Ombre Decay Shoot and Bella Howard Inspired Shoot

At the weekend I decided to collaborate again with Daniel Evans, the photographer who featured and shot a shoot in the magazine previously. As Danny is in charge of the Asos Marketplace, and takes a lot of the images for it, I wanted to create a shoot against a white wall that was bright, young and playful. I was looking through the work of 25 year old photographer Bella Howard who is gaining notority in the fashion world for her fun, playful and hipster style of shooting. Her style is free, young and fresh as she likes to capture nostalgic images, as if you were with a group of friends at a party. Her images make you feel as if you are there with the models. She uses polaroids, retro photography as well as digital images to create this. Therefore i wanted to re-create this style, so I rented a lighting kit and shot a few images inside my house. We set the lighting kit up inside my living room where the walls are mahogony. I also managed to do a few shot for the now DIY section of my Zine. I made ombre tights and socks, a studded collar and dip dye chalk hair and created a DIY tutorial to put within my magazine.

 

Bella Howard- collaboration with Jigsaw and Topshop

 

I was relatively pleased with the shoot, however the images had an orange tint for some reason, but easily edited in Bridge and Photoshop. As there was another shoot going on that day, there was about 8 people in my house and as we were in the living room as well as shooting in there, I think it made my model a bit nervous. I wanted the shoot to be more playful and for her to act more natural in front of the camera. We captured a few images which were in the moment, very similar to Bella Howard's work, but I feel it could have been a lot better. Nevertheless it was a last minute shoot and I am still happy with the images and feel that they will fit into my Zine quite well.

The second shoot which took place on Saturday was a shoot inspired by the Ombre and Orange trend. The images didn't need too much editing, but I took the saturation down of the background and left the colour of the clothing quite vibrant.
Today, however I attended my tutorial and my tutor said that these images and the sports location images weren't as strong as the other shoots I've done. They also didn't flow well with the rest of my magazine so she suggested they should be cut. I do agree, as it is a shame that the shoot wasn't able to take place at the abandoned hospital, although I do really like these images. I hand dyed the tshirt dress, tights and socks and was hoping to include them in the magazine in order to include the tutorials. This would also give an opportunity to see how they can be styled as well as created, so I may still leave this shoot in the magazine. Once everything is put together I can then edit and get second opinion once again. Another suggestion was to make a QR code for smart phones for my nail tutorials which means that the reader can easily visit the blog which runs along side the magazine. It was really easy to make, I just entered the website into the QR code generator and it gave me the code instantly. This was a really nice and professional touch.

Orange Ombre

I had a message back from a model I'd been wanting to use for about 2 years now, Rachel Heather, from model mayhem. She is absolutely stunning and model like. I have 2 shoots left to do for my magazine before I continue on my portfolio work.

I planned this shoot last week and wanted to create an orange/red based shoot, this is because of the survey I conducted I found that a lot of people wanted to know how to wear this trend. Obviously i didnt want to use just orange or red clothes so created an initial mood board to show the main colours of the shoot and then because i wanted to do a location shoot and wanted to contrast the bright colours with something a bit more dark. I then started looking at derelict buildings around Southampton such as warehouses, houses, hospitals and schools. I found The Mount hospital in Eastleigh that had been closed down in 2003 and has been abandoned ever since. I drove there on Friday the day before my shoot today to check what the conditions were like. Unfortunately, the whole hospital was cordoned off with fences and a sign that said it was illegal to trespass. It looked quite dangerous too so i thought it was best not to do the shoot there. I visited a few other places that i had researched but they all had been knocked down or renovated. So after discussing with my makeup artist, photographer and model we decided that the Southampton common cemetery would be a better suited location and therefore i would achieve the contrast of colours and themes I wanted.

 

The Mount Hospital

 The Southampton Cemetary

 

Colour palette inspiration

 

On Friday morning I shopping for my shoot and purchased a long orange dress with a split in the side which was exactly what I had in mind. The dip dye trend and ombre dying is extrememly in at the moment so I wanted to incorporate this into my shoot too and had decided to find a dress, like the one I bought and dip dye it in bleach. However, when it came to the dip dying, this particular fabric didn't have any dye in it, so instead i dip dyed some tights, socks and a t-shirt dress and was really impressed with the results! I'm going to add a tutorial for dip dying as well in the 3rd section of my magazine, which now i am planning on changing into a DIY section rather than beauty and nails. I will include mini tutorials on using chalk for dip dying hair, creating your own embellished collars  and nail tutorials.

Edited Sports

I have returned to Southampton from Easter break which meant i was able to edit the images I created of my sports shoot. On a larger screen, I realised that the images werent actually over exposed and didnt really need much editing. The make up showed up really well on camera too which meant I only enhanced it a little. I have also become more cut throat with my selection of my images, I need to stick to the three outfits that i had originally planned to do on each shoot, as the number 'three' was meant to be the running theme throughout the zine. I now plan on re-editing a few of the shoots I have already done and cutting out outfits to just three.

Printers

Indigo Press

After popping into Indigo Press two weeks ago , they rang me back within a few days to confirm a quote for my magazine, unfortunately, as they are a bespoke printing service, the prices they were offering me were out of my price range;

a5, 48pp and 4pp for cover printed on 170gsm uncoated paper and inside pages on 120gsm, finish; folded, gathered, trimmed, sized and perfectly bound would cost :

25 copies - £294.00
50 copies - £395.00
100 copies- £503.00

My budget was originally £200-250.00 for around 100 copies, so i had to decline their offer and go on the hunt for more printers around the Southampton Area.

I then popped into Design and Print on London Road where they were very helpful and received a quote within that same day.

I could have 50 copies of 60pp+ for £160 and on the chosen paper I wanted, however to ensure the quality is good I am going in next week to give a sample to get printed.

Easter Break

For Easter, I had decided only to go home and relax for one week and work for the rest, however I planned a photo shoot in Eastbourne Park about an hour away from where i live and collaborated with a make u artists who had graduated from Solent and also a fashion photographer who is in her third year at Solent too.
Both of our shoots were based on the sports trend, so I had styled the outfits for the photographers piece. She is also creating a magazine but based on Sports and lifestyle. My shoot was more of a high fashion based style. Luckily on the day it was meant to rain heavily in the afternoon, but we had clear skies and sunshine all day which made it so much easier with the lighting. However we did use a reflector in most of the shots to gain a more dramatic look, but found out the images seemed a little washed out on screen, but could easily be fixed on Photoshop. Unfortunately I couldn't open the RAW files on my laptop, and my trial for the new In Design had run out which meant I couldn't really do any work whilst i was at home. So i decided to sort out my nail blog, I photographed a lot more tutorials for my magazine and blog and also created two pages on the actual blog for nail inspiration and other nail fanatics on the Internet.

http://sannailfreak.blogspot.co.uk/

Edited Yellow Shoot

 

Logo and illustrations

I really like the galaxy print that has been really popular recently and so i wanted to incorporate that into the design of my logo. These two logos are designed for the front of my magazine as well as the nail blog. I created the galaxy background on Photoshop and used 3 colours that i thought would be eye catching and aesthetically pleasing to the eye and compliment the hipster and trendy approach to the zine.

I have also been drawing the illustrations I'd like to feature as decoration in my magazine and have drawn things that go with each chapter and editorial. Also I have an illustrator that I interviewed and is contributing to my magazine that is drawing on top of one of my editorials. I have given him a final deadline for this week as I need to edit the images and he is adding finishing touches to them. Hopefully I won't have to re shoot this particular one, but its getting quite tight for time! Once that has been given to me I still need a few images of their favourite work, and then add it to the magazine. 

 

 

I tried to upload these particular images onto my blog for the title but unfortunately on Blogger, you can only have a banner on certain templates and because for my blog I wanted tabs on the side of the page in order for easy browsing access, this template wouldn't let me put the banner on. If I were to change the template of the website, it means that I would have had to change the whole site and start from scratch. Blogger is quite a temperamental website creator if you are not as experienced as some, or pay for more memory. I will see if this design works, but if I feel that it doesnt work I will have to start again.