Evaluation

Overall I think that our final images work well and fit with the editorial idea that we decided on. The images would work well as an editorial; there are a variety of poses and different styling throughout the images. The images work well as a set but on the other hand I feel that they are also strong as individual images. I am pleased with the lighting and think that the ring flash has made the images much more interesting aesthetically than our original idea of the plain white background and simple lighting. We edited all of our final images on ‘photo shop’, we changed the levels, removed any obvious blemishes and got rid of the red eye in the images. We tried not to alter them too much as we didn’t want them to look overly polished. Obviously fashion images and editorial photographs are often very edited but we just felt that these didn’t need to be edited to a huge degree.

I am really pleased with the model that we chose he was ideal for this shoot. He is very versatile and I think that he suited each of the five different looks we dressed him in. He was particularly good at posing and didn’t need much direction from the photographers during the shoot and was confident in front of the camera. Although the other model couldn’t make it I think that using just the one model worked out well and perhaps made time management a bit easier.

I feel that the styling is strong in all of our final images, as a group we worked hard to make sure that each look was different and exactly what we were looking for. We had a variety of clothes; accessories and shoes sourced from several different places and chose the best ones for the shoot. We spent one afternoon in town getting final items for the shoot that we couldn’t source elsewhere. Not all of the clothes fitted perfectly but Sarah was on hand and pinned anything that was too big or needed nipping in if it didn’t quite look right.

I think that the three of us worked quite well together, we met up several times before the shoot to discuss concepts and ideas and to make sure we had planned everything out and we made sure that everyone was involved and had some input. I feel that we were relatively organised and although it took us quite a while to come up with the initial idea when we had it everyone worked hard to make sure the outcome was good. I think we managed our time reasonably well particularly when it came to the day of the shoot. We made sure that the photographers and the stylist were there two hours before the model arrived so that every thing could be set up and any potential problems could be solved. We had separate areas for the styling and the photography to make sure that everything was organised and nothing got mixed up or broken.

We had intended on using the Cannon 5d and had booked it out, but unfortunately the person who had it before us didn’t bring it back on time. Luckily I had brought my camera to the shoot but it would have been good to use the 5d as we had intended, I particularly like the image quality the 5d produces.

All of our blogs relate too our shoot and our final images, Sarah did some research on clothing and stereotypes, Jess was really interested in using a male model and I was really interested in using the Ring flash, and we all have posts on our blogs relating to these areas as well as others relating to the concept of our shoot.

Given the time scale I am happy with our final set of images, however I think that if we had longer to do this assignment we would have perhaps done another shoot to see if we could get any stronger images and instead of wasting time doing the full length shots done the more tightly cropped shot and focused more on pose and getting the images perfect.

Final images

Clothing as a language - First impressions

The main idea for this shoot was about thinking of clothing as a language and how we express ourselves through the clothes that we wear. I decided to ask people what kind of person they thought would wear each of the outfits we chose for our shoot.

It was really interesting to see how people judged what kind of a person he was just by what he was wearing and how clothes give off certain information (or misinformation) about the person who wears them.

'He looks like more of a younger guy, not really bothered what he wears too much'

'Quite casual, he doesn't look like he really cares what's in fashion, although he doesn't look bad'

'A bit of a lads lad.'

'Obviously sporty, I reckon he's one of those guys that likes to go out a lot'

'Rich maybe'

'Takes pride in his appearance, looks like he would probably know his labels'

'Not English'

'Good job, he looks like he might be quite rich'

'An older more sophisticated guy with alot of money'

'He looks like he might own like a club or bar, something like that'

'He looks like he plays guitar'

'Younger guy, quite laid back but still likes to dress well'

Casual - look 5

Theses are some of the images for the casual category, in the end we had three different outfits for this category, i think that they all work well. We added other outfits because everyone has a different idea of what's casual.

Outfit one

Outfit 2

Outfit 3

Football/sports - look 4

These images are for the football/sports look, on the top image we added the jacket to add a bit of contrast with the background because the white football strip was blending in too much, we also added a headband to complete the look. I think aesthetically out of these too images the one on the grey background works a bit better than on the white.

Prep - look 3

These are some of the images for the prep look, personally i think that the ones on the grey background work better for this look. I think that the styling works well for this look too and the use of accessories really helps bring the look across.

Suit - look 2

Theses are a few of the unedited images for the suit category, i like the ones on the grey and white background and think that the ringflash aesthetic works well on both. I also think that the styling for this look has worked out really well.

'Indie' look 1

These are a few of the unedited images using the ring flash for the 'indie' look. Personally i think that the grey background is much better than the white in these images.

Shoot 3

With the previous lighting set up not turning out as planned we decided to do a shoot using the ring flash, it has an aesthetic that everyone in the group is interested in. We used the same model and again we shot both on the grey and white backgrounds.

Overall the shoot went well, the model was really easy to work with and didnt need too much direction. We were organised and shared the work load between the group, over all we worked well as a team to bring the shoot together. The full length images didnt work as well as we had hoped as you could see the line across the backdrop, we could have edited it but the closer cropped images were much stronger in general anyway.

Contact sheets

Shoot 2

We decided to try and use this 'Terry Richardson style' for our shoot, we shot all of the outfits on the white background and all of the outfits on the grey, we also styled and added another outfit for the 'Casual' look. We used the additional head from the ring flash kit to create the images.

Unfortunately we weren't 100% happy with these images, the style of the aesthetic didnt seem to fit with the concept for the shoot. Also there were some really harsh shadows that just didnt look right. The images on the grey backdrop look much better than the ones on the right but they still werent what we were looking for.

These are a few of the images from this shoot, i didnt put them all on as there were alot. I have included contact sheets for the images.

Prep

Casual (2nd outfit choice)

Contact sheets