Material Girl

In order for Gemma to be allowed to come with me on my road trip to Cornwall, we had to shoot some commercial images for her agency portfolio while we were there. While this is a totally normal type of request, in all honestly I found it really hard because the idea of being commercial has never been particularly inspiring to me, I always strive for originality in my photographs and I've never really thought of it as a way to generate money, only a way to generate images that explore what I feel is interesting and beautiful in the world.

However we had a go, and I actually really love these polaroids we took, I guess sometimes you just have to find a way to make commercial work for you, and do it your own way.

These two we took in the beautiful house we stayed in in Penzance:

And these two we shot amid the magnolia blossoms in a park across the road:

Styling: Jennivi Jordan

Make-up: Gabriella May

Model: Gemma @ Sapphires

Digital Preview

I recently went on a little adventure down to Cornwall to shoot some images for a school project in some incredible locations. I am originally from Cornwall, and love how naturally beautiful and rugged the landscapes are, so it felt amazing for me to combine these with a fashion element. 

I had the most fantastic, sweet, exciting team to work with and the images we produced together are looking so beautiful. They probably won't be ready to show for a while as I am currently in the long, arduous process of scanning negatives and polaroids, but here are some unedited digital shots capturing the essence of the trip.

Styling: Jennivi Jordan

Make-up: Gabriella May

Assistants: Gabriella May and Kristine Joramo

Models: Charlotte Butler and Gemma Deeks

Model Gemma and Stylist Jennivi.

Gemma looking dramatic in a stone circle under an ominous sky.

My make-up artists and best friend Gabriella, filling in for the model while we tested the light.

Model Gemma looking wild and sexy in the landscape.

 

Kristine and Gabriella frolicking in nature after recently disturbing a snake in the grass!

Gemma at our ruined church location by the sea.

  

Gabriella and I loading the new Portra-400 into the Hassleblad.

Gabriella piggybacking our model Charlotte across the headland.

Charlotte looking incredible in Jen's fantastic styling. 

Charlotte and Gemma huddled together for warmth. Don't let the sunshine fool you, it was freezing!

Charlotte looking windswept on a cliff edge.

Lots more to come from this trip so watch this space.

In Conclusion

Today I finished my dissertation.

Couldn't be happier about the fact that it's over, and now I can get back to being creative and taking more photographs, and reading things that aren't about the construction of gender and phallic symbolism.

Even though I am happy it's done, it was really interesting to do. 

I wrote about the use of antlers in fashion photographs like this one, and the way they influence gender stereotypes.

This images is by Rankin Waddell who I am generally not a massive fan of, but this has got antlered skulls in it,  so it's won me over:

I recently did a shoot with a deer skull and antlers, which I will post soon, but until then here is, in essence, what I have discovered from several weeks study of the use of antlers in fashion photography:

In conclusion it can be deduced that, to a certain extent, the use of antlers in fashion photography can be considered subversive to gender stereotypes. However predominantly their use resoundingly confirms ideas of masculine dominance and feminine passivity in a culture where representation is still ultimately dominated by patriarchy.

Who'd have thought it?

Anyway, celebration time, no more essay writing for me! 

Wish Fulfilment

I had time today to catch up with my negative scanning and scanned the 35mm film from the shoot I did with the amazing stylist Marina Magalhaes. She has made a beautiful layout for the digital images (which I posted here a while ago) on her blog ThingsBecomeThings in an editorial titled Wish Fulfilment of Ideas. 

Personally I like the film versions of these pictures more than the digital ones because I feel that film provides an extra separation between the subject and the viewer. When films is left left scratched and chemical stained like these you become more aware of the photograph as a surface, a surface you can look through and see into the world captured in the image.

Because these constructed still lives are so strange I think that the idea of giving them this added space makes them feel more believable somehow because it is as if they exist in another realm separate from our own.

(Albert Einstein)

 (Abraham Lincoln)

 (Salvador Dali)

 (Charles Darwin)

 (Mahatma Gandhi)

 (Sigmund Freud)

I've also included this accident that occurred while processing (I think I got the film stuck to itself so part couldn't develop) because I really enjoy when things like this go wrong and you get strange effects:

This is Marina inside Sigmund Freud:

And this is Darwin imprisoned:

We left all the heads around the locations in the hope that it would make people smile when they saw them in the street. Except Freud who I have in my living room.

Calendar Test

These images were inspired by a challenge I saw from the amazing photographer Lina Scheynius.

The challenge that you can find on her website was this:

these are the rules: "take on picture of yourself every single day for one year. use whatever you might find in the place you happen to be - just make sure that you are always in the frame somewhere, somehow. there will be tons of days when you will not want to take a picture of yourself - do it anyway! take the first one in july 2009 and the last one in June 2010 - and then develop all the rolls at once. voila!"

(www.linascheynius.com)

However you will note that there are a lot less that 365 photographs here.

This is because I didn't really consider the fact that the camera I chose for this project would be unusable for any other work until the year was up. I chose to shoot on my grandmothers old Pentax SLR which is a lovely camera, but also my only 35mm SLR which I really like to use day to day.

Therefore after a couple of months I decided to find a different camera to continue this project. 

But here are the images so far, me on all the days...