PEP160 Reflective Blog

Before the PEP160 brief I have always looked over magazines as a potential path for getting work within the freelance photography sector, focussing more on newspapers and private clients, However, with the new brief being centred around the magazines and the editorial sector specifically I’ve had the opportunity to experiment with my style of work, looking at various genres of content from the high fashion in Vogue to small local stories in Cornwall today and even looking at niche areas of the editorial sector such as Vegan Life. This wide array of genres has given me the chance to try different ideas that I wouldn’t otherwise pursue for a story.

So having looked at many different genres of magazine I decided to try and find 4 stories to capture that are completely different and would suit 4 very different magazines. The original 4 were Bike magazine, Cornwall Today, Vegan Life and Red Magazine all of which are printed magazines that can be found within stores across the UK. After reading several copies of each magazine online and in print I developed a relatively good understanding of the type of content each magazine desires  for example I knew that for bike magazine I would have to find a story that would be entertaining to the adrenaline hungry audience and would require a very clean style with lots of creative lighting and well framed images of bikes, engines and relevant people within the story, I also knew that they used a lot of double page spreads and portraits were often a lot smaller on the page, knowing this would change the way I shot for this piece as it was clear that portraits were less important and that the real focus is on the bikes and the action happening around the people.

The assignment has pushed me out of the comfort of my existing ways of photographing a story and has forced me to try new styles of imagery while I try to frame shots in a way that will allow them to be cropped in a variety of ways later on to better fit the page once I start editing it all together on Adobe Indesign. Since college I’ve always used the basic 5 shots when trying to fully encompass an event or narrative within my photography: establishing image, portrait, detail, action and the wow shot. These five images definitely allow you to give the audience a pretty good understanding of the story you are trying to convey provided you get the composition, lighting, etc correct, however shooting for a specific magazine in mind took my shooting to another level as it forced me to consider more factors when deciding what to capture. This has got me to slow down a bit when shooting as i had to consider whether or not the image I’m attempting would suit my client’s needs. One thing I noticed about the images I was shooting was that I had started to develop the habit of stepping back more from the subject to allow for negative space that could be used for headlines and text.

Before this unit I have only ever used bridge and photoshop for producing my work for hand in and so I have enjoyed getting to grips with new software this term. Indesign is one of adobe’s products that I haven’t ever thought about learning before now however I now know it is a mere essential to have in my arsenal when I finish university and go out in the real world. I have struggled quite a lot with this software because it isn’t as intuitive as other adobe software which has led me to spend a lot of time on Lynda.com and Youtube as I try to figure out how things are done. Admittedly the spreads I produced are not exactly how I desired them to turn out especially my spring/summer fashion piece which when printed had cut off the top of the text despite the fact that my text fit into the frame on Indesign and I also feel that my spread titled “is veganism viable” could have been vastly improved with some more time spent looking at different design techniques. More specifically I have a circle in the middle of some text that contains an outtake from the main bulk of the text as I found this was something which voxx magazine, the target magazine was quite typical for their designs, However, having looked back at this part of that article it lacks any design and is almost as if the text was just placed there without much thought. Another improvement that could be made for the article is the title. The title for “is veganism viable” was printed in black ink which looked great on the screen however my screen has quite a low contrast in comparison to what is printed and so the piece would greatly benefit from being checked on a calibrated screen to ensure that there wasn’t too many shadow tones surrounding the title text. To fix this issue I also could have taken a sample of the colours in the image and utilized one of those for the colour of the text which may have helped the text stand out a bit better rather than blending the background and the text together. As far as the content for this article such as the images I feel that there is room for something more. All three of the images featured in the piece are food photography which is definitely relevant considering the subject however it doesn’t completely capture my experience of spending a week living on a plant based diet. In my opinion the images lack context for example they could have been placed in any food magazine under an umbrella of different scenarios. If I were to re-shoot this article I would focus on capturing the wider view of the story from me taking the time to learn about veganism through my friend and the magazines and books he gave me to the preparation of the food. To a degree I feel that the text within this piece does help recover some of the lost information from the images however it focuses mostly on nutrition rather my experience and the story of my journey.

 Spring/Summer fashion with little ellie mai is a piece I shot while considering two different approaches to the story on the one hand I was going to do a profile of Ellie which would explore her story about being a fashion, lifestyle and theatre blogger however on the other hand I was also looking at completely disregarding that part and focussing solely on the fashion much more like a piece for Elle or Vogue. However from the very start I knew that red magazine was the target editorial space for the story mainly because of how flexible it is for content, for example, Red magazine have a spotlight area within the magazine which looks more at the person in question and gives them the chance to talk a little about themselves and their opinions while being accompanied with high quality fashion style images but they also have other areas of the magazine which focus much more on just the fashion with text down the middle of the page and lots of smaller images depicting products and clothing etc placed around the text at angles almost like a mood board of that seasons fashion. In the end I decided that as a photographer I much preferred the spotlight section of the magazines with large glossy professionally captured portraits. The final product ended up being almost exactly how I hoped except for the text cut off at the top due to some cropping from the printer. I particularly enjoy the large double page spread of Ellie stood on the rocks with flowers laying on the ground as this provided an abundance of negative space for text and titles.

The other two pieces I produced where “The death of the high street” which focused on capturing a local story that looked at the impact of introducing large corporate business into small towns as well as the effect of business rates on the high street. The other story I used was almost like a profile looking at an up and coming group in the plant based food industry that has been featured in some of the smaller news outlets. The story was aimed at Vegan Life because they haven’t featured AllPlants yet and none of the vegan magazines have done a story of more than a single page on this young business yet despite the huge leaps they are taking to push the industry and so I thought it might make for an interesting story to approach them with.

Overall PEP160 has definitely been one of the largest learning curves for me throughout the first year and I have learnt a lot about the industry through completing the work however I am still not completely competent with Indesign and so i am considering doing the Indesign adobe qualification to provide me with a better understanding of the software. 

Elena Shumilova

Elena Shumilova was my biggest inspiration for the relationship brief. To provide some background she is a russian mother of a young child whom loves to get outside and adores playing with their pets. The images Elena produces are some of the most aesthetic portraits iv'e ever seen with incredibly soft and creative lighting she almost tells the story without the model and props. The depth of field plays a huge part in some of her photos as she creates the balance between isolating her subjects and capturing the surrounding environment in order to capture the full narrative around the relationships in the images.With her main focus on the relationship between animals and children the images played a big part in the way i shot with Freja and Bella. However one thing that Elena has utilized that i failed to do so was shooting within the golden hour. The ambient lighting in Elena's images is warm and the shadows are soft which is key to producing that aesthetic however when i shot my photos i just missed golden hour and so the lighting was a little more harsh.

All Plants

While i was in London a few weeks ago i made contact with a young company called "allplants"whom  started up in 2016 producing a range of vegan frozen meals. I found this business to have an interesting story because of its beliefs and goals, The food produced by all plants is completely preservative and chemical free as they literally only use plants within the recipes and they also use completely recyclable packaging and encouraging customers to send back the boxes used for shipping so that they can be re-used.On the day of the shoot the i was met by the two founders of the business whom took me for a tour of the facility and then let me loose to explore and capture the story. The first image i captured(as seen above) was a portrait of the two founders JP and Alex.The two guys were alot of fun and incredibly passionate and so i wanted to capture that within the portrait.being in the middle of an industrial estate in seven sisters london i was unable to get them outside which was unfortunate as i feel that a more exciting location would have made for a great opening portrait to the story.despite this i do feel that the white background will be useful within an editorial context for PEP160 as it provides me with negative space to place text.

On the day that i was there the kitchen was mostly empty as it was the tasting day which meant that one of each meal they produced that week is cooked and the team were tasting them to ensure the dish is right.
 The images i achieved at this shoot were not 100% what i was aiming for however i do feel that as an editorial piece i have enough content to produce 2 double page spreads.

Pal Hansen

By far one of the best lectures we had during London week came from Pal Hansen and his assistant.
Pal was the first guest lecture of the week and it was incredibly refreshing to have a guest lecture that wasn't there to simply sell us his new book at the end. He discussed the importance of personal projects outside of our work as a way to fuel our ambition and creativity.He believes in personal projects as being a great way to produce meaningful work that you can then take and show to potential clients and employers.
Pal later explained that it is important to lose out attachment to social media for pushing or work into the world, everyone does that nowadays and so the it is essential to find fresh creative ways to stand out from the crowd. He suggested that going to the effort of travelling to showcase your work in person with a nice printed portfolio is now rare and will surely put you out there as it isn't the mass audience and lots of clicks and likes you need to worry about as a freelance its making sure that the right people see your work. the kind of people that can actually pay you and give you jobs in the future.

Further more pal discussed the importance of a diverse skill set in today's world it simpy isn't enough to be a good photographer,employers need someone they can trust to do several things such as the writing or videography that may need to accompany the images you shoot. although the client will often only commission you for one of those skills at any one time it provides you with more opportunities to be commissioned

I also learn't that in order for me to become successful in my field i am going to need to spend a lot of time practicing and honing my social skills as this is a crucial skill when it comes to getting your subject to open up and provide a more authentic depiction of your subject.

Finally Pal gave the stage to his assistant for a while.Pat(Pals assistant) explained that assisting jobs are priceless gifts allowing you to get paid while providing you time to learn from a professional until your ready to move on and work for yourself.He reminded us to make sure we know what we are worth as it is easy to be taken advantage of by some professionals but that we should also be prepared to work exceedingly hard.

London Week, 5 picture story

London was amazing with so many potential subjects to photograph i could've shot every assignment while i was there!.

For the 5 picture story i wanted to capture the unseen side of london. Having never been to london before that week i was able to look at london from an outsiders perspective because nothing was familiar to me even down to the culture and lifestyle.For the final 5 images i took to the streets to find something which i simply wasnt expecting based on the stories and stereotypes of london that i have been told. Early on Thursday morning i discovered a small corner of london just off of Brick lane called the nomadic garden, i instantly began shooting it, with no one about i couldn't capture any portraits to help tel the story. instead i focused on capturing 5 images which provided an insight into the gardens which were more like an exhibition for incredibly artistic individuals that needed an outlet to display their work.from graffiti to sculptures made from all manner of objects to make shift buildings there was something new around every corner.

The 5 images i chose are a mere peek into the diverse range of things i captured while there. with such a hipster vibe around the location i would be interested in returning when there are people there to capture the full story as i find the small spaces in a place like london can often be the most interesting. once you get off the beaten track, that's when the real stories begin to piece together