Research on beauty photography

After deciding to create a section on my website for beauty reviews, I have been doing some research on different beauty bloggers, particularly on how they take their photos.
As I already have some experience of writing beauty reviews from interning at the Hull Daily Mail, I have a good idea of what I need to include. But taking photos is something I’m not used to, and something that I really want to get right. This is because I think including a good quality photography really transforms an article from amateur to professional.
From looking at different beauty blogs, I have noticed they often keep the photos simple, keeping a white/ marble background and putting focus on the products only. This is what many of the photos on the British Beauty Blogger website as well.
An alternate to this, is placing the products on luxurious surfaces or next to other objects, which I find makes the photos more interesting and look more high end. This is something I could try when taking my own photos.
What the majority of other beauty review websites do are play with perspective. They change the focus so only the product is in clear view, or they take close ups to get a good view of the product.

Looking at different websites has given me a good idea of what I would like to create on my own website.

Lou Lou’s Vintage Fair

For my website I visited Lou Lou’s Vintage Fair, which took place over the weekend. I decided that I wanted to take a range of photos of the event to include in a photo gallery page I have recently created.
However, after getting to the fair and having a look around, I realised I had forgotten my memory card for the camera I had borrowed from the university stores!
I was disappointed that I had done it, as I really wanted to get some good shots to make my website look professional. Instead I used my contingency plan of taking photographs from my phone. Although the photos aren’t as a good quality as they would have been on a professional camera, I think I got some good shots at different angles, which I have now uploaded to my website.

Creating a photo gallery page demonstrates a different skill to just writing. In the future I will definitely keep borrowing the camera to take to different events to fill up the photo gallery page.

Line Magazine

This is the first magazine I have found that is purely online. Line magazine is ‘dedicated to showcasing the creative and versatile realm of fashion, beauty and photography’ with an ultimate goal of ‘capturing the minds and hearts of aspiring creators, and those enthused by avant-garde, high-fashion editorials.’

The magazine itself is very much the style of a print magazine, where you click an arrow to turn the page. However it is also interactive, as you have the option to buy the clothes when you click on the clothes featured. I really like this idea, as it makes it convenient for the reader. This is an idea I could use on my own online fashion magazine. I could possibly exchange use of clothing in exchange for advertising their clothes in this way.

There is also a page on the website which includes different videos, which further increases multimedia and interactivity with the reader.

Progress 16/03

During this session we discussed with Sally how far we had got with the documentary.

We then had a look at different techniques to give our documentary the style we are looking for. One way in which to do this is by using the idea of stop motion. This is when you cut out parts of the film to look like each part is a photograph.

Also, the background music helps to give the documentary the style you are looking for. We got the idea when Sally played a piece of video without the music, and it could have several different styles.

This taught us about the importance of style when creating our documentary.

We then started choosing which parts of footage that we would like from a video we found on YouTube. This is what we will use for our stop motion part of the documentary.

Research- Breves de Trottoirs

This is another Web documentary that I really enjoyed looking at. It is called ‘Breves de Trottoirs’, which roughly translates to ‘Sidewalk Shorts’.

Created by Olivier Lambert and Thomas Salva, it is a web doc that tells the story of daily celebrities in Paris. Straight away when opening the site very Parisian music begins, before a wall of a building is made visible. The main graphic is a map, which you can click on to take you to each person. The map also shows which part of Paris you can find them in. I would like to use a map like this for my own web doc.

When you click on each, you get a wide range of media. A video about the person, an information sheet, photos and music used in the video are all available.

One in particular that I loved was about a man named Michel Godin des Mers. He is a man which travels around Paris, fighting for his rights on his self- made ‘cyclo- mobile’. Previously being known as a model and comedian, Michel is also a poet and artist, who sculpts fountains- which can be seen all over his cyclo-mobile.

Each video is in French but subtitles are shown below in order for the English to understand. I loved this web doc as it gave such an atmosphere of Paris itself.

 

Find this web doc here: http://paris-ile-de-france.france3.fr/brevesdetrottoirs/index.php/en/#/home

Creative typographic communication

I found this typography, which was created by Anne Lee. She collected different wild flowers and arranged and photographed themselves. I like how she didn’t need any computer to generate it, she made it simply by arranging flowers.

Although I wouldn’t use this type of font, I liked how it looked, and the different colours involved. It would be a nice thing to include in a editorial document, as it would include both photography and typography.

Design for editorial- Brief

For our first assignment in Semester 2 we have to ‘produce a brochure that promotes ‘you’. It needs to be eye catching and needs to show who you are and what you offer.

There are three main considerations when developing an editorial document:

• Typographic communications (formal and creative)
• Image (and graphic elements)
• Layout and composition (grid and compositional forces).

 

It needs to highlight who we are, what services we offer, our skill sets, our clients, our history and our values and philosophies.

We need to generate graphic elements, typographic elements, photography/ illustration and page layouts.

At the end of our assignment we need to produce an eight faced document, with print ready artwork and evidence of graphic/ typographic element design

Graphic Design brief

Our next assignment is titled ‘Design For Editorial’.

For this brief I have to consider three things in order to develop a successful editorial document:

• Typographic communication (formal and creative)
• Image and graphic elements
• Layout and composition.

I am to develop on my last assignments- for which we considered identity and promotion, producing documents that highlight who I am, the services I offer, my skills, clients, history, values and philosophies.

To do this I am going to produce an 8 page brochure that promotes myself.

For my brochure I need to generate graphic elements, typographic elements, photography/ illustration and page layouts.

As well as this I will submit print ready artwork and evidence of graphic/ typographic element design.

Starting photo for assignment

I decided to use the method of lighting candles for the first photo in my assignment, as it gives a clear indication of what my theme is. I used my new camera, a Nikon Coolpix L820 to try out different effects, such as increasing and decreasing the ISO, and changing the colour options. Here are some of the photos I took:

This was my first attempt, just using the camera on automatic. I decided that the ‘L’ needed to be a capital to increase readability, but I like how the candles look against the wood flooring.

This is another shot with the capital added. For this I changed the white balance to ‘Incandescent’.

This shot was taken in black and white. I have decided to use this as my first photo, as I like how the light jumps out at you against the grey/ black background. Although you can see the matches I have used in the bottom right corner, I think they look like I have placed them there, and gives an indication of how I have produced the photo.

Photos for assignment

These are some of the photos I am going to use for my photography assignment. I will edit some of them to give a better effect. I have collected these images over the past few months, which means I have managed to take photos in a range of different areas. I think they suit my theme of light well.
These first three photos were taken at a museum in Wakefield. The neon lights seen in the photos were actually the exhibits. I really like the photos in which the main light source is the daylight from the windows. My main inspiration for this was a photographer named Kristopher Grunet, who also takes photos with daylight as the main light source.

The photo under these was taken on the big wheel at Hull Fair. It is a great example of light from above, although I will probably edit this to get a better quality by using colour correction on Photoshop, which we have learnt in class.

The next photo is of a pumpkin I made on halloween. I decided to put this in my assignment as it is a unique way to capture light.

After this is a Christmas tree I put up in my room, and is again a different light source, which is what I have aimed to do throughout this assignment.

I love the next photo of a set of streetlights in Hull City Centre. It is a good example of leading lines, although I will improve the quality, again by using colour correction on Photoshop.

Although the next photo of Christmas lights in Hull is a little blurred, I like how the majority of light is in the top third of the photo. I also think the buildings on either side frame the light.

The last photo is again from the big wheel at Hull fair. I wish I’d have taken this shot without the bars from the wheel in the way, but it has such a wide range of different lights I didn’t want to leave it out of my assignment.