My Visual Logbook

I went back over my images to further refine them. I wanted them to look as coherent as possible. I had previously adjusted the curves and although they looked the same, I wasn't happy with them as they lacked the warmth I wanted them to have. After Jame's lecture this morning on adjusting certain colours hue's by selecting them, I used this technique to go back and try again with my images. I edited them side by side so I could easily see the changes against each other as I went. I brought the original warmth back into the image, and brought the saturation of the green down slightly.

When trying to keep a good level of coherence within my images I wanted to experiment with these two images to see if I can get the blues to match and for it to look realistic. I think altering the luminace of the blue in the second image changes the image quite drastically.

Today I experimented with putting my images into professional contexts to see how they would look. The first mock up works better and looks more realistic. I think the image works well in that context, its more plain than some of my others which is the reason I chose it for toyshop as the majority of their advertising is shot on a plain background when in the studio. I chose to aim the second mock up at Zara because its where the styling came from, I don't think it looks as authentic, but that is maybe because of the large scale of the billboard and it isn't really something Zara would do.

I experimented with the combination of a GIF and stills over the weekend.  I really like the border and repetition of the same image. This was my first attempt. I think it came out okay, but you can see where the background colour changes really clearly, so I plan to try again later and see if I can rid of this by editing the original stills.

I found JH Zane on Instagram after they came up as a sponsored post on one of my friends phones and they thought it would be relevant to me. What I found I liked most was their short moving image pieces;  I've still got to edit together my moving image from my Diversity brief, and was planning on doing this monday in our workshop on creating gifs and cinemagraphs, however I wanted to try out this as the combination of still and moving really appeals to me.

Links for the clips:

https://www.instagram.com/p/BPHaMmMh2ds/?taken-by=jh.zane&hl=en

https://www.instagram.com/p/BNPrhEGhXqW/?taken-by=jh.zane&hl=en

Lazy Oaf is another brand who's fashion stories containing gifs I thought worked really well. Again, its the combination of both still and and moving image which I want to experiment with.

They use these GIFs as part of editorials to add another aspect other than flat stills, something I really like as its understated but still creates another dimension for the stories to sit in. They're so simple; literally an infinite loop of two images but together with the speed and in combination with the still for the first example, and the fact its such a subtle movement in the second that it still works as a still.

Today I printed my final three images for the Diversity now brief in preparation for my show and tell crit on Thursday. I am really happy with these three and how they work together as a set. My main inspiration came from Mark Sanders and his series 'Contours' even though I ended up not using nude images, I think you can see the visual references and in todays 1 to 1with Matt, he asked if I had looked at Elad Lassry, even though I hadn't in relation to this set of images, he is one of my influences throughout my work and I like that that comes through any of the work I produce.

Matt looked through all of my work which I plan to submit and said it looked very coherent and he could see my visual style coming through. The only thing I was worried about was my essay but he has given me some confidence behind my written work too. I came out of my tutorial very happy and confident that I can submit a good bulk of work that I am proud of.

Tonight I shot the final images for my diversity now brief. I used a friend of a friend as a model as I thought she really embodies diversity and has an alternative take on beauty.

I really liked the blue from my previous experiment and it worked really well again with the idea of body form more so than the darker purple or the yellow.

The close crop of my images is partly because I was using paper backgrounds which were limited in size, at A2. I had this same problem with the final images which I used for my rough cut brief.
However, I do really like the crop and I shoot alot of the time with a 50mm lens which means I have a similar crop throughout my work.

The brief asks for 1-4 images, I plan to submit three, of the same model, because they work really well together. I will adjust the blues so that they match too.
I'm really happy with these images and I had today marked as my last day to shoot any images for my three projects, and I've definitely got enough to work with, its a nice relief that I can now focus on getting everything ready for submission and focus on my written work too, including the essay.

When looking for inspiration for simple, minimal documentary style portraits, Andi suggested I looked into Viviane Sassen. Sassen is a fashion and fine art photographer who is known for her use of geometrical shapes within her work. She has been widely published and exhibited. These two portraits from her series Etan & me are incredibly simple, but I love the colours contrast and the composition, the documentary style and how the angles are used to document from every side. This is something I want to do within my diversity brief, keeping everything very samey but using different angles.

On sunday I shot an experiment for my diversity brief. I used a model which had quite a bony body shape, something which I thought could look quite abstract and show how bodies are different. These are the best two outcomes from the shoot, I like them, but think I can produce far better quality of work and hope to do this tonight in the studio. I shot these at home infront of a window using natural light and a A1 paper backdrop.

I took these to my workshop this afternoon, where we presented our work to the rest of the group and got technical feedback. Things brought up were the model looked cold, and you could see hairs. I didn't photoshop these to the highest standard because I wasn't happy with them, but I didn't think the tiny hairs were a problem as it was showing diversity and I'm not going to photoshop every tiny hair out so she looks like a stereotypical model on the front of a magazine because that wasn't the point.

The technical feedback I received for my other briefs was overall quite positive, some I didn't agree with but they were suggestions and its nice to know other peoples opinions.

I found Nadav Kander's faceless portraits for the Samaritans We Listen Campaign commissioned by communications agency MullenLowe on Its Nice That. I really like the angle which the portraits are shot from, and the coloured backgrounds. The campaign also demonstrates diversity with the idea that depression and suicidal thoughts aren't ageist, sexist, or racist.

I want my set of images to have some personality within them, as well as documenting the diversity of the model. I plan to shoot from different angles of the face as well as from behind like these, and just of the models arm where she has tattoos. I think an image like this would work really nicely within a set of three or four images, where other shots display other parts of the body and the models face.

When creating my diversity portraits I am taking a more documentary approach towards my image making. I looked at the work of Thomas Ruff and his typological portraits. He studied at the renowned Düsseldorf Art Academy working under Bernd and Hilla Becher. 

I really like the bottom two and the top right image, the top left is quite muted and doesn't reflect my own style as much. The passport style images emphasise same-ness, however this isn't what I want my images to suggest as the purpose of my images is to promote and document diversity. I am not worried that my images will do the opposite of my intentions as they will not be in a typology, which by nature unifies and equalises people together.
The composition of Ruff's work is something which I want to reference in my own work.

After shooting one of my final sets of images for the first brief I tried to match them up with a landscape to see how they work together and what adjustments need to be made. After matching the tones with one image, it will become easier to do this step by step with the remaining ones. I'm really happy with the outcome of these and how they look together; putting them side by side with a landscape completes the image in a  way and I can see the pairs together in an editorial for a fashion brand or in a magazine.

I'm at the final stages of my first brief and all thats left to do is to make my images look more consistent as a series, and doing this by very subtly adjusting the curves. Its quite a time consuming process for such subtle adjustments as trying to get images I took on different days, months apart in different conditions to look the same is more difficult than I first expected. Despite this, I'm happy with my progress and excited to see how they all look in the end.