Matchbox styling suggestions...

Over the past couple of days I have been having a think about the styling for our Matchbox photoshoot.

I have some ideas that aren't solid ideas at the minute just ideas we as a group can think about.

I realise that the shoot is based around this idea of consumerism and an almost army of women: these women want all these things that are popular or on trend at the minute and we are wanting to look at the concept and bring out the individual in the image, we want to make a heavy point on the individual i.e the model. Our images are being created to question and highlight why we are a ‘mass consumer’ society. We want to create a literal uniformed look, making the mannequins strongly similar and making the model stand out and show her identity. The mannequins could almost be made out to look like a Barbie doll-highlighting the very fake look.

Here's my thoughts;

-I think whatever clothing we get needs to have a military feel to it because of the idea of the uniform and row of models/mannequins- militant looking
-with the earth/air/fire/water idea in mind- we could choose different pieces of clothing that you wear when in earth /air/ fire /water circumstances- i.e swimwear, safari/utilarian look/ summer wear etc....
-we could go for earth/air/fire/water literally with the colour palette of the clothing. earth- natural tones: air-sheer fabrics, ice blue: fire-hot reds, oranges: water-blues, violets

With regards to the idea of the smokey look of the photograph, and the post I have spoke about on here with the idea of using a mirror to make the model and mannequin multiply, we could take the images from the reflection in a mirror, if you check out one of our photographers' blogs, Moira took an image of a model through the mirror and the debris that was on the mirror created a nice smokey,uneven effect.

Another idea when considering the styling for the matchbox shoot, we could literally look at a subculture or a certain type of person in a group i.e western guys, army military: people that are always in a group and take styling ideas from their group??? as we are takin imagery of a group of women/mannequins/models.

We could literally play with the idea of reflections: maybe use a mirror for the reflection but with post production take control of the reflection and change the reflection to something more ironic for the consumerism theme????

We are having a group meeting tomorrow so some of the ideas will be discussed tomorrow.

I will keep you guys posted :)

Character Profiling

Over the weekend I bought the Sunday times newspaper to catch up on, well, the news obviously but to also get a look at the Style Magazine as I knew it would cover a catwalk report so I wanted to have a good gander.

Anywhooo.....

In the Style Magazine there was a fashion story which proves very useful to my project at the minute, the name of the shoot,'New Tribes' was photographed by John Lindquist and Styled by James Jeanette Main.

The story was basically about 4 types of 'The New It-girl'; the Euro Socialista, the Eco Bunny, the Creative Assistant and the Art Poseur. The stylist, James, really had to understand the character of these types of women and emphasise these types with not only their clothing but with their added accessories and style. This again links back to an earlier post where I spoke about accessories helping to characterise a certain person etc.

My favourite look out of the story has to be the Art Poseur, I just love the mix of fabrics: she wears a Nail leather jacket (made to order by Gareth Pugh) against satin jodhpurs (above). The added quirky hat with a pink flower and oversized handbag to carry her SLR, paintbrushes and her journal all add to this character profile of this type/style of person.

Euro Socialista- always with.....

- latest accessories
- scene grabbing jewelry
- the new blackberry
- starbucks coffee
- celeb friends on speedial
- o and not forgetting a B.A (Bad attitude....well sometimes)


Creative Assistant- always with...
- hundreds of bags, camera cases, tripods
- journal
- next seasons clothing
- their bosses handbags (well they are assisting)
- tit-tape/scissors/memory cards
- o and again not forgetting their bosses skinny soy gluten free milk free no added sugar extra hot extra shot latte



Eco Bunny- always with....
- their grandads bicycle
- a selection of small handheld gardening tools
- very little if at all any product in their hair
- recycled bag, shoes, scarf, jacket,
- o and not forgetting a checklist of the following months farmers food markets

Roles???

Yesterday I had a design history class where we watched a documentry about teenagers in the late 50s/60's and into the early 70's.

It showed you views from adults who were in their teens during these periods and what they felt about certain fashions/subcultures/people, and it also showed some clips from these decades, from the teens at the time, and what they felt about their life and what their parents felt about there behaviour. The documentry was interesting really and the views expressed had quite similar connections. Being that teens were seen as 'things' in their own right. (and also something which I didn't know but should have - the fact that Teddyboys were seen as a kind of threatining group, maybe because they seem to stick together like an army, maybe there dress sense scared some people??) They had there little goups to hang about with. A good quote from the documentry has to be a woman commenting on people in the street and how you could put them into a specific group and reinforces how fashion works, 'you could recognise who somebody was by their clothes that they were wearing'- this again highlights the groups and specifies them in a way and it also shows their 'roles' in society.

During the afternoon, I had a chat with our lecturer, Steve and we were talking about the documentry and we got into a discussion about subcultures and the fact that they had certain roles to conform to....or that they just wanted to conform to. There are such things as subcultures and groups, be it teens, goths, skaters, teddyboys etc (and this is still present today) but it seems in these groups they have smaller groups within i.e goths to emos, goths to glam goths etc... and each group has these different roles that they have within the bigger group.

Then my very last lecture we were speaking about the model vs the pose and we came across again, the role that a model has. The lecture was really interesting, you began to understand that the role of a model is necessarily not to just sell clothes, or be a 'coathanger' they are actors in their own right, and from my previous blog, My favourite model being Lara Stone, she is a typical model to really show how the role of the model has changed drastically from the early 20's to now. She is a chameleon. In a shoot she doesn't seem to just pose, she acts.

So with all this information from yesterdays lectures it really got me thinking about roles of different kinds of people...the role of the photographer, the role of clothing, the role of a mother, of a child, the role of a parent, the role of a magazine editor, a fashion designer etc..... It seems throughout time roles have changed drastically-why?

Uni shoot..

God damn it i hate not having the internet! I should be getting it at the weekend so there will be a hell of a lot more blogging, promise! x

But for now just something to look forward too.

At uni i have been set a project to focus on tribes and sub-cultures and identify what tribe i fit into. With this i then need to do a 3 page editorial shoot which i style and photograph for my assessment in january- trust me when i have done all the editorial work and of course the shoot, over christmas i will post my final shots (in their editorial) on here. Prior to my assessment we have weekly briefs set to help us with our final assessment pieces and one of the briefs we were set was to put together 8 different images and looks for practice for the final shoot, i did this last friday and the shoot was really successful, when i have the net at home i will post the test shots on here and you guys can give me feedback on what works and what doesn't! Basically the shoot focused on the homeless. I decided to look into this tribe/group as when assesssing myself to fit myself into a group, i really just don't fit! Hence homeless not fitting into society-i played with this idea. I looked at photographers such as Don McCullin, who works primarily with black and white photography and who photographs reality (some photographs in his book 'Sleeping with the Enemy' are unbelivable, one specifically of an albino boy in a camp- the image is so horrid, you really feel for the boy.) And then of course the fashion/documentry photographer Corinne Day, for her gritty, 'unstylised' fashion imagery from her early days in photography. (I must just quickly mention a fantastic book i came across, 'Imperfect Beauty', which is a book that includes lots of interviews from photographers/ stylists and art directors and is great for any fashion reader!). I really wanted to capture the emotion of the homeless, i thought of everything down to the positioning of myself as photographer to the models pose. The only thing that i found difficult (as i got so into looking into the homeless and photographers' work) was making the image a fashion image rather than just literally photographing the homeless. But as said, the photoshoot was successfull and im really pleased with the images i shot. And i need to thank my model, George, she helped me out a hell of a lot. Not just by modeling my clothes (also getting changed in the street and dealing very well with the harrassing guys!) but advising me with some things on the shoot as im still very amateur with this!
I will post the images on here next week some time (hopefully i will have the internet) and like i said, you guys can give me some feedback.


Thanks Ashes, speak soon xxx