POSE RESEARCH!!!

So I didnt need much research into clothing or anything, as I kind of knew how Rocker type people dress from years of wearing the look myself. I also didnt really need to do much research in the way of shooting techniques, because we all decided that we were going to use the same lighting set-ups to make the editorial look kind of like a "high school year book" kind of thing, just using different coloured backgrounds for a few of the outfits just to give a bit of change to the look of the photographs so that they didnt all look the same.

What I really felt like I needed to research though was the kind of poses that I could try and get the model to do, so that's what I'm going to put on here before I put up the photos from the test shoot and final photographs.

We decided that we would each style and photograph the same stereotype, so I shot and styled the "Myspace" theme. This meant that when looking for inspirations for poses, I looked mainly for rockstar poses, live band photographs, and stuff like that. Here are the images that I found.

I think this pose is really interesting because of the props. I tried a couple of shots using this kind of pose when we did the actual shoot, as it gets across the attitude of a rock star, whilst also making sure you can see all the clothes and styling, and so helping in the fashion element as well.

I think this pose is only really interesting because of the person who is being photographed, rather than the pose itself. The tattoos, hair and clothing are what make this photograph stand out, and the pose itself is quite plain. Which in a way is quite good.

 I didnt do any shots like this because I obviously wasn't shooting a live band, and so it would have been difficult to get the energy right, and not make it look too posed. I decided to put this in here anyway, as I think it is a really interesting pose and it would have been great if I could have gotten the energy in the photograph to create such an unposed and interesting look.

 This pose was fairly obvious when thinking about Myspace and Rock stars. This hand gesture is used a lot in the Rocker world, and in my photographs that I took, because I think it is something which people would relate to the stereotype of "Rocker" and "Myspace".

I put this in because I wanted to get a photo kind of like this with the model playing an instrument. Unfortunately the model we got didnt know how to play so it didn't quite work the way I wanted it to.

Oh God

The last few weeks have been kind of hectic. We've actually done the whole project now, and I realised today that yet again I have been neglecting my blog! So that's not good. I'll be posting a lot this next week then, because I've got some research that I've done that I want to put up before I put up the test shoots and actual photos.
BUT in this blog, I just want to go through the outfits that we chose, as we're a group of four photographers, so we each had to do a bit of styling as well as photographing.
We each were in charge of styling one of the five stereotypes we have shown, and I was in charge of the "Myspace" rocker outfit. For this I chose an oversized tee shirt with skeletons on it, ripped shorts, leather jacket, patterned leggings and studded black high heels. I also chose rocker-ish jewellery and accessories to go with the theme, such as a black studded belt, sunglasses, and silver / black bangles and necklaces. We also decided that we might use props in our photographs, so I took some photographs of the model playing an electric guitar, as this goes with the "Myspace" theme, as Myspace has become more about the music scene over the past few years.

Other outfits include :
Twitter - Gossip - White dress, blue blazer and pumps. Accessories - Satchel style bag, pearl-like / gold jewellery. Props - mobile phone.
Tumblr - Arty - Assortment of colourful tee shirts, mainly red, black waistcoat, black shorts, patterned tights, black ballet-pumps. Accessories - Lots of colourful bangles and necklaces. Props - Picture frame.
Facebook - Prom Queen / Popular - Red prom style dress, stilletto heels. Accessories - Silver tiara.
Youtube - Geeky - Checked shirt, black skirt. Accessories - Fluffy hair ties, suspenders, geek glasses.

I think we managed to get the outfits quite accurate to the stereotypes we were trying to show.

More Social Networking Stereotypes

I found this on Heather's blog, and I thought I'd put it on mine as well because it is an interesting way of showing social networking, in an American Yearbook style, as this helps to get across all the different stereotypes. Also, it might give some ideas as to how we might do the layout for our editorial.

I think that is one of the next things we will have to discuss as a group, because we only have 5 stereotypes and we somehow have to fill 8 pages with images of those stereotypes. We may have to do some as a double page spread and some as a single page, or even come up with a few more stereotypes to convey. 

Ideas

My group has come up with a few ideas for how to photograph this idea of Education, and come up with a few good ideas styling-wise.

We have decided that we are going to have models showing the social networking site's particular stereotypes, which are :

Facebook - popular, slutty? - Facebook is one of the most popular social networking sites. Everyone seems to have one, and in profile photographs and such, people always seem to dress quite provocatively. Also, people tend to care a lot about what they look like in photographs which are put on Facebook, as no one wants to look bad in any photos.

Myspace - Emo, rocker, musician?, individual? - Myspace was always used by the more "emo" stereotype of people when it was really popular a few years ago. People tended to have their own style. Now, Myspace seems to have become more about the musical side of things, having it's own record label and stuff, which would also fit into that category of emo / rocker style.

YouTube - Nerdy - I think we decided that YouTube was more of a nerdy website stereotype, based on the fact that it tends to be a lot more technical. People need to know how to work a video camera and usually edit their movies before they put them on YouTube, which makes it seem more nerdy than the other sites.

Twitter - Gossip, Celebrity - Twitter provides a lot of gossip about celebrities as a lot of celebrities have a twitter account and have "tweeted" outrageous things about people which other people would be interested in hearing. It educates people into the lives of celebrities.

Tumblr - Arty - Tumblr is somewhere where a lot of people share their art / photography / photoshopped images etc.

We're thinking of finding clothes to fit these stereotypes together. Each person in the group will have one area to look at finding an outfit for, but we will all give our own input on each of the outfits.

EDUCATION

So the new brief was given out a few weeks ago, and my computer has only just decided that it's going to let me access my blog! So now is as good a time as any to get started on researching

I have a group for this assignment, made up of four photographers - Me, Heather Whitfield, Sophie Morris and Alison O'keeffe. Obviously it is not ideal that we have 4 photographers instead of having some stylists to help with the styling side of the brief, but we seem to be getting on with that side of things okay.

We have decided to do our assignment based around stereotypes and social networking, which I think is an interesting way of interpreting Education. Young people seem to get most of their education from the internet these days, and the idea of looking good in a profile picture makes people want to educate themselves into making themself look better for that purpose and learn how to make themself into the stereotypical view of how a user of a particular networking site "should" look.
Also, people can find out a lot of gossip from Social Networking sites. This leads to social education as it is making people more in the know as to what is going on in the world of celebrity, or what is going on in their own lives.

The interpretations behind showing Education through Social Networking sites are endless!