Tuesday 7 May 2013

90s Mash-ups

So as part of my final piece I wanted to create three 90s mash-ups using my four most recent shoots. I felt this would be a cool and unique way to express the crazy, tacky and, quite frankly, mismatched era. I cut and collaged different body parts I felt stood out to me, until placing together these three weird and wonderful 90s manipulations...

Sunday 5 May 2013

Nike Airs and Popping Pills

So on Tuesday I completed my final shoot for my 90s project, super sad I know! I know this shoot was going to be the hardest to create as I wanted to make it seem as realistic as possible as I felt it was important to keep some aspects of it serious yet still try and recreate the 'fun' and 'carefree' feelings expressed at the time. I decided to shoot my images at Wonderland Maidstone on their 90s themed night as I wanted to use an environment most suitable for my projects. Plus I also wanted to use bright coloured lights as a main effect in some of my images.
The styling of my model was very important in this shoot as I obviously needed to incorporate my crop-top but I wanted to ensure my model was styled in clothes of which someone going to a rave or a club in the 90s would wear. I chose to put her hair up in a high side pony tail, as the sporty 'no fuss' look was very much key to the era. With her make up I didn't go to heavy as rave make-up was fairly bland until it came to eye shadow, for this I used a dusty purple. I then styled my model in silver and blue air max trainers, black fish net tights, leather hot pants, my own crop-top, a pink and blue shell suit jacket and numerous gold and silver chains. Once ready and styled we made our way to the club. First of all I took some stationary images of my model, as I wanted to make sure I had some classic fashion photography shots, where my crop-top was clear to see. After getting a tad bored of getting my model to just stand and pose I decided I wanted to experiment with some movement. For this I literally just got my model to stand under the lights on the dance floor, and dance about using cringey 90s dance moves!    There goes another friendship! 
I made my shutter speed on my camera a lot slower in order to capture the light and movement in a way in which I believe people who were taking drugs at the time might see things. I wanted the images to look slightly surreal and imperfect, hence the blurs and smudges. I'm very pleased with how my images turned out baring in mind they were very experimental. I think if I were to re-shoot my images I would try different locations as although mine was appropriate as it was 'fashion' photography I feel it would of been cool to look at it in a more documentary style!  

Thursday 2 May 2013

E Was Not For England

After having tones of fun completing my troll doll inspired photo shoot, I felt it was time I revisited the dark side of the 90s. My fourth and final theme is 'drug and rave culture' a huge topic whenever the 1990s is bought up, and it seemed only right that I looked into it and compared it with the lighthearted cover up of cheesy pop and neon colours. The first thing I looked at was the death of 18 year old school girl Leah Betts, and I have to say it made me look at the 90s in a totally different light, the 90s suddenly became a lot darker, scarier and not such a joke. Although this theme was very sad, I became fascinated with the idea of people using drugs as a way to escape the 'throw away' era, and I couldn't wait to start planning and making my final crop-top based upon it.

I wanted to use text in a black and white format in order to create the appearance of a news paper to represent the dramatic news coverage from when Leah Betts died. The text was a poem I found by poet FlowBert 'E Was Not For England' which expressed strong 'real life' emotions on drug and rave culture, and how it affects peoples lives. I took the poem and selected some words I felt important and made them bold and then created my own silk screen. I then printed the text onto my tee, I did this several times, overlapping the words to give it the messed up disorientated appearance. Im really pleased with my top, now I just need to start planning a realistic 90s rave photo shoot...    




Tuesday 23 April 2013

A Hell of a Lot of Backcombing and Pink Hairspray

Yesterday I created my troll doll inspired photo shoot! And I have to say it was the funnest shoot by far. I had a very clear vision in my head of how I wanted my model to look, and that was, exactly like a troll doll, therefore a lot of backcombing and hair spraying was in order! I started by doing my models make up. I wanted to give her a doll like appearance with a slight twist, so I did her base make-up as normal but drew on little corner eyelashes to give her that almost 'cartoon' look. On her lips I used a pale orange lipstick from Topshop, as I wanted a colour that contrasted well with her hair colour, which I planned to make pink! 
When finishing her make-up I moved on to the most exciting part... the hair! So when doing my models hair I pretty much sacrificed our friendship as using the term 'backcombing' probably isn't strong enough. I 'backcombed' all of my poor models hair, and pinned random sections to give it that extra lift, when I was happy with the height and volume I hair sprayed it (like glue) and then I started to spray it baby pink! Although my model didn't look best pleased, I was having a great time! I then styled my 
 model in powder blue vans, shiny blue disco pants and my troll doll inspired crop-top. Then to finish off the look I added an oversized pink bow to her hair, in order to give it that extra 'cute' troll doll feel. For the shoot its self I picked a couple of walls outside my college that had been painted in a way to look like graffiti. I felt this to be the perfect setting for my shoot as it was child like and fun, and super 90s! I also liked the mixture of colours used, making it appear even more tacky and garish! I got my model to pose in a number of different poses and positions. I asked her to make herself look ridged and 'doll like' to ensure I capture the true troll persona. I also made sure she look slightly clueless and dumbstruck as I also felt this fitted the brief. Looking back on  my images I am very pleased with the results, as they a pretty much how I imagined them to look. Now its just going to take a lot of being extra nice to my model and a hell of a lot of brushing, wish me luck!

A Dozen Neon Trolls

Okay, so this was going to be my stupidest, most outlandish crop-top yet! 

The idea of sewing 90s troll dolls to a T-shirt would send most people into some sort of fashion coma, however I became very excited by the idea. Early last week I ordered 12 troll dolls off of amazon with the vision of using them to create my 3rd 90s inspired crop-top. To make the top, i cut of a section of the bottom (as done so with the other two) to make it into a crop. I then dyed the spare bit of fabric apple green, and started pinned it around the neck of my top to create a ruffled collar. I wanted to make this top as dramatic and fitting to the theme as possible. I then pinned my troll dolls in and around the pleats and ruffles of the collar, making it look bolder and very 'in your face' 90s. 

Once happy with my layout I started to sew my collar piece onto my top. Now all I had to do was find my very own life sized troll doll to model it for me! 

Sunday 14 April 2013

So Super Cringey

Earlier on in the week, I completed a shoot based on rock legends Nirvana (see previous post), and I thought it only fair that now it was The Spice Girls turn! Using the crop-top I had made and a very good friend, willing enough to make me make her look about 12, I created a super cringey Spice Girls photo shoot!
I wanted to create a realistic 'tacky' looking 90s shoot, using a plain white back drop, cheesy poses and classic 90s pop princess hair and make-up! I styled my model in plain black leggings and my own Spice Girls crop-top. 
The inspiration for my shoot was from my number one Spice Girl, Baby Spice! I wanted my model to display a certain girly innocence, a trait that seemed to be popular within the 90s with the rise of other big 'pop princesses' such as Brittany and Kylie. It was so interesting doing this shoot compared to the last one, which had a much darker feel. I felt with the Spice Girls shoot, everything was far more staged as I guess it was how someone would expect a typical 'photo shoot' to go. Where as the Nirvana shoot felt so much more natural and serious, I found these differences to be clear in the artists music too. After completing this shoot I felt it important to look at more comparisons from the 90s, looking at both the staged, silly side and the dark and somewhat serious side...



Friday 12 April 2013

Look as if you couldn't give a...

On Tuesday I went to a friends house to shoot my grunge inspired photo shoot. I waited till about 7pm so the lighting was just right, still light but getting dark. I then styled my model in black wet look leggins, doc martins and my Nirvana crop-top. I used a black pencil eyeliner to create a smudgy dark effect on my models eyes, a deep purply lip tint and back combed my models hair slightly to give it that scruffy unkept look. I wanted to create a realistic grunge atmosphere so I used the back drop of a brick wall and an old motor bike that was just laying unused at my friends house. I felt this gave the images a certain sense of street style and made them look a lot more natural. It also fitted in well with Nirvana's classic rock image. I asked my model to look as moody and grumpy as possible, which wasn't hard as it was freezing outside, to complete the 'no hope' grunge attitude.

























I was really happy with how a few of my images turned out, however it was such a challenge making them look convincing and not too staged but at the same time like a fashion shoot and not like documentary photography. Although the images looked great in black and white I also felt it important to capture the full appearance of my crop-top, hence a few close up of the embellished lyrics.