For this module I have been assigned the role as the Photographer within my magazine group. When I was first assigned this and we were given the brief on the overall module in the lecture I was pleased with my role. This was due to my love for all things photography and if given the choice this is the role I would have chosen. In the first few sessions my group and I began to try and understand everyone’s creative differences and the strengths and weaknesses we could each contribute. On first glance after hearing everyones initial ideas/concepts I had some concerns that our general aesthetics and concepts we each liked would clash and not everyone would be on board with the theme of the magazine. 6/10/22
The first theme we landed on as a group was playing around with the proposition of Indulging, combing people’s ideas of how to indulge and basing photoshoots of this and even named the magazine ‘Indulge’ to begin with, but later decided this topic was too vague and we needed to be more specific. In the end the final theme was decided on consumption. Personally, I wasn’t a huge fan of this as I felt we could be more original and again it was too broad of a topic which I think down the line made things very confusing to come up with photoshoot ideas and article types. However, everyone seemed to be on board with the theme so I felt as though I had to go along with it, which in hindsight I wish I spoke up more about how I really felt towards it as it made me not enjoy the work as much as I could have and I feel as though my creative ideas haven’t been pursued through my photography as much as I would have liked. 11/10/22
18/10/22 The next week our group began to meet and discuss further how we were going to create our magazine based around the idea of Consumption breaking it into sections to show how consumerism can be depicted in many different ways, such as, Social, Food, Media and Material. This allowed us to all understand it in a more simple way as there was slight confusion with myself and Maddie as the topic is very broad and needed to be specified what it was exactly we were trying to create. At this point we still hadn’t met all as a full group the stylist didn’t come to any of the sessions yet which was inconvenient as a collaborative project it’s required to know everyone and have everyone contribute. Especially in terms of photography and styling as the two go hand in hand which I don’t feel we worked in unison together at all really for this module. I felt that as we were incorporating Indulging and consumption why don’t we play of the concept of people’s ‘Guilty pleasures’ constructing photoshoots around interviews we could do with a range of people about what they’re guilty pleasures are to inspire our work. By this point we had talked about a few possible photoshoot ideas we could do, we took to instagram to do a poll on our stories of what people’s guilty pleasures are no matter how strange. By this point once we had evaluated which answers from these stories we would like to be inspired by Lucy pitched one about eating cold beans straight out of the tin and that someone had described they ‘love beans so much they could shower in them’. Our response to this was of course to be inspired and recreate this in a photoshoot.
1/11/22 ‘Spill the Beans’ Photoshoot. Between us we wanted to start creating content as soon as whether the shoots went well and we used them for the final piece or if they just turned out to be test shoots, regardless it was good to get the ball rolling. Our first photoshoot was at Charlottes house, Myself, Lucy and Charlotte collaborated together to carry it out. Between the three of us it was a bit of a struggle and inconvenient that our own stylist Lily did not turn up for the photoshoot as it meant that was another aspect we had to allow time for and come up with ourselves as we weren’t provided with a styling board (including hair and makeup) or any creative direction in that sense. Together we sorted this out with the clothing Charlotte had on her at her house and what we could make do with the items provided. I enjoyed this shoot as it was playful and messy which is exactly what we wanted to portray in our zine. I liked directing the shoot and sourcing the location of where it would work best, obviously it was slightly limiting in that sense because we were pouring beans all over Lucy, therefore too messy too be in the studio but also a perfect fit because we wanted to go the full extent of the response we got and actually make our model shower with beans. We came up with the idea of filling an empty body wash with the beans and photographing the Lucy using it all over her. In terms of sourcing a model for this shoot we hadn’t done the casting call on Instagram yet (and someone who would be willing to pour beans all over them) so was grateful when Lucy put herself up for the role. Our magazine is all about being playful and daring which I feel this photoshoot encapsulated well, as-well as our choice of wanting to use bold colours and saturation on the images. We ended up selecting the best images and using them within the final magazine after playing around with where they would slot in best. Maddie also wrote a great article to go alongside the images based of what the person who responded to the poll had said after she interviewed them.
During our next lecture we spoke to Chris about the first photoshoot just to check if we were making the right progress and if what we were creating in the images was correlating successfully to our theme. After speaking to him he seemed pleased with the images and enjoyed them which reassured me I was on the right track as I often second guess myself in my work whether it is good enough or up to standard. This was helpful to me restoring my confidence for the future shoots we would be doing and having more confidence to speak up about my creative ideas and direction.
In the next couple of photoshoots I wanted to outsource different places to shoot at rather than just in the studio as that can often get boring in my opinion and wanted to play around in a new space. For this shoot it was for the consumption of food section. I sourced a cafe which I felt was appropriate as I wanted to find a greasy, diner style as it was meant to be messy. ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’ in the laines was the cafe I chose to take the models after our morning lecture in the lunch hour. I sourced the models Izzy and Archie and created mood boards for what I was wanting to capture in preparation. Again for this shoot I also had to style it too as I was given no direction by the stylist and she did not show for the shoot. This was fine as I enjoy styling although I would have liked to work alongside each other rather than take on both jobs for most of the shoots as it caused me more stress when planning ahead for the photoshoots and taking on more work than anticipated. I wanted to capture this particular shoot on film as It is my preferred medium and felt it would reflect the greasy ,diner cafe vibe more accordingly. Unfortunately, during this photoshoot my film camera I was using began to not work which meant I had to switch to my digital camera I had on me as-well. This was a shame as I was excited and confident to create some great film content which I felt was not executed to my full potential due to my poor equipment. After this shoot I missed the second lecture to go home and begin editing the images as I wanted a quick turn around when doing them so I could move on to the next photoshoot and create as much content as I could. Also keeping in mind I wanted quality over quantity. In regards to editing the images I have explained and digressed further on it in my sketchbook which I have done for all shoots.
When selecting what images we were going to use and talking about the specific photoshoots in the studio, I felt that sometimes my opinion could be dismissed and not considered as much as I would have liked when putting forward my creative ideas. An example of this is the material section of the magazine when doing the ‘Plastic’ photoshoot. Overall, I didn’t love this shoot concept as I felt it had been done before and when basing ideas around plastic and sustainability it can be very easy to fall into a trap of creating something that isn’t original which I didn’t particularly want to reflect back to my photography as I ideally wanted to do something else. However, we didn’t have much time to plan out new photoshoots and I personally found it confusing when thinking of concepts because the theme was too vague for myself to think originally swell as I wasn’t the biggest fan of it.
FINAL EVALUATION
As I reflect on this project as a whole I find it has come with its many strengths but also equally weaknesses. Working as a group is always going to bring up it’s differences and challenges, as lovely as my group was I found that a few times too many we did not work as collaboratively as we could have and in that sense ruled out a certain level of success. I feel as though some members of the group pulled their own weight more than others which when working in a group can very quickly and easily become a prominent problem, as everyone is required to contribute an equal amount. When this isn’t achieved it is inevitable that challenges transpire and can begin to cause certain division within a group and creative differences. Personally, a large factor to my own personal issues within this module was that I did not love the overall concept/theme of our magazine and therefore struggled to understand from a creative standpoint how I was going to achieve work to the best of my ability when my heart and interests didn’t lie cohesively with the magazine’s manifesto and general aesthetic. I was very pleased to be given the role I wanted, although, having said that due to being photographer I believe that if the stylist and I had worked more in collaboration together the work produced together would have been a lot stronger. Having said all this, the strengths I gained from this creative collaboration is something I see as a positive. One strength I gained was accepting that in the industry you are not always going to have your way creatively and full creative direction, but you can utilise this to build stronger character development that you are up for a challenge and pushed me out of my comfort zone. On occasion, the group didn’t work collaboratively and it was one persons idea at a time as nobody put forward so we all were left confused by the topics and what they became. This proved a weakness as a few of us were confused by the general concept it restricted our full potentials to achieve an amazing and successful outcome. If I was to do this project again, what I would do differently is put my ideas forward more and make sure they are heard rather than being submissive due to not being listened to or trying to be understood by my ideas I did pitch.