gracemadeley-blog

[gracemadeley-blog]

Look Book Research Sources:

These 4 images have really inspired the lay out for my own look book. I haven’t copied them exactly, as I wanted to make my work my own and adapt the lay out to my theme. However, I did use more inspiration images when creating my 3rd draft of my look book and my 3rd draft is my final and best work. Therefore, I think that shows that inspiration images really do help me to create better work, especially within this circumstance because my final piece was more graphic design based and that isn’t my specialty, therefore referencing professional lay outs made it easier for me to achieve successful outcome.

[gracemadeley-blog]

Look Book Edits and Improval Reflection:

When I first began my final piece, I struggled because a look book is a more graphic design based project and I also didn’t have a clear idea as to why I was making a look book, I just thought it was just a way of show casing my images. However, through many tutorials with my tutors, receiving constant feedback, getting peer feedback and doing extensive research into why look books are created and asking myself why I am creating a look book, I gained a good understanding of what is expected of a distinction level final piece. I think this is apparent when you look at the designs I created before half term and the designs I have created during this week. Before, my lay out was basic and unprofessional. Whereas now my look book is very professional looking and engages the audience to want to recreate the trends and styles I am selling to them. Here are some images my original lay out:

[gracemadeley-blog]

Shoot 9 Edit Reflection:

For my creative making edits for shoot 9, I wasn’t inspired by any image in particular but more so just the overall bright and bold aesthetic of the era and so wanted a images that emulated this. For the basic editing, I enhanced brightness, contrast and saturation to make the images more sharp and allow the colour to pop. Furthermore, I then proceeded to either add a colour layer on top of or duplicate the image and lower the opacity of the second layer. To blend the two layers together, I opted to use a blending mode. I found the best blending mode to use was saturation. Overall, I feel these images have turned out well as they emphasize the over the top New Romantic retro style of makeup that was popular during the 80’s.

[gracemadeley-blog]

Shoot 9 Reflection:

I feel shoot 9 was really successful, as I selected a model who already embodied an out going and original style and I felt like she would reflect the theme well because it is such an outrageous look. Furthermore, I looked at many makeup looks and photo shoots from the 80’s and so attempted to emulate the striking styling and powerful images, especially through re creating the poses of Grace Jones- I believe this went well as I instructed my model in how to position her body, where to look and what facial expression to do/ how much effort to put into the moment. Here are my images:

[gracemadeley-blog]

Shoot 9 Mood Board:

Here is my mood board for shoot 9. I have gathered my inspiration images from Pinterest and album art work/photo shoots of Grace Jones and Boy George. The theme for this shoot is the ‘New Romantic’ 80’s makeup trend. I feel that this trend encapsulated the retro style of the 80’s and just how bold and outgoing the era was. Obviously the key is using lots of colour and being rather harsh when applying, as the makeup isn’t blended well, this helps the colour to stand out more.

[gracemadeley-blog]

Shoot 8 Edits Reflection:

These are my edits from shoot 8. There was no inspiration to create these edits, I just really liked how my other colour overlay and glitch edits had turned out from previous shoot and so I wanted to experiment making more because there is such an extensive range of images you can produce through overlaying and glitching, therefore I knew my edits would look different to the ones I had done prior, despite using the same techniques. What I think has worked so well within these images is that they still have the warm tones that I added when first editing my images, therefore the edits still fit with the theme. Since the shoot was already so bright and busy, I didn’t want to do anything too over the top and so opted to do some simpler edits and some that were more evident, however, still didn’t distract you from the model and the clothes he is wearing. I wanted my images to that grain/slight blur that you see in some of the most iconic photos from the 90’s, I don’t know whether the images are like this due to the camera or editing but it seemed to be a reoccurring theme and I feel I have explored this idea and achieved it successfully within some of my images. These are my edits:

[gracemadeley-blog]

Shoot 8 Reflection:

For shoot 8, I opted to reflect the 90’s America boy style, using two trends in particular: pop punk and athleisure style. I chose to take my images in a vintage clothing store as I wanted this shoot to not only be about the fashion, but the entire aesthetics. This was inspired by the images featured on my mood board of the woman shopping at a vintage record store. I styled my model in similar clothing to those worn within the 90’s but since we were doing the shoot in a clothing shop, I decided to add to my models look with some vintage pieces from the 90’s, including an Adidas windbreaker jacket. To edit these images, I have lowered the brightness and saturation and increased the contrast to give the image more warm tones, including reds and oranges. Since the images were rather bright and busy due to the fluorescent lighting within the shop and all of the clothes within the background being all different colours, I felt that extremely bright images wouldn’t emulate my theme well, as this shoot is all about a cool, chilled style. Here are my images:

[gracemadeley-blog]

4-6-2019 Reflection:

During my last week, I have found through very detailed planning and time management, I am being very productive and getting a lot of work done. This includes only tweaking my previous work, such as my project plan and final piece look book, which allows to bring it up to a higher grade and updating my blog, as I haven’t posted all shoot reflections yet. From this week, I have learnt that I work well with very detailed planning, as it gives me a clear idea of just how much I need to do that day, therefore allowing me to be more motivated to get my work done. This is definitely something I shall do during my time on the extended diploma, plan and manage my time more vigorously.

[gracemadeley-blog]

Shoot 8 Mood Board:

This is my mood board for shoot 8. The theme for this shoot contains two looks: 90’s athlesuire style and pop punk- both very popular fashion styles within America during this decade, with the overall theme being an American boy look. I wanted to have more variation within this shoot and therefore I thought having two different trends would be a good way of showing that. However, the location will remain the same. I am inspired by the trend of taking images in a vintage store, as you can see from the inspiration images, the model is posing in a record shop, which has a very 90’s theme. For my own shoot, I may go to similar shop, or perhaps a vintage clothing store or an American candy store- anything that I feel will emulate the American boy style. Here are my inspiration images, including potentional out fit looks as well:

[gracemadeley-blog]

Shoot 7 Creative Making Reflection:

For this shoot, I didn’t want to have Creative Making Edits that were too overpowering, since the shoot itself already was very bold. Therefore, I opted to make edits that just enhanced the fun, adventurous theme of this shoot. To make these edits, I copied the layer , used the rectangular marquee tool and selected segments of the image that I thought were interesting. I then selected the inverse of the image and deleted it, so I was only left with the segments that I had originally selected. The last step included just slightly moving the segments, to create a double illusion sort of look. I found that this technique worked better on some images than others, nevertheless, I think I was able to create really interesting edits.

[gracemadeley-blog]

Shoot 7 Reflection:

I found Shoot 7 the hardest shoot I have done yet in terms of making it look realistic. Since the clothing during the 80’s was so adventurous and over the top, I found it hard to re create this, especially for my female model. Therefore, when I was researching into 80’s fashion trends, I had to chose the trends that were a little more conservative, as I found it very difficult to get really similar clothing- whereas in my other shoots, this hasn’t been a problem. I think the location worked really well as it was extremely bright and adds lots of colour to the images, which I think helps take away from the fact that the models’ styling isn’t as bright and bold as it was to be expected. Furthermore, through editing the images, I have managed to make the colour stand out even more so, by increasing the saturation within the sky and coloured- metal frame work. Having said that, I had to be careful not to oversaturate as I found that would affect my models’ skin tones and make them a shade of orange. Therefore, I found using the sponge tool on photoshop very useful as it allowed me to saturate only the areas that I wanted to, rather than the whole image. Here are some of my images:

[gracemadeley-blog]

Shoot 7 mood board:

The theme for my shoot 7 is 80’s pop culture trends. Inspired by people like Madonna and George Michael, this shoot will be bright, colorful and encapsulate the 80’s with a modern day twist. I have found these images on Pinterest and Instagram and I am inspired by the location of some of them, which is a football/basketball court. I think this makes for an interesting location because their tends to be bright pops of colours at these sorts of places, therefore will fit in very well with my theme. Furthermore, if I dress my models up, I think it would create a nice contrast- casual location with chic styling. I intend to use two models for this shoot, a boy and girl. I have decided to do this just to add variation within my work as I haven’t yet done this and I like the idea of having two opposing looks together. For the styling, i am opting to re create looks that are very similar to the sort of things that Madonna and George Michael would of worn. This includes, mini skirts, crop tops, mini shorts, white slogan t shirt and ankle socks. For my mood board, it was hard to find images that actually were from the decade, therefore, I have chosen images that are just inspired by it. Here are my inspiration images:

[gracemadeley-blog]

Shoot 6 Creative Making Reflection:

Since shoot 6 was really colorful, I wanted my creative making edits to emulate that also. Therefore, I opted to make glitched and distorted edits. I found this made the images very exciting because the edits are all so different. Some have a contrast between black and white and colour, others have contrast within the sense that the lines of the floor are vertical but due to the editing, there are now horizontal lines within the image. Also, through the editing the colour has been emphasized even more so. I did a range of edits for this shoot, as I personally wasn’t sure what looked better: the more subtle edits or the more colorful and adventurous ones. Therefore, I wanted to have a range available for my tutor to mark. Here are some of my creative making edits:

[gracemadeley-blog]

Shoot 6 Reflection:

Through shoot 6, I really feel I have been able to portray my theme well and push it further with the creative making edits. I feel that this shoot is my best one in terms of linking it to the contextual image- as they are almost identical. I feel I chose the right model for this shoot, as they are very confident and trendy, therefore up to date with the latest trends and have a good insight on how social media influencing works. Therefore, I found working with my model on this particular shoot rather easy as they really grasped the theme. A challenge that I faced during this shoot was making the images look different to one another. Since the floor is the focal point of all of the images, I had to think wisely about what angles to photograph from and how to get my model to pose, thereby allowing for variation amongst my images. To edit these images, I have airbrushed my model for the perfect ‘insta worthy’ look that is so sought after. I have also increased the brightness and saturation to make the colours stand out as much as possible. Here are some of my images:

[gracemadeley-blog]

Mood Board for Shoot 6:

This is my mood board for shoot 6. The theme for this shoot is modern day fashion blogger/social media influencer. I have chosen this theme because 1) it is one of the biggest growing fields in the fashion industry as of right now 2) it allows me to create really interesting images as there aren’t any limitations when it comes to social media influencing (what you wear, location, etc) All that matters is that it’s trendy and up to date. The inspiration location for this shoot is the Colour Factory, which is in San Francisco. It is an art gallery of sorts that has big installments and displays of bright colour. I have been inspired by these images because they are bright, young and trendy which all emulate the theme. For my shoot, I could take pictures at the Tate gallery because they have a rainbow coloured floor.

[gracemadeley-blog]

Shoot 5 Creative Making Reflection:

These creative making edits were inspired by a polyptych image I found on Pinterest. To create these images, I first off added a scaleline effect to my images to give them a slight grainy tone and blurred look, as that is how the inspiration image appears to look. I then proceeded to select fragments of my images that I thought would create interesting looking polyptych edits. Through this process, I found that the smaller the area selected, the worse the polyptych looked. For instance, the edit of the eye repeated, looks rather scary, however, the image of the eye, part of the nose and part of the mouth, works better because it’s a bigger segment and so it’s repeated as much and therefore isn’t as overpowering. To further these images, I did turn some into a sort of simple magazine/lookbook layout, just simply for experimentation. I chose the word ‘modern’ as theme for this shoot is modern styling. I feel by adding this word it has helped break the very busy images up and just adds another focus to the images because sometimes polyptych images can be too overpowering. Here are my edits, I have included all images from adding the first scaleline effects to my original images, to the ones with text:

[gracemadeley-blog]

Shoot 5 Reflection:

The theme for shoot 5 was modern minimalist beauty. This included trends such as ‘glass skin’ and styling the baby hairs. I took this images within the lighting studio because I wanted to use the soft box to achieve good quality and even lighting to enhance the glow of my models skin. I took my images from the shoulders above in order to capture the detail of the styling. Furthermore, I opted to take portrait images because I love the way that Richard Burbridge (the photographer of whom I have been inspired by for the theme of this shoot) encapsulates such a simple look yet allows it to be so powerful through his use of intimate angles. To edit these images I have simply increased the brightness and saturation in order to enhance the models skin, as that is the focal point of the image. I think this shoot has gone well and I have related it well to the contextual image and artists, however, I think I could of done a better job by taking some more images of features closer up so you can see the glow on the skin, which would allow for a closer link to the themes I was aiming to re creating: “glass skin”, “the wet look” and “no makeup makeup”.