At the very beginning of the project, my theme was time, but it was too broad, so I chose two different directions, one is Time Traces in Daily Life, is more like document product photography, and another one is 24 Solar Terms, is like fashion photography,
At the first, I was focusing on product shooting for Time Traces, such as a 20 years silver bowl, a 5 years lipstick, 50 years hat, something has been with me or live for long time. I also did some shoots of skin, like wrinkles, texture of skin and beard. However, the final images are not strong enough, so I turned to focus on 24 Solar Terms.
24 Solar Terms is a very new and unfamiliar subject to me, I only had a very basic understanding about it. The reason why I chose this to be my FMP topic is also because of too few of people know about this. This is a traditional Chinese culture. Marie Claire China made a series of photoshoot base on this topic in December 2018, it inspired me to wonder why Solar Terms couldn’t be presented in a different way. From the survey we can clearly see 84% people know Solar Terms from family and friends, and never researched this specially. The biggest reason is because this traditional has been gradually lost, very few of people promote it, people are not interested in it, so I would like yo use photography, through visual image to make people interested in it and understand it.
I started the shooting in the end of February, there are 24 themes totally, and I found time management was probably my biggest problem, most of my models are available in late March and April, and it takes 10 days to print, bind and deliver to me, so I decided to shoot everything between late March and 21st April. Fortunately, I did the research and prepared advance. In the middle of shooting there was a little episode, one of the models refused to cooperate the shooting in the last minute (within 12 hours before shooting, and we supposed to shoot 10 themes in different days), I prepared everything and booked studio for second day shooting. I was so upset, angry anddevasted, but luckily I found another model few days later.
A lot of shooting was taken during Ester, and I couldn’t book a studio and lighting for indoor shooting, so there are lots of light colour were edited in Lightroom and Photoshop. Almost all of the shots were done by two people, me and the model, such as setting and styling (more details on the last page of photo book), there were quite lots of problems during this period, as lot of things had to be done without a team or any helper.
In my research, apart of basic information and custom, I also did some research of relevant poem, and flowers are related almost in every Solar Terms, so I have used more or less flower element in a lot of shooting.The final outcome is a photo book, compared to other commercial fashion shooting, this series of shooting might be more abstract, I believe the whole shooting and the work will be more perfect if I have more time.
Anyway, I still feel a sense of accomplishment after completing 24 themes of photos, I hope through this photography ways, the traditional culture which on the list of Intangible Culture Heritage of Humanity can be interesting and understanding to much more people.
Website: fayhuang.com
