Category: Reflection

Currently working for REISS, Andreas works under high pressure, fast pace conditions; shooting thirty to forty looks a day due to a 30% to 40% increase in products resulting in an increase in the production chain. An operational timetable is used in order to structure shoot days and organise specific models, photographers, hair stylists, make up artists and stylists.

At the end of the day a contact sheet will be created, consisting of the chosen images selected from the shoots taken that day. Once they are finished the retouchers are sent a list of codes for the images that have been retouched in order to ensure that the images are ready to go online. Now bought out by NEXT the platform of REISS has been changed, which has slowed down the process and increased the turnover time from a few hours to three to four days.

During the talk with former student, Andreas spoke on a lot of information about how the industry and fast work pace has affected his own personal life and work. He elaborated on the information, expressing that at times it was extremely hard and difficult to keep up with. As a person, Andreas seems highly organised and seems to be thriving under these intense work conditions which I think at lot of people would struggle with.

Upon reflection and moving forward with what I would like to do in the future I feel that Andreas was extremely helpful in giving a realistic insight into what it is like to work for such as a big name like REISS. For the forth coming future Andreas’s talk has helped me reconsider the job roles I would be willing to do within the industry and I now plan to really enhance my strengths in order to use them to my advantage.

Leave a Comment

Through out all of my university projects, I have always struggled with designating time to each of my projects, often making my work process rather chaotic due to an influx of pressure and work load I put on myself. Naturally I’m a perfectionist and this results in my time being taken up by sketchbook layouts and mood boards. I found speaking to my peers extremely useful and managed to ask them about methods they use and things that could help me speed up my research process in order to focus my time on the practical element of the project. Through speaking to my peer Lara Coassin, she advised a time calendar, much like a ghant chart but physical, as well writing down my tasks at the start of the day in order to check them off like a ‘To Do’ list. Being a visual learner, I found this method extremely helpful and found it a lot easier to complete my tasks after visualising how I am to structure my day. Figure 1, 2 and 3 are examples of how I have been writing down my days, keeping track of deadlines and balancing university projects with personal work.

Leave a Comment

My thought process when linking my outcomes back to my concept is a mind map of links, thinking of them as correlations with what Performance means. Some carry clear attributes such as musical performers and artists, however the process of capturing the audience has made me think about how much they add to the atmosphere; the way they dance, react, interact with each other and the performer. It moves the term Performance from the literal sense to metaphorical. The audience isn’t consciously performing, however they are choosing they’re mannerisms in order to present themselves individually in a specific way. Through the process of removing my self from being a performer or an audience member, I get to experience an outsider perspective, unconsciously watching people as an observer without them necessarily realising. When photographing events I consciously try to go unnoticed in attempt capture scenes as though I were apart of them.

Leave a Comment

Diana Uprichard Dolly Clothing 

• New and Sustainable are contradictory
• Sole Trader
• Focusing on consumption
• Refusing to contribute to single use culture
• Exercising de-growth and decreasing waste
• Visual representation of how many clothes are thrown away every two seconds
• Using creative curation as a distraction
• Freedom from the highstreet
• To watch The True Cost
• Fashion Revolution
• Circular fashion
• If you keep an item for 2 years it has 24% less of an impact on the planet
• River Blue The impact 0f denim

The Great Dolly Clothes Swap 26th Feburary

• Community
• Belonging
• To disrupt the value of clothing
• Continue the story of clothing
• Redeveloping a love for unwanted clothes

Thrift Fashion Show 

• Celebration of uniqueness
• A fashion show to exhibit old clothes
• High cost of £4000 to run
• Fundraiser needed
• Body positivity
• Knitted together community

Side stepping and Adapting

• Adapting to the COVID-19 Pandemic
• Sewing scrubs
• Fundraising through social media marketing
• Scrub Kits Dolly Scrub Hub
• Produced 14000 sets of scrubs
• Sew For Good 
• Dolly Kit 

Deadstock

• Using Deadstock fabric to make Dolly Kits 
• Smaller kits using scraps of unused fabrics

Personal Notes

• Potential models Guilia, Lilly, Lara, Sarah
• Maybe Borrow items from Diana for a performative shoot
• Collaborating sustainability with a performance
• Earthy tones to connote the connection between sustainability and the earth
• Contrasting make up
• Minimalistic look
• Connote how sustainability is a circular performance that represents a cycle
• Formative is about building a character
• Collaborates the character within a performance and the character clothing holds when its reused

Leave a Comment

Through the development process of of my Final Major Project I have been looking at expanding my content creation to looking at moving image and visuals to bring my printed magazine/photo book to life. I plan to do through the use of QR codes and apps such as Adobe Aero and Artivive. My idea is to connect my documentary photography with videos produced by the creatives I photograph; some vides already created that I would like to include are:

• Van Wilkins Keep Hush live set
• Vague Skate Mag’s O.W.L – Maritime/O.W.L – Pavilion
• Plxyhousx Instagram reel

Last week as a group we all created a collection of images that represented the direction of our Final Major Projects; and posted them on Padlet. The process involved:

• Creating a Name
• Imagery
• Small description
•  Pre-existing work used as an inspiration
• Identifying other ideas
• Encourage collaboration

After further discussion within my Tutorial with Dani this week, to develop my research process I need to look at:

• Colour Palettes
• Visual content
• Alignment
• Font
• Flat Plan
• Building an aesthetic
• Making the imagery cohesive
• Target Market

Leave a Comment

After a recommendation from Dani, Lauren and myself discovered a strong correlation between our themes and thought it would be beneficial to record an informal conversation, discussing our views and opinions on the topic of ‘The performance of rituals’. After a brief conversation beforehand we agreed to speak under three categories: Preparation, Interaction and Reflection. It allowed us to discuss how people and each other prepare for the day, what rituals we each do and the idea that a human daily ritual is a performance within itself. The conversation was recorded on a iPhone and flowed extremely naturally as if we were recording a podcast. By collaborating it allowed Lauren and myself to elaborate on our themes and gain an external perspective.

Moving forward, graphically I would like to create a visual that I can use to enhance the audio of our conversation to be uploaded to my blog. This is because at present I have no intentions of creating a digital presence for my magazine although through my development this may change and evolve into a social media account that will enable me to post and access a wider audience.

Leave a Comment

After a couple tutorials with Dani, I managed to create a strong foundation for my FMP as they helped stimulate my thought process.We spoke about aspects I would need to think about in order to move forward and what actions I would need to take in order to complete the tasks I set myself. The aspects included:

• Casting
• Location
• Styling
• Hair and Make up
• Prop
• Post production

My thought process works very clinically and I like to create a structure to my work, so it was easiest for me to work in quantities, thinking about:

• How many editorials
• How many are going to Landscape
• How many are going to be Portrait
• How many Beauty shots
• Which practitioners do I need to contact

Creating these lists help me to organise my time and create a base to begin my work process. I concluded that naturally I’m attracted to Methodical styling, as its thoroughly thought out and symbolic. The logic behind something being done in a certain way helps be understand the creative thought process of a practitioners work, and this is what I would like to reflect in my own work. Techniques to consider are:

• Photography Bracketing
• Flatplanning
• Documantation

Leave a Comment

The briefing, presented by Mark; outlined the next steps to continuing with the process of the completion of our Final Major Project. He highlighted to us the structure we should be following in order to maintain a good level of time management for our project, which is something I struggle with during production.

As I will be undertaking the roles of Photography and Styling, my potential outcome is more likely to be editorial based and will take the form of either a Magazine or Photography book, which will hopefully meet the criteria of a published outcome. The exhibition of our final work needs to be supported by a body of development indicative of experimentation, which will be my continued sketchbook that will highlight the key aspects I have taken from my research during Task 1. The idea is that by documentaing all images taken, we have have a catalogue of images to use for our portfolio.

Leave a Comment

The L6 Photography and Lighting refresher workshop was extremely helpful and reminded me how to use the studio and equipment safely and efficiently. The photography team showed us some really useful tips that could speed up the studio and editing process. I tried to take photos of any props or settings I thought would help me with my project in the future and enhance my editorial work. One prop I had never use before but will make sure to in the future, was the colour card; a board of colours used to speed up the editing process. By holding the board in front of the camera and taking a photo of the model or set you wish to use, you can then place the Eyedropper tool in Adobe Lightroom over a colour on the Colour Card panel and use the preset it suggests to adjust the photographs taken during the shoot. I think the colour card will contribute to creating consistency in my shoots and elevate my editorial work.

With the Photography and Lighting workshop just consisting of Lara and myself, we were able to ask a lot more questions and experiment with the props spoken about such as a soft box, snoot, beauty dish, colour gels, reflectors and the umbrella. Moving forward I want show the use of the studios facilities throughout my experimentation to make sure my shoots look as professional as possible. By establishing what props should be used and when I gained a better understanding of the effects I can create on the model and set for my future editorial work.

By experimenting with the lighting and props it was a lot easier to understand, hopefully speeding up the process when doing my own shoots. We experimented with aperture, lighting and colour gels.

The images displayed show Lara and I changing the sides of the spotlight by using a snoot and softening the light by using an umbrella. We were able to experiment with the strength of the fill light and aperture by altering both and balancing it out through the use of a light meter. For future shoots I know a definitely want to experiment with the gels more to create a colourful environment and use fill lights to add dramatic effect during much darker shoot.

Leave a Comment