My Visual Logbook

After my 1 to 1 with Andi I realise that I now need to go through all my images for the first brief to adjust the curves very slightly so that the tones all match and are much more coherent. I started with the two portraits below and theres a before and after. They look much better and I didn't realise how different they really were until you put them side by side and see the difference between before and after. I plan to go through all my images like this so that they match better than before.

James' lecture today was on beauty. I think I gained some knowledge and it made me question a few things about my own practice, which I can write about in my 3000 word essay. The main topic that stuck with me was my stance on my practice and how Taste fits within in.

Where do I stand within the spectrum of wanting to take cool images because they're cool rather than to actually mean anything, and having meaning behind them?

I take pictures because I think it looks good or for a purpose other than to have any signifiant meaning behind it. My commercial practice is totally fashion based and I do not mind producing apparent 'meaningless' images as long as people look at them and appreciate them for being 'beautiful'? I question the word beautiful because beauty is based on taste, and as James argued today, who dictates what is good taste and what is bad?

What I think is good taste will be very different from what the next person argues good taste is, unless they agree with me, then they will have good taste, too. But only in my opinion.

I turned to one of my close friends who explained her opinion in terms of design, and showed me a very inspiring video which illustrates the idea so well for me.

in terms of design everyone who designs has good taste, its basically on the job application. 'Good taste' is your eye for design; your ability to tell if something works or if something doesn't.
It doesn't matter if its a picture of a tomato or of a dog and you dont like tomatoes or dogs, you can still tell if it works; if the composition is there or if the colours are saturated enough. A good designer, (or photographer I think) can differentiate between the good and the bad qualities, and not allowing their personal opinions to get in the way of their critiquing work.
People say art is subjective which is true in a way, but as a designer you have to be objective to be able to remove personal opinions when viewing others work.
This makes total sense to me because thats what tutors do when they see students work.

colours are emotional contagegent within artwork. for example inside out, the colours reflect the feelings, joy is yellow, fear is purple, sadness is blue, anger is red, disgust is green.

The video below illustrates taste and how designers have to work to be able to demonstrate theirs to its full potential.
The idea that your work kills you because your taste strives for you to do better, and that the only way of rectifying this is to keep working because by going through a large volume of work you close the gap between frustration and ability. I love that idea so much; its really helped me to understand the process of learning too as its putting words to my frustrations. It will be really helpful for me to include this in my essay about the process of learning.

I have previously seen my images as sets of two and three to make sure I am maintaining an aspect of consistency, however for the first time as I have near enough chosen my final 12 apart from one final portrait, I wanted to see them all together in one space to see how they look as a set.

Some are finished and some still need retouching and refining, however as they look now, I am confident that they will work together and that they all look similar enough to be identified as my work. It was useful to put them all in one space as it was much easier to identify where they needed to be adjusted and which ones didn't fit within the set. I now need to go through them individually and adjust the curves very slightly to help them fit better.

Today I hoped to capture a final still life and a portrait for my first brief. I hope to finish this as soon as possible to then be able to focus on my remaining diversity brief.

In our lecture on Tuesday James tasked us with producing a treatment for our new brief. I had made mood boards before and didn't find it very different apart from including some more words and direction to be able to sell my idea and provide more information other than visual.

I found Mark Sanders photography on It's Nice That, his personal project with Charlotte Heal titled 'Contours' combines close up cropped images of the body alongside clothed images, so carefully done that the lines of form match up perfectly and flow completely. I had to look twice when I first saw them because of the cleverness to align them so fluidly. Art director Charlotte Heal describes them as 'their modern take on the nude'. This combination of fashion photography and the human form really inspires me to do something similar for my brief on diversity and the human form. My next post shows my treatment for the brief, demonstrating the aesthetic I am going for and the types of models/styling I plan to use. 

The colour and crop is beautiful and its minimalistic take on the human form is something I hope to speak through my images also.

I really don't like the above three shots. I like the idea, but the execution just didn't work out and I didn't have a coloured background to work with other than white/grey, and adding in the yellow during post looks unnatural and I tried to work around it by adding the illustrated leaves as I had before, but it just doesn't work as I had hoped. I took these before the first two above and felt quite disheartened and was worried I wouldn't have enough solid images to select from for my final submission, however I have the studio booked next week and I am confident that I can either recreate this shot and get a better result or shoot something better.

Today I discovered Stories Collective, an online platform for showcasing the work of photographers, stylists, art directors, filmmakers, models and designers from across the globe in the form of fashion stories. They commission creatives to build visual narratives to fill their weekly online updates and bi monthly issues.

After completing the Rough Cut brief and the investigation exploration brief last year, I am far more aware of graphic design and the effect is has on how we view images in print.

the third issue celebrates the 'plantae' kingdom in all its form. Inspiration comes from the wildness of nature, urban green spaces, a tropical setting or an eccentric garden. celebrating the graphic and feminine beauty that plants have to offer.

I always feel inspired by nature and the world around me, however I very rarely shoot with models outside and this is something I really want to start doing as I look towards the BA2b brief which we'll begin in March. I think my work will really come into its own once I start shooting on location and step out of my comfort zone outside of the studio.

I came across the brand Loeffler Randall whilst browsing on pintrest, and loved the style and branding of their look books. The demonstrate really continuity across an entire brand and the style is very similar to that of mine and in a context where I want my work to be viewed. Both campaigns were shot by photographer Alex John Beck, and set design for the R16 (first set)  by Eli Metcaif, who's editorial credits include Vogue Paris, Vogue Spain, i-D, Dazed & Confused amongst others, and who's clients include, Abercombie, Calvin Klein, Victorias secret and Nike.

Yesterday  I shot my moving image piece for the first project. my references are advertising videos from brands such as pretty little thing, boohoo and misguided. My aim before i started was for the shoot to be as fun as possible, so that my model looks like she's genuinely enjoying herself, and so that she didn't feel awkward dancing about on her own. This was important as I wanted my footage to feel authentic. I wanted to shoot my moving image in the studio so that it remains consistent with my other images as all my portraits were shot in the studio. I chose to use the daylight studio because it would already give me some ambient light to play with combined with the light from the HMI lights I used. I had never used the HMI lights before and this was a good opportunity as I needed the constant daylight balanced lights compared to the flash. My set up was as below: I had two HMI lights, one reflecting off the ceiling to produce a soft overall light, and one with a giant softbox lighting the model. I gave myself a lot of room between the lights, the model, and me because I knew we were going to have alot of movement so I considered this with my set up, making sure the lighting was consistent across the backdrop too.



A problem I encountered during filming was having shaky hands, I tried using the studio stand but I struggled with the lack of movement and it was frustrating trying to shoot an angle that I couldn't get.  I shot as much footage as possible with the idea that its better to have too much footage than too little.  After editing it all together today, I am very grateful that I had so much footage to work with.

when I came to editing the footage today I was hit immediately by the fact I had shot the large majority of my footage portrait rather than landscape. When it came to putting the clips together, I had some which were landscape but the majorty of my footage was portrait. I hadn't even thought about the rotation of films, any screen I'd ever seen a clip on other than a mobile phone. I felt so stupid, but was happy with the footage I'd shot and didn't want it to hinder how it looked in post. I knew I wanted to play about with effects such as split screen and running footage backwards etc, and split screen was a good way of filling the screen with three images all doing the same. I really liked the effect but didn't want it throughout. After speaking to mike and discovering I couldn't change the orientation of the screen, I took his advice and presented my footage in the same format that the BBC News do when they show a video from a mobile phone on the screen and have the same video but slightly cropped in and with a Gaussian blur over it. I think this works really well as a technique as you can still see the full shot within the frame. In some of my shots I zoomed in to fill the frame with a single clip, where it didn't matter if you couldn't see the whole thing. By using different techniques like this I think I created a successful and interesting moving image clip.

For sound, I worked by myself in garage band creating a simple upbeat sound clip wanting to reflect the fun style of my footage. I again took inspiration from Missguided and Pretty little thing, keeping it simple but full of energy. This was successful and for my first attempt at shooting moving image, this went really well.

The only criticism I have of my moving image piece is that it isn't as consistent within my images as I'd hoped it would have been. The model is consistent and the overall mood and lighting is the same, I kept it flat and simple, however one of the main aspects of my stills is colour and I haven't managed to really bring that out from within my moving image. When I took this to my workshop and worked towards feedback I worked on adjusting the curves of individual images so that the lighting was much more similar. (see below) This improved the similarity however I'm still not 100% pleased with my final outcome. If I had more time I would try this again, maybe shooting outside where I could try and replicate the surroundings more and get some more consistency between still and moving.


Below is my final moving image piece.

After finishing my moving image I experimented with potential professional contexts which my video could be placed in. An obvious one was for a misguided advert so I looked at how they include their branding within moving image and added a logo at the end of my film. It works really well and is very conceivable had a viewer not known that it wasn't real. Adding this context to my work helped me to understand and see myself in a commercial market and gave me some confidence that my work could eventually sit quite comfortably in that sort of environment.