For Tchad’s narrative I wanted the shoot location to be more about his cultural upbringing, as part of forming the narrative of how he sees/saw himself. Given that he grew up in an upper middle-class area, with an upper middle-class family, surrounded by stunning countryside and stately homes, I wanted to shoot outside a very grand looking house, preferably one that was old university. Very luckily I did just this, and managed to get the ok to go shoot for an hour and a half at Corsham Court, a stunning 500 year old house, designed by Capability Brown. Which is also now part of Bath university. Which contextually fits perfectly with the period in Tchad’s life that I am looking at.

Whilst I got confirmation for Corsham Court I also tried a few other places that I thought could work, such Longleat house, as Tchad used to work here during the period of his life that I am focusing on, whilst I like the idea of this in terms of it fitting the cultural element of it, I still always felt that my shoot location for Tchad’s narrative was imperitive in getting the idea across, and in order to push the narrative of his time in college, I needed the location to be an old university, for the grandness but also for the context.

I also tried to shoot at Lacock Abbey, as I thought to shoot down by the cloisters could work well as a few notable old universities such as Oxford and Cambridge have cloisters around the uni grounds. I also thought that I could get some quite abstract images here and play around with the Tchad looking at himself in a very critical way.

For Freya’s shoot location I knew that I wanted to shoot her in Bath, for a similar reason culturally but also to speak of the context of the narrative. For this I wanted an affluent looking city to speak of a young business woman doing very well, staying very focused in her career. I was imagining something similar to Mayfair in London. Also this being said, this is also where Freya grew up, speaking of her narrative culturally. As well as this as Bath is known for being a perfectly balance of stunning countryside and a roman city, it is very common for people to work some of the time in London but reside in Bath. This helped make my decision as I wanted my location for Freya’s shoot to speak of her being someone who is doing very well for themselves.

I did always intend to get walking shots of Freya as if she was in a rush for another business meeting, busy and focused. However I also liked the idea of having her inside a hotel getting ready for the day ahead, or a bar/restaurant maybe having a meeting with a client.

I achieved this as No 15 in Bath allowed me to shoot there for an hour. The Bar is really beautiful and worked well for my concept.

The restaurant down stairs had great natural lighting which allowed me to keep the tone real although it was meant to be a very constructed image.

I also rang up a self catering boutique hotel business in Bath, Marcus allowed me to shoot in his ”Mr Darcy” property for more than long enough. This location was excellent for capturing my jewellery shot as it had an art deco mirror in the bathroom which was really great for narrative. I wanted to explore using the mirror to assess the self and critique the self as we were still shooting the black suit but I was focusing on the necklace which was a symbol of the part that religion has played in Freya’s life, carrying this in the form of accessory once again reiterates that clothing and accessories can carry strong meanings and feelings for the wearer. Symbols of where they have been and where they are going.

I did find experimenting with Angelica the model, gazing at the clothing in the wardrobe and coming down the stairs useful. But in terms of working to push the narrative forward, something was missing. At this point in this shoot we shooting the black suit, so I wanted to capture Angelica looking nervous, a little fragile, using the suit as armour. I experimented with this by shooting Angelica coming down the stairs in the heels, this was making her walk very nervously and cautiously. In terms of visual reference I found Nick Knight and Issabella Blow photo helpful for this

The figure is blurred and also looks as though she is trying to disappear. I wanted to somehow try this concept. To clarify this was the part of the shoot where I was looking at how Freya dresses when she is feeling less confident and more nervous.

(Fury, Knight, & Blow 2013)