For my folio, I think I'll be continuing with "conversing" with my favorite photographer's photographs. You can see some of her photos in the post below, but here are some more (these are more of my favorites).
http://www.zhangjingna.com/ her wesite
http://zemotion.deviantart.com/ deviant art account
I think she has a really interesting and varied look at fashion. Last semester I had a crack at fashion but didn't go so well. I think it was largely from lacking direction and motivation with what to do. Taking some of her images and building on them/responding to them I feel is a good way to learn about how to shoot fashion in a way that actually interests me. I found that it was a lot easier to shoot a decent image last week with brief 6 with a specific idea of hers in mind than it was to even begin last semester. It also lends itself to both studio and location work which suits because she shoots both quite evenly.
A few of the things I was looking at working with (which can be seen a bit in the above and below photos) were frame within a frame, oriental themed shoot, negative space, portrait in a landscape, movement, simple but strong (beauty portraits above), the shape of a body and lighting it, and movement/shape of a dress (which I have already shot, see below). This leaves me 7 images to shoot, all with their own look at an aspect of zemotion's shooting style.
It's not so much that I want to copy zemotion at the expense of developing something conceptually stronger, I'll talk about that in a second, but it has more to do with the fact that whilst I think a lot of people think I'm good at using the lights etc, I don't think I am very comfortable with running a fashion shoot - taking other people's time and resources, being the "leader" on a shoot and in particular, I usually don't have a particular image I am trying to pursue, but whenever I do, I find it easier to direct, be confident, and the shot usually looks better. See the difference between the below shot and last semester's folio. While I feel like I have a little bit of that, I'd like to capitalise on it and learn from it.
So that's probably what I'll do. The other thing I suffered from last semester was being indecisive and letting it all get too late, so I think I will do this series either way. Just get on with it. I have nothing to lose really.
The other brief I was keen to develop was the placement/displacement one. I found the brief really interesting to look at from my own standpoint and it was also really interesting to see other people's reactions and interpretations of them. On the other hand, I intentionally made the two photos quite easy to read different things into, it was one of those things where you could tell a lot about the viewer from what they thought. Don't get me wrong, they had a very specific meaning to me which I chose not to share in front of the class, which is part of why I'm not sure it's the best idea to do it for a folio. Food for thought, but I really need to think about it and how I would push it further and whether I'd be ok explaining it. Anyway, we'll see on that one.
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