Day 1
1.What you learn from first walk can be take forward to second walk?
In my first walk I just thought about how can I apply the rules I broke to take pictures, but not think much about if they were effective. And I will think more about composition and lighting and shadows to capture strong narratives in my second walk.
2.What aspect of the disciplines you were introduced today most interest you at this stage? Why?
I have a new understanding of art direction after listening to Mark’s cases. I find it is interesting to think about how you can interpret your concept and respond to client’s quest. It’s not a limited design area, instead you need to be responsible for whole working process and every single thing to achieve the final outcome, from casting to printing, which means diverse knowledge is required.
But things I am worried about is that I’m weak at getting lots of people together and directing them to achieve one aim.
3.What was challenging for you in the process of applying your photographic rules? How did you deal with this challenge?
The rule I choose to break is “keeping lens clear”. I used red aestate to cover the lens, it turned out that light didn’t work well, especially in dark area. So I just cover a part of the lens, then some strong narrative with strong urban sense and blur effect had been created effectively.
4.How well do you feel your selection of images tell the story/capture the essence of your walk?
-The pictures I took in my first walk has 2 difference narratives: urban and rural. I think colour and shadows I captured are strong enough for people to get sense of what I want to communicate.
-In my second walk pictures I hide behind obstacles to capture objects far away. The obstacles is clear and the objects far away is blur, which presents a limited viewpoint. But the themes in the pictures I took is not unified, so it’s not work as strong as the first set of pictures.
Day 2
Very, very intense day. It’s always difficult for me to think, make decisions and practise them in such a short time. The day was interesting but made me extremely tired. And for working in pair, I did learn much more than doing by myself, there were always some fresh ideas coming out through working with persons I’ve never talked with. But the problem was that we didn’t allocate time appropriately and spent too much time on one look, so we didn’t create enough looks to select from and work on. But luckily I think the looks we created all have clear concepts to convey. Instead of styling and fashion part, I will focus more on concepts communication and characters creating.
Fashion Communication is quite interesting and I never did it before. But after today’s experiment , I think maybe it’s not a perfect choice for me because intense working environment and group work are both my weakness…
Day 3- photos editing
Instead focusing on the styling created, I give more focus on creating different characters using the looks we created. For example, the combination of black PVC tape and the light silk has strong sense of contrast. We shoot the look on the roof and this made my think of a woman trying to run away from the “modern jail”. Also, for my partner’s look, I recalled the time when she put the heavy plastic thing on my head and wrapped my face with it, the smell was quite strong and the sound of the plastic was harsh as well. Right, that’s the feeling of Consumerism. So I created a character who was a target without self-identity in consuming society. She’s quite pathetic because she was willing to be like that and thought she would remain safe and warm in such a dangerous consuming society.
I actually felt more confident about the graphic things. When editing the pictures, I aimed to use the typography to strengthen my concept. For example, in the second character I created, who started to question rules and being confused, I made the typography blur and add them in front of her eyes, working well with the red headwear of her. So it’s more like she was actually wearing a “questioning space” on her head.
Day 4
How can you improve the way that your work is presented?
I think portraits are way more than the photos of bodies, which causes a problem of repeating. And also, it’s better to have different poses of each look, which can help present the characters vividly.
What did you learn about editing your own images, and how can you apply this knowledge to future projects?
-Sometimes photos with real colors don’t work strongly, so I can try to make them black and white to apply more focus on the emotion I want to express through the picture.
-Typography is an important part of my work. Through choosing the text and the letterform carefully, concepts could be stronger and clearer to the viewers. And the shapes/directions and locations of typography is quite important, it should interpret the whole picture to convey ideas, instead of being isolated with other elements in the picture. Sometimes the shape/direction of typo can be used to lead point of view and make eyes travel around the whole picture.
-Crop is effective as well. I can add more focus on the subject and strengthen concepts through cropping images appropriately.