lights will affect the street, so this meant quite a bit of time was spent wandering around different areas of towns at night to see if anything would be similar to Brassai's image. I found a street that I thought would work due to the shop signs and the shop window lights though the area was much lighter than in Brassai's image.

For my own ideas into the urban space I decided to look more into the people that you would find there, the people that lived, worked and visited the city. The more I thought about it the more I wanted to show the differences between the people that work there and the people that visit. This led me to Martin Parr's image of Athens with the two different cultured tourists; this made me want to capture images of tourists taking photos of the attractions within the city. For the people working in the city I looked at Harry Callahan's work and Philip-Lorca Dicorcia's, which is quite similar, but because I wanted this series to work as a comparison I did not want to have tightly cropped images of peoples heads. I kept my distance as I did with the tourist images and tried to capture some similarities with the composition, in two of my images I was able to get a single character to stand out this linked these together and in the other two I have leading lines which draw the eyes through the scene.

I enjoyed spending more time in both darkrooms, I have gained more skill with printing and feel that I have progressed with not only my photography but the concepts behind the images as well.

Review - The Body

This is the second part of the assignment where we had to find someone that either lived in Medway or attending the university.

I am quite interested in fashion photography so I thought that I would try and find a student studying one of the courses in fashion. After asking a few people around the university I was lucky to find a girl that was studying fashion textiles, this course is were students actually make their own clothes completely.

I took some inspiration from a few different fashion photographers that mainly use black and white film. The photographers, which I looked at, were Albert Watson, Irving Penn and Richard Avedon, these were the three that stood out the most with their studio shots. The main thing that I took from looking at them was the way that they all used the lighting to create their images. I ended up using the butterfly light set up that Albert Watson had used in the images that I have used as my references. This is quite a flattering way to light female models/sitters so I thought that it would be appropriate to use.

With this image I wanted to create a story about how the student came to a finished piece of work, I got her to bring along her sketchbooks, lots of materials that she would use and some finished pieces. I also thought that using a material background rather than a standard studio colorama would add to the effect of a fashion textiles student making clothes. There was also a manikin in our studio that fashion textile students often use, so we decided to use that which, again emphasises the idea that this person makes clothes.

I am very pleased with the way this image has turned out, even though you wouldn't know exactly what this person does you would be able to tell that it was something to do with fashion and making clothes and that was what I wanted to show.

The body - Test strips and final

After the shoot, first thing to do process the film and make a contact sheet. Then I am able to pick which image I think is best at showing the story of this fashion textiles student. 

There were a few that I wanted to print, some I drew crops on and others I dismissed straight away. I eventually chose one that initially I labelled with a question mark. In my opinion this one had everything in it that I wanted and basically told the story of how the student got from her ideas in the sketchbooks to a finished piece.

After selecting the image that I wanted to print it was time to start on the test strips, the exposure time for the print was 17seconds at grade 2. This test strip looked very flat or dense and I wanted to add some more contrast, I added in some grade 0 at 2seconds and grade 5 at 3seconds. The grade 0 is mainly used as the base as it has the lowest effect on the contrast, if you didn't add anything else the print would be very gray with very little tonal difference. The grade 5 hits blacks and the whites basically making them one or the other, this causes quite a lot of contrast.

The test strip on the right is quite close to how I want it, the exposure is still 17seconds but I have added the grade 0 and the grade 5 which has given the strip more contrast, you are still able to see a lot of the detail within all of the materials in the image too. I added just a few more seconds of grade 5 to the last test strip on the left which gave me the contrast that I wanted and also left enough detail in the blacks.

My final print of Hannah, with a small narrative going on in the image, which is what I wanted to show. I did use the same lighting from my diagram from the earlier body post, this was the butterfly lighting set up. This set up gives the sitter a little shadow under the nose, it is also one of the most flattering set ups that can be used when shooting female models. 

The Environment task 2 - Test strips and finals

So just to recap, for this part of the assignment I wanted to photograph people within the city without them noticing. I suppose I wanted to capture them unawares in their own space like Harry Callahan and Philip-Lorca Dicorcia but I did not want to go to the same extreme as they did, I wanted to show the environment that the people I was photographing were in.

I took my camera to London as it is a hot spot for tourists, I went to several locations and waiting for the right moment to capture the type of image I wanted of tourists taking photos of the attractions and of their friends with the attractions behind them. I also wanted to capture images of people that work in the city and thought that by shooting this at a slow shutter would show the difference between these two different types of people. The tourist, generally, spends a lot of their time stood still looking at everything around them whereas the working/business person will possibly be in an office most of the day and then be in a rush to get back home.

Below are the test strips and final images that I chose to print.

Colour printing takes quite a while to get right especially if there are more than one light source all of which are different. This is something that I had a bit of trouble with as I wasn't sure which one to correct. 

It was quite clear that the first test was far too green and yellow, so this had to be adjusted by changing both the Magenta and the Yellow. 

There is a chart on the wall next to the colour darkroom which tells us how to get to the correct colours by adding or taking away certain amounts of magenta and /or yellow. I did this quite slowly as I did not want to go too far.

I eventually got to a test that was neutral around the central character (with a bit of help from our technician) but the only problem now was that the print was a little to light. This meant that I had to add  a few more seconds to the exposure to darken it, there was also a chance that this would change the colours that I had just spent so much time trying to correct!

Above is the test strip with an extra 6 seconds which made it darker, which gave it some more contrast but this did in fact change the colours slightly so I had to decrease the magenta by two on the final print.

This image also had some mixed light within it, but fortunately starting at the same area as the one before gave me an area that was neutral and where I could print from.

Because I was using daylight balanced film, when I came to print one of my images that was shot in daylight it came out extremely cyan. This meant that I had to decrease both the magenta and yellow by 40 so that the colours would be corrected to how I originally saw the image. 

After making a few adjustments I was much closer to getting a full print, I decided to print another test strip a bit lighter because I was loosing some of the detail in the shadow areas.

This image was shoot in the daylight too so I was able to start with the colours being nearly exactly how they needed as I used the same amount of magenta and yellow as in the other tourist image. I just had to tweak the numbers a little bit as the initial full print was slightly red.

Here are my final prints, like all of the test strips they have been scanned in, unfortunately my scanner isn't big enough to scan the whole image in with the border which is one inch (so you'll have to imagine that).

Stop and Stare/Constant Velocity

Tourists at Trafalgar square during the day taking pictures of the fountains and male tourist with a DSLR looking around for things to photograph. I was watching the people behind near the fountain about to photograph it when the man in the middle walked into the frame, I quickly re focused on him and got this shot which shows the whole stop and stare idea that I was looking for.

This image was shot near Liverpool street station, it is of a walkway that goes past several offices where a lot of business people walk through. The slow shutter allowed the movement of the people to be captured as blurring, though it appears that the character in the middle has hesitated about walking in front of the camera because his left leg is quite clear compared to everyone else. This image has similarities to the tourist one above because of this central figure and because there are other people behind.

I think that I was quite lucky to have got this shot of a man taking a picture of the sunset with the houses of parliament right next to him. I had enough time to compose this image with the handrail of the bridge leading up towards the tourists and even though you cannot see the clock of Big Ben you are still able to identify what and where it is. I also found it funny that you can see sunset's pretty much anywhere in the world yet people still photograph them, especially when next to a London landmark.

This is the last image within my series, I think that it is the weakest out of all the images because there isn't really much clarity as to who these people are. You are still able to get the idea of constant movement and rushing around in the city because you can see a skyscraper in the distance on the far right and all of the people are a blur.