#mono project

For my final shoot of MONO I decided to experiment a little with texture and shapes. I went out to brick lane and bought 3 meters of black and white striped fabric to use as part of the back drop. I also bought a meter clear plastic where I used a C stand to pin the plastic on. I then used a spray bottle to achieve an effects of falling droplets infront of the models face. My main reason for this was to promote the sunglasses and show buyers that you can wear these in any weather and still look cool. 

I really enjoyed shooting my final, I was very relaxed and had a lot more fun than I did at my first shoot. My ideas felt stronger this time round and I always enjoy experimenting with something new. I also felt more confident directing my model and giving him different poses to try out, which gave me better variety at the end when it came to choosing my shots. 

My test shoot went...pretty crap. My whole idea on trying to project patterns of light on my model was a complete fail because apparently I need a certain piece of equipment called a spotlight for it to work..which I don’t actually have access to :(  So I ended up with a plain grey background, a model and some lights. I had to work with what I had which wasn’t the end of the world but I was just a little bummed out that I couldn't get the effect that I wanted. I will now have to come up with a different way to make this spread interesting.. 

So in this test shoot I used one soft box and two monobloc flash heads with one snoot. I was finding it a little difficult to get the exposures right at first and I think that’s because I tried to overcomplicate the lighting. There were too many lights doing their own thing which confused the photograph. However I managed to tone down the lights and with a little experimenting I placed the lights in their positions and went for it. I got some really great shots, mostly close up shots which is a problem because I am definitely lacking some long shots. I think I was focusing on the sunglasses a little too much instead of paying attention to the models body stance as well. I was quite happy with the styling of the shoot because it was what I was going for, simple but with an edge. However I think the styling could be amped up a little by adding a few more unique pieces. 

Things to improve for the FINAL shoot:

Come up with a solid lighting diagram 

Come up with an idea to make the set more interesting instead of having a plain background (props etc) 

Shoot LONG SHOTS. Do not just focus on close up. Play around!

Think about the styling a little more, add some unique pieces that captures street style

I have been debating and felt quite stuck as to how I wanted to approach this MONO project and realised to stick to simple idea and not over complicate things. However I don’t want to go too simple...so how do you create something interesting without going overboard? 

明治8年創業、京都の祇園に構える老舗店舗「ない籐」が新たに立ち上げた草履をモダンに構築したプロジェクト"JOJO"サンダルが入荷！

各サイズ：SS (22.5cm) S(24cm) L(27cm)

I feel that even with the problems with the shoot, I am happy with my final images. I would have liked to have created my images with a model so I could have had more control over the clothing and overall theme of the pieces.

I had my shoot for my Mono sunglasses project on the 28th April at 10am. I had organised with the  group to meet at 8:45am so we had plenty of time to set up the lighting and backgrounds. The model was organised to arrive at north Greenwich tube station at 9:45.

We set up the lighting and decided in our group that i would shoot first. I went to the tube station at 9:40 to wait for the model to turn up. I waited until 9:50 and the model had not turned up. I began phoning him, his phone rang but there was no answer, I tried this a few times and text him as well. It got to 10:10 when I  left as this was now cutting into mine and subsequently everyone else's time to shoot. We began contacting people we knew to try and model for us but we could not get hold of anyone, as a last resort we used ourselves as the model for the shoot.

As we were put into groups for the project we separated the roles between the three of us. The roles were:

Finding a model

Finding a stylist

Finding a makeup artist