Hello there! This blog post is going to be about the pre-last week of the FMP. As I remember I’ve mentioned my intention of doing the photo shoot a couple of posts ago, but it had finally happened last weekend. According to my prepared timetable, I have to hurry up with completing the photos and making them look their best. But first things first, I’m going to tell you how the photo shoot went, what problems I’ve faced during it and what are the lessons I’ve brought out from this experience.
To begin with, the code name for this event was ‘The White Lies’, and there are a couple of reasons for that. The models were wearing white shirts, and the profound reason is that all our ‘crew’ of four of my friends and me are united not only with the friendship but with one secret we all keep. And every time somebody tries to reveal us, we work like a team covering ourselves and each other. Sounds mystical, right?
To continue, the idea of outfits, makeup and hairstyle for girls came from my childhood when I had rivals and ill-wishers around me at school. And when their words about my style and clothes in general wholly broken me, my mum told me one thing. She said that if you all were wearing the same clothes, you would be the only one beautiful because the beauty itself doesn’t come from the clothes you wear. And my photoshoot’s idea was in showing the beauty of every person without putting gorgeous pieces on them. There is a story behind every single photo, to be honest, but I don’t have any rights to tell it here.
So the makeup was pretty simple: foundation to smooth the face tone, some contouring to give sharpness and shape to models’ faces because it looks better on camera, also some blush for them not to look pale. On the eye leads, we used neutral shadows, but just a little bit, some mascara to highlight the eyes. The lipstick was an emergency decision cause one of the models had visible damage on the bottom lip. Finally, the eyebrows we’ve done in the usual for girls way.
The location choice was simple to make because I knew for sure that I want it to be a place full of nature not to make it too complicated and overdone. So there were two locations: one was for the duet shots and another for shots with male model Nicolo. Primarily I’ve struck him out of the models’ list because we had some complications in our communications going on, but the day before that we found the common language and agreed to do the shoot.
I admire models’ hustle and their hard work to make my photos to look better; I was honestly impressed by the outcomes I’ve selected over bad shots with someone’s eyes closed or light being not the best because the number of good shots was around 150 and I consider it to be successful.
Now let’s talk about the last bits of research which I’ve done before the photoshoot which included two artists: Thea Gregorius and Renée Gouin. Thea’s works have attracted me because of the simplicity and beauty of geometrical shapes. I’ve also made a response to her creations by taking the papers of different colours and making holes with needles. It has helped me to present the style of her works and also reflect on my skills of this craft.
Renée’s illustrations look minimalistic, and I’ve decided to take her style of picturing the shapes and try to do the same with different materials. I’ve used Adobe Sketch on iPad Pro for my digital response, watercolours for showing the same image with different colours and lastly papers of different textures. The last bit I’ve added to response was little collage I’ve made with my digital work, where I’ve used Andy Warhol’s idea of Campbell’s Soup Cans.
That’s all I wanted to tell you today. Next week’s post is going to be about the exhibition with our works. I am so excited to see the audience’s reaction so I can’t wait for it!
Julia Savchenko CSVPA 