Contact Sheet:

This was the first photoshoot I executed for my final exam, mainly inspired by Helmut Newton. Newton inspired me to explore the themes of femininity and identity through dressing similarly to how he presents his subjects, which can be seen through the sunglasses, blazers, skirts and tights allowing us to look more sophisticated. However, I incorporated minor details into my clothing associating with Yayoi Kusama, and they link effectively through the use of vibrant colours and background, which is an aspect of Kusama’s work. In this specific shoot, me and one of my friends were the main subjects, meaning each image was only showing one person individually. This could be seen as an advantage for my work, as often the models in both of my artist inspiration’s work are presented alone as it symbolises empowerment and confidence. Despite this, it could also be seen as a disadvantage for my project as many of the models in Newton’s images particularly are presented in duos, showing relationships and connections. So in my future photoshoots I will keep these ideas in mind so I can carry out the most accurate images possible.

The location of this photoshoot was in Howard Davis Park, in the flower gardens mainly but we slowly made our way around to capture different settings as the background. I chose to photograph in Howard Davis purely because I wanted to include scenes of nature and an outdoor environment and flowers, as it directly links to Yayoi Kusama due to her iconic symbol of flowers. However, I will also go on to edit these images and photoshop digital flowers into the background of them so it resembles a mix of both my artists.

I imported all 422 of my photos into Lightroom and created a new collection for my final exam project. As this was a significantly large photoshoot due to the different backgrounds and settings throughout, it was time consuming for me to go through and flag each image individually, as well as flagging my favourite images and rejecting my least successful ones. In addition to this, I colour coded each image either green, yellow or red to represent how successful they came out, so it is easer for me to decide which ones to edit.

Experimentation:

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