Project Evaluation

Overall, I have enjoyed this project focusing on Fashion and Beauty really interesting and fun as it has been self driven in the sense I have chosen what shoots do in relation to my project and had more freedom than the projects in my AS year of photography. I have also enjoyed looking into the idea of fashion and beauty in different ways and how to present it – for example, similar to how it is commonly perceived in magazines and advertising or taking a different approach showing the darker sides – creating a story to go with the image and showing more than just the fashion and beauty aspects in the shoot for instance, location and props has played a fairly big role in many of the shoots I have done during this unit.

For the majority of this project I have come up with ideas and inspiration for ideas easily, although creating them has, in a few cases, been hard to show in the way I imagined whether it be down to availability of models, props, or location which did not stop me from taking the image, it just changed the outcome which was not always negative. However, for the majority of the shoots they went as planned and in most cases turned out a lot better than I expected. One thing I focused on during this project is using locations more and incorporating them into my shoots and making sure the location fits the ideas in the shoot. Two strong examples are my Brick Lane shoot and the Motel shoot. Both of these mentioned shoots use location to broaden and deepen the ideas behind the image and the overall presentation, with the Brick Lane location enhancing the fashion and colour aspect of the shoot and the motel location giving a grungier effect that would not be achieved in a

studio.

Another area that I have worked with a lot and looked at in terms of enhancing my images is the use of Ring Flash. This helps to give a magazine cover finish to portrait work, which therefore making it seem more professional. This can only be used for portraits, and only works well with certain shoots that look better with no shadow and bright white light. An example where this

worked really well was a shoot I done of Rhiannon where the aim was to show a cute, pink, girly beauty idea, therefore Ring Flash worked really well, which helped create a better overall finish including showing the colours more vibrantly and getting rid of shadow.

Something else I have experimented with in this unit is the use of film cameras. This is most evident in my Motel shoot as using a film camera was key to this shoot as I wanted to achieve a slightly more vintage, grungy look to go with the location and fashion I was showing. These film images came out good, with good colour and had to do very minimal editing. Some images came

out crisp, and others came out blurred and distorted. Although this was the case, the effect looked really good and worked well with the ideas I was putting forward in the shoot. I also used film cameras in the studio as well which came out good, with the film camera giving a slightly more faded effect on the images.

The 3000-word essay although being difficult in some areas, has also helped me along the way with this project in terms of developing ideas and understanding the fashion and beauty photography industry. For example, looking into its origins has not only given me information on the industry and how it was started and who headed it, but looking at techniques and how shoots were constructed, and how they developed overtime, changing along with technological and social advances. Another area that has helped me from this essay was taking a deeper look into the leading fashion photographers and how they fit into and changed photography in their time.

Overall, I am really happy with this project as a whole, and don’t think that it could have gone much better due to the range of shoots I got looking at the idea of fashion and beauty from different angles and is something I could easily continue with due to the range of ideas I have and how I can develop upon and do different takes on shoots I have already done. I am also happy with the research and contextual side of this project also as it has given me more insight into the area of fashion and beauty photography and its leading, and new, photographers, which has then impacted my shoots in a positive way.