One of our workshops during this week was to portray a character from a made up tribe based on 21st century youth culture responding to climate change. We was then put in to random groups, which for me is beneficial when developing on to skills like team work, creativity, communication skills and critical thinking. Working in groups allows me to explore other peoples creativity and ideas and for me to learn on working collaboratively efficiently as well as how other people portray ideas. In the Fashion Industry, you normally work with others very closely and collaborate with one another. So it’s a very important skill, and for me has developed well since being in University.

As a group we worked together to brainstorm ideas for our character and their tribe. We all individually was drawn to the idea of using denim. As denim material is very damaging to make and struggles to be sustainable, this is because the process wastes a lot of water. Although, denim is very durable, known to have a long life expectancy. As well as Denim never goes out of trend, decreasing over consumption and waste, slowing down the encouragement and urge of contributing to the damage the industry causes. We then linked the idea of Denim and the Colour Blue, and for our aim to respond to climate change, we automatically linked the ideas of water, blue and denim to the ocean.  We discussed further ideas from the ocean and originally wanted to use a green screen behind the model of water, and use draping of fabrics to portray the movement of the ocean. However due to time and limited equipment, our idea wasn’t able to become reality. We continued to think of our backstory and tribe. We wanted our tribe to portray a strict rule of only using denim, showing the durability of the material and therefore decreasing over consumption, as this is the only material they wear. They think about the earth and do not want to encourage landfills and other damaging aspects. And if they only wear denim, they can’t be encouraged to over consume in fast paced trends and cheap bad quality items.

We styled our model using the technique of layering. Our photo process behind this was due to the character and their tribe spending a lot of their time outside and in colder wetter conditions. Due to our strict rule of only denim, we layered the model in a pair of baggy jeans, a skirt, another pair of denims styled into a top and then finally a denim jacket. This was a successful choice, and I liked how all the different shades of blue worked together, also portraying different colours of the ocean.

First we decided to use an original thought of draping blue fabric in the background to portray water and the movement. We used our surrounding area to pin the blue fabric to other fabrics like curtains etc. We took a few shots however as a group we decided our idea turned out to be not as successful as we hoped! We then searched for other suitable locations, but we couldn’t agree on something that would portray our ideas and thoughts, and show the viewers the character and their tribe. We was finally drawn to the outside, due to our character and their tribe being an outdoor group. Our model posed sat on a wall near a tree, showing the audience their close relationship to nature.

Unfortunately as a group we wasn’t overall impressed with our final shots, as we wanted to use our original idea of using a green screen and creating lighting and successful draping effects to portray our model in the ocean. However, the workshop was still beneficial when developing my skills of working in a group and learning to collaborate efficiently.

During week 2 of Module 2, I looked into styling techniques that are commonly used by stylists and are also important skills to understand and be able to perform successfully. I really enjoyed this workshop, I worked in a group including the model and we only had materials and garments around us in the studio. This allowed us to use our creativity and collaborate together with ideas. There was a lot of trial and error while performing these techniques due to ideas not being successful in reality, critical thinking due to a lack of materials around us etc.

However, eventually we managed to become successful in portraying each technique on the model. My favourite technique was definitely the layering, which is above this blog, because of the different textures and colours of denim. It was a really effective example and was fun to throw together and see what we could create! I have now become very familiar with these techniques and I would definitely like to play with draping again in a different aspect. I think It’s such a beautiful styling technique that creates movement , and I feel like I would be very good at this particular skill, especially if I have the right equipment and materials! Draping is a technique that could create a lot of emotion and movement in specific shoots, especially elements like water and fire. Overall I definitely feel that this workshop was beneficial for me, as it allowed me to develop my creativity for future styling shoots, like draping, and also helped me understand why It’s a basic and important skill to understand for a Fashion Stylist.

This week I started a new module of Fashion Styling and Photography. I have been intrigued to learn more about these roles in the fashion industry for a while now as I feel like I have a lot of interest towards them. I love the creativity you can explore while creating meanings or visual concepts for the viewer, and how the Stylist and Photographer work together to make it reality. So far I have been experimenting with my own camera, that is a Nikon D3500, to develop my skills using a camera. I only experimented with the basics like how to download photos to your phone, how to use the easy operations and advanced operations etc. The “newbie” stuff. However, I do feel like I’ve managed to understand it quicker than I expected, although I still have a lot of areas to learn! I would love to be confident in using a camera without using the operations, and being able to adjust setting myself to achieve the goal I’m working towards depending on the photoshoot. While practising with my camera, I walked down into Brighton and visited the Beach near the pier, the Lanes and the Pavilion Garden. I felt like these areas would be the best to explore the skills in using a Camera and would be good to use to teach me the basics. While I was at the beach I focused on achieving a quality shot of the waves in action. At first I was using an operation that sets the camera and adjusts to take water movement in photographs. However, looking back at my captures, I feel like this is only suitable for waterfalls and other similar water movements, not for movement like waves as it blurs and become unclear so therefore becomes difficult to see the structure of the wave. So instead I used an operation with a faster shutting speed, like modes for sports, people or fast moving vehicles. This allowed me to take much more clear and in the moment shots of the waves, showing the structure, and as if you physically paused the wave for a moment. It took many attempts, but when I finally got home and went through all the photos that I had taken, I found one that was exactly what I was hoping for! So now I have a little bit more of an understanding how different shutting speeds affect photos, and what settings are most successful for this type of shoots and similar. However, I would like to now aim towards not using the operations and being able to adjust this all myself. Moving on to the photography through the Lanes, I found myself taking many photos of street art or aesthetically pleasing looking shops, just to again experiment with the basics of my camera and capturing photographs that look good quality and interesting. These were mostly just as I was walking past and were taken for personal interest, for example street art that looked really cool and interested me as I love to take my time admiring different forms of art, especially street art. When I was at home, I took my time to look a bit at the retouch menu on my camera. The retouch menu is where you can edit photos and add a variety of different aspects, and they can create such different meanings to your photos. I explored selective colour, cross screen and image illustration. Selective colour was really interesting to use because that’s the effect that can easily create a whole new meaning to a photo. I originally had taken a photo of some graffiti, surrounded by colourful stickers and posters with different meanings. It was a photo where the viewer could determine how they viewed it depending on the way you perceive things. However I edited it to only keep the red in and for everything else to become black and white. Just by removing the positive bright colouring, the picture almost turned quite aggressive looking. But when I used another photograph of the graffiti and edited it using the image illustration, everything looked like a poster or a cartoon, creating harsher black lines and the saturation and vibrancy being turned up, creating more of a positive meaning behind it rather than aggressive. I really enjoyed using the image illustration effect and seeing what works successfully and what doesn’t because I feel like it has to be a very particular vibe, person or object to make the effect work. I also edited photos using cross screen that is an affect that turns lights into “starbursts”, enhancing the photograph. This is really affective to use on pictures in the evening and night time as I felt like it created a very warm and cozy vibe to my photos. You can adjust the amount and size of the starbursts and I just feel like it’s a very small but effective edit you can use on your photographs to create a vibe and that emotion that makes you feel comforted. Overall I enjoyed experimenting and learning my camera and I’m motivated to continue learning the settings so I’m able to adjust different aspects by myself. I feel like it’s an area I could really develop my skills in, and I would love to learn all aspects about it. So I will continue doing research on Photographers as well as sustainability to understand how photography can also be sustainable.