Description of Image

For our starting point we decided that our initial idea would be to look for shapes in old paintings. We gathered our primary research from visiting the art gallery in Birmingham. We took photographs of original art work to select shapes within the paintings and sculptures. However, when we had arrived at the gallery we had discovered that taking personal images of the art work to put on a public sight is prohibited. Due to this complex situation the only alternative was to write in and ask permission unfortunately we hadn’t had enough time to do so. Instead we came up with the concept of using the marks on the floors, tiles, waterfalls archways, walls and inspiring architect in the gallery and around Birmingham and took various images of them.

As we all liked this idea and liked how our primary research came out, we looked at various artists, designers and stylists for further inspiration. We analysed artists such as Picasso, Deepa Panchama and Neville Brody and looked at their work in depth which gave us an idea to expand on our concept by collarging our primary research as a form of expressionism on our final piece like in Picassos art work. Due to this we formed our photo shoot and experimentation.

We used a model and formed a simple photo shoot against a white background and concentrated on facial expressions and simple make up. However we thought the model didn’t fit the look we wanted so as an alternative idea one of our team members stepped in as the model. We made certain roles and responsibilities for ourselves so the shoot would be more organised and successful. I and Emily was in charge of hair, make up and clothing, Brendon was the photographer and he did the graphics and Olivia was the model and she also did some of the graphic work. We all posted research that we collected ourselves and put it on the group blog to record our ideas and experimentation. With the styling for the second photoshoot we started off simple with her hair and make up then experimented with various poses; make up, clothing, lighting, angles and themes. We then took all the images that were taken and made up four different final images and experimented with them on Photoshop and chose the best one. The final photograph we wanted to be quirky and a bit different and fun which is what we achieved.
The final outcome was of the model's head shot and partially the neck and shoulders. We decided that we only wanted to capture the facial features more than anything. Then we had photos of the architecture of the buildings and detail on the tiles and we cut these up into geometric shapes, stuck it on a photo to create a collage, scanned it in then resized the whole image which looked really effective. I like how the photomontage style that we were going for worked and how the photography was very strong. One of our main influences was a piece that was of Audrey Hepburn and she has strips of photos coming of her eyes like photomontage which gave it a really edgy look which we wanted to achieve.