Project: Yorkshire Fashion Industry

Project: Yorkshire Fashion Industry

For one of my University assignments this semester, I have been tasked with creating a body of work that encapsulates a genre of photography. In my case, I was more or less directed to stay away from fashion and contemporary portraiture for obvious reasons. With those limitations in mind, I also thought it would behoove me to steer away from still-life and music photography as well. 

It took a few weeks of very hard thinking to conceptualise a project that would maintain my interest as well as help to further my individual pursuits. Inspiration finally came after I remembered a little snippet I read on Joe McNally's blog quite a while ago regarding how National Geographic spreads are shot. Now, I know most people associate National Geographic with wildlife and pretty landscapes, but I associate it with brilliant reportage and documentary on all manner of subjects; the article I always think of first when I think of National Geographic is one on Caffeine. In Joe's post, he reflected that it used to be 1500 rolls of film used to be shot for a single article. That single sentence provided incredible insight to the quality of photography that National Geographic is famed for. Also stuck in my brain, were that these articles were not comprised of any one genre of photography, but rather encompassed all genres.

With these two notions in my head, I proposed to my tutor that I actually prepare a documentary article on the subject of the Yorkshire based fashion industry (focusing on South and West Yorkshire) and present the final product in the form of a magazine. 

Once I had her approval, I began evolving the idea further. More inspiration for the project came from the unlikely source of Magnum photographer Martin Parr during a lecture he gave in Huddersfield. Mr. Parr is currently working on a project based on his fashion work in which his output is no other than a magazine. The inspiration comes from the fact that he is actually including advertising (produced himself) in his magazine as well as the content. 

Along with my own ideas for the project, the bits of inspiration from these two legendary documentary photographers helped me to provide a solid plan for my project as outlined below:

Goal: To create a photographic and journalistic article that documents the current state and history of the fashion industry in the region of South and West Yorkshire and produce  the final output in a magazine format with intent to exhibit the body of work at a later date.

In order to achieve this enormous task, I intend to research and document the following:

• Independent Designers and their workspaces
• Fashion Retail
• Independent Boutiques
• Street Fashion
• Textile Industries
• Independent Craft Fairs
• Fashion Recycling/ Charity Shops
• Shopping Culture
• Beauty Industries
• Fashion Shows and Trade shows
• Fashion Related Advertising (Billboards, shop windows, etc)

I need to have the majority of the work done for the beginning of May in order to prepare the final output for the hand-in date, but it should be entirely possible to finish the project in that time frame.

I am open to virtually anyone getting involved in the project as long as it is fashion and beauty based (even if it's not covered in the list above). Please feel free to get in touch via the comments section, the contact forms on my website or by Facebook.

I'm very excited about undertaking a project with huge potential and I very much appreciate the time you took to read this! If you can help in anyway, please don't hesitate!

Back To School

Two weeks ago today, I turned 30. Shut up. I'm still rather devastated by that little fact. However, one week ago today, I finally began something that has been listed as one of my major "priorities" in life. I started University. Funny how life gets in the way of something you dictate to be "one of the most vital things you need to do in life".

Beautifully, the course is for a Foundation Degree in Commercial Photography through Leeds Metropolitan University via Wakefield College. This should be thoroughly interesting. So far, the first three days have been rather droll; mostly consisting of enrolment and a few very basic camera craft assignments. However, there already is brightness in the future.

If nothing else, I've already found out that I will be able to sign out both the Mamiya 645 and the Rolleiflex TLR. Consequentially, I've already ordered 12 rolls of 120 so I can get that show on the road.

As I get deeper into the course as well as my own work outside of the University, I promise I shall not neglect this blog as I have. Furthermore, as a class, we've been informed that we shall be required to start a new Blogspot blog as of next week. I will link to that as well and if nothing else, I can ascertain that that one will be very regularly updated as it is considered part of the coursework.

Okay. I'll stop for now. Updates with images will be on the way soon!

Here I Go

Here I Go

It's been a good while since I've had the opportunity to post here. The last several weeks have been a veritable roller coaster with all the ups and downs. A lot of highs a merciful amount of lows.

The biggest news of the lot would be that as of last Friday at 2PM, my employment in the textile manufacturing industry officially ended. I now have no other source of income other than my camera.

Now other than my continued full time employment, there's the multitude of things that kept me from posting here as I would have liked. Of the many things finished and started over the past few weeks, this is but a quick breakdown:

• Business Plan Complete
• Several Meetings with a Business Advisor
• Several Wonderful Photoshoots
• Marketing Plan Complete
• Press Release Complete
• Several Events and Fairs Scheduled
• Found a Studio Space
• Lost Said Studio Space
• Finished Full-Time Employment (Did I mention that yet?)

Now I plan to touch on a lot of these topics in future posts, as this is still a blog about my endeavour to make a career out of my photography, but for now, I will just leave you with a couple recent images whilst I begin to plan what is next to come.

Androgyny

Androgyny

I could easily have titled this post with a song reference, but I refuse to quote that atrocious "Beyonce" song and the "The Who" lyrics I have in my head are probably a little too obscure to serve this purpose.

Alas, today I'm going to talk about one of my favourite trends in fashion and fashion photography. Androgyny. I love it. So visual, so visceral, so moving at times. From images of David Bowie to Agyness Deyn to the backup dancers in the video for "Addicted to Love" to the fashion photography of Paolo Roversi. I love it. The whole style, the whole movement.

As such, it is only natural that I would want to incorporate the use of androgyny into my own photography.

Thanks to a few keen models, though not entirely without trepidation, I have been able to start an ongoing body of work based solely on that single, yet enormously broad, concept.

While I am over the moon about being able to conduct this project, I've found that there are a few misconceptions out there that turn a lot of people off of the concept. In particular, male models . I seem to find people tend to believe that androgyny is the act of a girl looking like a boy or a boy looking like a girl.

At least in my vision of the concept, that could not be further from the truth. In fact, it's about being genderless. Either or. Not gender reversal, rather a convergence of both feminine and masculine traits.

Minor hindrances aside, I am now fully on my way to furthering this particular body of work and I can only assume that as the project progresses it will only get easier to justify my vision. I have seriously enjoyed creating my photographic work with androgyny so far and I can only hope to continue to do so in the future!

Thank you for taking the time to read my ramblings. Feel free to drop a comment below whether you loved the images, hated them or think I'm just completely full of it! All feedback is always appreciated!