I’m pretty pleased that I’ve managed to edit my images how I want them, including extending the backgrounds and airbrushing skin etc. It’s a lot easier after the workshop we had last week on beauty retouching, and while I haven’t managed to hone the skills down too precisely yet, I’m pretty pleased with it all the same.

Finally I have shot something which is worthwhile! I think I’ve got the lighting I want on my model right, but I was still struggling with the background, because I’m looking to move away from dark backgrounds in to some more pastel colours. Next time I shoot I’ll make sure to be in the EG studios so I can easily ask Mike or Fergus for a hand with this. We also had some real issues with the lights, but I think we managed to make it work, so I’ve at least got something of substance to show for my crit next week. 

I was working with Issy as my model, who is usually my go-to gal for shoots, and Millie from the year below as my assistant. We worked really well as a team, but I think it was just too late in the week for us to really give it our all because we all seemed really tired. I’ll have to bear this in mind for when I next shoot. 

Here are some of the unedited images - I can put my Photoshop skills to practice again, as well as the ones which I learnt in last week’s workshop. 

Today I am my tutorial with James, thankfully to tell him that I finally had a shoot planned! I told him about how I hadn’t really found anyone for my shoots yet, so he suggested posting more and more on social media about it, finding fashion and FCP students to help, and going to makeup counters in Norwich to find MUAs. He also suggested that I get some business cards to make myself appear more professional while I do this, so I’ve put some on order from Moo and hopefully they’ll be useful and give me some more confidence to find models and MUAs when doing street castings. The business cards should arrive next Thursday, so I’ve got a bit of time to kill in the meantime, but at least they’re on their way. 

I’m continually trying to find models for this project, and I’ve put a post out for a models, stylist and MUA with no luck as yet. Thankfully, I have a friend modelling for me for my shoot on Friday, but I’ve had no responses to my social media posting and it’s quite irritating, to be honest. I’m trying really hard to find people to be in my shoots but with no luck, but I have a tutorial with James S tomorrow, so hopefully I can get some guidance on this then. 

I made a start on my pecha kucha presentation this weekend, and it is unbelievably hard. It makes me feel like I have nothing to talk about - which is stupid, because I know I have plenty to talk about because I talked about it to numerous people in the last workshop, but it still feels as though there’s no actual substance to my work, as usual. However, I’m enjoying the chance to explain my work because it’s giving me a far clearer idea of what it actually is that I’m studying and what I've still got left to do. 

Yesterday was finally the big day - the AOP Awards. I went down to London with Kim, Cherie and Eleanor and we were there and looking around the work by about half 6. All of the work was really good, and there were some that really struck me (luckily we got our goody bags with a free book in which I’ll be able to reference later!). 

I devised a plan with Chris on the best way to speak to photographers. It was really noisy in the exhibition space, so we moved outside to the smoker’s area, where it was far quieter and you were much more able to talk. To be honest, it followed the same principle of being in bars, clubs and pubs, that if you wanted to meet people and actually get to know them, then the smoking area is always the best place to go. And it worked! I met a photographer who professionally goes by the name of Polskey, and we chatted about women photographing women and the difference between female and male photographers, and then she mentioned she wanted to start up an all female photography agency. A man, who I later discovered owns an online photography company worth millions (literally), then offered to put £5k seed money in. We all shook on it, and now I REALLY need to get down to emailing her so that she remembers me! 

I also made contacts with two girls who work in production and agency, and they said that if I ever needed work experience or fancied an internship then I was more than welcome to contact them. They gave me some of their postcards, which had their details on them, and so I have at least got this to fall back on. 

All in all, I’d consider the night a reasonable success, and in light of this, I have FINALLY responded to an email from someone who gave us a guest lecture last year. I’d been putting it off and off because I was so worried about it and stressing about university, and it’s all fine, he said he completely understood, and it was an absolute weight off my shoulders. I am so pleased. 

Today I also attended a beauty retouching masterclass. I am so so so thankful for these sessions, as I’ve always felt behind in Photoshop because I had to learn from scratch since I started uni, and while I’m sure that there are other people who have done this too, I still feel like one of the weakest people when it comes to Photoshop. Digital retouching definitely isn’t the job for me. 

This week’s group crit had a poor turn out - only 3 of us and Sophie. However it was good, I felt a lot more comfortable with fewer people (especially people I knew) and we got to spend a lot more time on each person. 

In an attempt to produce something (literally anything) for tomorrow’s crit, I did a shoot with Kam. It was really good to be back in the studio, but it was bloody hard to give any direction. I know I haven’t researched enough, but I’ve at least broken the barrier that was picking up my camera, and turning it on for something other than checking it still worked. 

I wanted to play around with gels a bit as I think I might use them for my project, so I got some out and found them really hard to control. There’s a large selection of gels, but finding the right one is a pain in the arse, and even when you’ve got the gel on your light, it’s either too intense or not intense enough and I don’t know enough about gels to know what to do with them. Which means I’ll need to keep on practicing and practicing and practicing until I’ve perfected them (or find another means of adding colour to my shoots). 

Today’s workshop was one of speed dating. We had to come in to class with 3 ideas for our research report or project, and talk to lots of people about it, and help advise our respective partners on ideas for their projects. I found it useful because it meant I could get perspectives from people who don’t even photograph the sort of things I’m interested in, and because I’m nosy, it was good to see what other people were doing too. The most helpful thing I got was that Kerry gave me a photographer who’s work was similar to Juno Calypso’s, Scarlett Carlos Clarke. Again there was the sense of opulence and extravagance that I wanted, and the monochromatic tones too. Again, I think she’ll be another big influence in my work. 

Scarlett Carlos Clarke

This week’s guest lecture was Luke Stephenson. I’ve seen his work before as it’s been referenced to in lectures, and while discussing his work with my housemates beforehand, I was interested to hear some of the concepts behind his work and find out why he photographed what he photographed. 

Luke graduated in 2005 from Blackpool, and his work tends to focus on quirky British culture. His early work contains a lot of portraiture of his friends , and this led to a few fashion commissions early in his career. Throughout his work he tends to use the same lighting and set up of a plain, sometimes coloured background, and a light from above. This has been brought across to his still life as well, used first in the Clown Egg Register. 

From Clown Egg Register, Luke Stephenson

It was really refreshing to see personal work where it appeared (to me) that the photographer was simply photographing things and people which he found strange or intriguing, rather than having the concept looming over their head in this dark cloud of “But why am I doing this?”. It’s nice to know that you can just photograph things because they look weird or because you want to explore something. That said, there is a lot of repetition and sense of endurance in some of his work. For example, The Incomplete Dictionary of Show Birds was a project that lasted years while Luke searched for certain species of birds, and researched how to photograph birds etc, and the project didn’t appear to start because he had a particular fascination with birds or that they were deeply significant to him (even if they are now), but because he just had an inkling to photograph them. 

From The Incomplete Dictionary of Showbirds, Luke Stephenson

Today I met up with Kirstie and Kamilia to discuss my ideas with them and get some general feedback on them. I went in with the vision of creating these diptychs of women in contrasting lighting and costumes, and voiced my concerns that the images wouldn’t look coherent enough. 

I then went to the office to see if there was someone I could talk to, and I spoke to Katy about it. Initially she said she thought it could look a bit naff (absolutely the right word for it, I couldn’t really put my finger on why the idea didn’t feel quite right), and suggested I instead look at some more tongue in cheek artists. She said I should take another look at Cindy Sherman to consider the idea of character and alter ego in photography, and then she suggested I look at Juno Calypso. I instantly fell in love with her work - it had this really pleasing balance in the colour palette and in the framing, and I think that she will be a really really big influence in my work. There was always this sense of luxury and opulence, and I think that will translate well across to my work. 

I went to my first tutorial of the year with James Smith today, and it made me a lot clearer about who and what I wanted to shoot. He pointed out that some of my images in one of my GTAV projects have this seedy view of women, and so he suggested I look at Millicent Hailes and Nadia Lee Cohen. He also said that when Millicent was writing her dissertation, she looked at the male gaze, and talked about how women didn’t want to be sexualised at all as a result of it, and then thought “Hey no, we’ll be sexualised if we bloody well want to be”, and this has struck a chord with me, and I’m hoping I can bring it in to my work. So far I’ve got the idea to do diptychs along lines similar to the classic line “I can be whatever you want me to be”, with the same girl monochromatically light in this submissive costume (eg. a schoolgirl) constrasting with a dominatrix style costume on the right hand side. I’m not entirely sure about this so I’m going to pop in to the office tomorrow and ask what someone thinks, and I’ve arranged to meet Kirstie and Kamilia to talk to them about it too. 

Today we had another workshop, this time on how to use the library resources. This was actually surprisingly helpful, as I’ve been struggling to find professional enough resources which aren’t video essays I’ve stumbled upon on Youtube. I’m still lacking ideas for my main project, but at least I have ideas for the research report I suppose?

This lecture was about the reflective journal and learning objectives. It was really good going through how we can hit the learning objectives in the reflective journal, but it feels like we’ve completely switched how we do our reflective writing: I knew that this year we need to focus more on reflection than just chatting about what we’ve been up to, but I’ve never been very good at reflective writing anyway, so this will be something I’ll have to really work on to make sure I do well. 

Last night, I watched Kick Ass with my partner, and was absolutely captivated by the colours in it. While I’ve seen the film before, I noticed a lot more now how the colour divided the characters in a way which portrayed good and bad. Obviously, a film based on a comic book is going to be rich in vibrant colours to pay homage to it’s original source, however I hadn’t noticed before how the colours affected the narrative.

First of all, I noticed that in Frank d’Amico’s office, there was an overwhelmingly orange colour scheme. Frank d’Amico is the main villain in the film, and his character is that of a crime organisation leader. Hence, when I first saw the orange I considered it a nice touch, referencing how orange is used in The Godfather, but I kept noticing it recurring through the film, not only in setting but whenever d’Amico and characters relating to him appeared. 

Frank d’Amico’s office, Kick Ass (2010)

Frank’s son, Chris d’Amico (or Red Mist) is a secondary antagonist in the film. When he creates his superhero costume, it is overwhelmingly red, as well as his accessories, such as his car. He goes so far as to include the colour in his name. Orange and red are analogous colours, and so it makes sense for Frank’s son to take on his father’s warmer hues as well. 

Promotional material for Kick Ass (2010)

If we then look at the protangonist’s costume, we see that he is dressed in complementary colours - opposite on the colour wheel. Not only that but if we consider some of the spaces we see him in - his room, for example - they are also in this cooler colour palette. Kick Ass mainly fights Red Mist, and so their colour schemes complement each other almost to foreshadow that. 

Kick Ass in his room, Kick Ass (2010)

And once the secondary protagonist is introduced, we see that she is dressed in purple, complementary colour for yellow. She mainly fights Frank d’Amico, and while orange is not the complementary colour, there is often yellow in his scenes as well, hence we have (loosely, but still) another complementary colour palette. 

Film Still, Kick Ass (2010)

So, we can see when the characters are alone and in their own environments, their colour palettes are vastly different. However, most interestingly, when the characters collide, so do the colour palettes. For example, if we look at this scene where Frank d’Amico appears to hit and defeat Kick Ass, the colour palette remains cool, showing that d’Amico is not going to win this fight (overall). This is achieved through colour grading and accessories within the scene: even the blinds on the building behind them as Kick Ass is “defeated” are the colour of his costume. 

We can see in this scene that while the place where Hit Girl is hiding is surrounded by oranges and browns, she is hiding in a comparatively neutral and cool area - even the object she’s hiding behind is a cold metal, and the lights where she is are blue, which is a stark contrast to the rest of d’Amico’s base. 

Hallway, Kick Ass (2010)

Ross was this week’s guest lecture, which was good because it gave me more of a sense for the work he produces. He explained that he was heavily influenced by things from his childhood, from the men who his dad fished with, to the places he grew up and the surrounding area. It was interesting to see how this influenced his work, and it refreshed my idea that I should try to just shoot things that I want to shoot to start with...the only issue being that I don’t really feel interested in anything much at the moment. He spoke about being interested in certain people, and I definitely understood that fascination with these charismatic people who just capture your interest, though I think it would be hard to get this across in images. Again, as Ross shot a lot on film in his early work, I still think this would be something I’d like to try at some point, because film produces this nostalgic quality in images as it reminds me of my childhood because all of my early childhood photos are obviously shot on film cameras or disposable cameras.