Extended Practice

We went into town with Izzie (our model) to try on different outfits and see what would work best. We spent a lot of money on clothes and jewellery in Topshop for the shoot....

The next day J'nae came round and we pieced together a few different looks for the shoot so that we don't have to mess around with loads of different jewellery and clothes on the day. That way we feel a bit more organised, but we're definitely still up for trying out stuff on the day and seeing how it goes.

J'nae put together some contact sheets using the photos we took at mine:



Anouska finished the nails for the shoot too and sent over a picture of the finished product:

I absolutely love what she's produced. I think that they look amazing and completely suit our brand! They will also look amazing next to the jewellery and the moon prop in the shoot and will add quite a bit of glamour. I'm really excited to see them in real life and see the subtle iridescent foil used on them.

Nails
We both agreed that Izzie is going to need some amazing nails for the shoot as there will be a lot of close ups on her hands to show off the rings and hand harnesses etc. We bought some cheap fake nails in town to paint ourselves, but then I came across a girl on Instagram who hand paints nails to sell which are amazing!

So I sent Anouska a direct message via Instagram to see if she would be up for painting us some custom nails and how much they would cost. We exchanged a lot of messages talking about the brand and what kind of things she could do and have agreed on a price for the set. She is currently in the process of creating the nails, but in the mean time we had to measure Izzie's nail width so that we could make sure that they were the right size!


Anouska sent me an email with a photo attached to show how to measure the nails as I measured them completely wrong the first time.



I remeasured Izzie's nails this way and the measurements definitely seemed a lot more realistic!









I'm really excited to see how these come along. I originally gave her a lot of ideas to go with that would suit the brand, so hopefully she creates some perfect nails for us!

Moon Prop
We both really want some moon props to use in the shoot and in the product shots, so we created some out of wood using the laser cutter, which was the first time I'd actually used the laser cutter!!




We cut the moons out of 3mm MDF at a variety of sizes, with one large moon.


For some reason the laser cutter seemed to have a mind of it's own, even when you made sure all the measurements were correct, but luckily the moon just about fit into the wood.




The smaller moons came out pretty well too! A couple were a little bit dodgy, but that's why we thought it was best to cut out as many as possibly so that we had room for error!


We even used the laser cutter to cut out some pillow boxes on some pearlescent lilac paper (these photos don't do the paper any justice) and used the kiss cut option to create folds in the paper to make them easier to construct.


For labels on the necklaces we cut out some long thin labels in the same paper, and we thought that using the moon for the hole to put string through or necklace chains was a lot more exciting than using a hole punched piece of paper.


Had a look in the print room to see if they had holographic foil, but we're not entirely sure if we could foil things that easily because of already cutting out packaging etc. But it was definitely worth looking at to know about!

When we went into town a few days ago we visited a spray paint shop to see what they had in stock for spraying our wooden moon props. We decided to work with silver or metallic colours instead of holographic as we found that finding holographic materials was really difficult! The spray paint we bought is a silver chrome, so we quickly tested it out on two of the little moons to see how it looks..


We decided to try out spray painting straight onto the moon as well as spray painting over a layer of emulsion which was suggested by the man at the spray painting shop. The moon on the left doesn't have any emulsion on it and the moon on the right has a thin layer of emulsion. Although the emulsion does help to make the chrome look more shiny and bold, we preferred the mottled effect that you get from spraying straight onto the wood, plus the spray paint picked up any brush strokes or imperfections in the emulsion which was easily avoided by not using it at all!

I took the moons home with me and spray painted them all in the garden.









Product Shot Props
http://www.globalcrystals.co.uk
We paid a visit to Global Tribe Crystals in town to see if we could get anything for our in studio product shots. There were so many crystals there, we thought that we could always take a trip back closer to the time if we need anything to use in the photos, rather than going crazy and buying things straight away that we may not need!



We found some really pretty pearlescent shells which we thought we could use almost as a bowl to place some of the jewellery inside for photographs.

For the shoot we need to organise a bunch of things so that it all goes smoothly...

First of all we'll need some models and photographers, otherwise we won't have any photos!

We sent an email out across uni and used some model scouting websites but had no luck, so took our own initiative and looked around uni for people who would be perfect for the shoot.
We spotted Izzie Glazzard in first year, as she has dreadlocks and would suit our brand perfectly! So I sent her an email and she was up for it! We also asked a friend of Jnae's called Lunar Rising but she wanted us to pay her to do the modelling, which we definitely didn't want to have to do.

Male wise, we decided to ask Jordan in our class as we want a male with long hair and who would suit the brand. We did get contacted by another student in the uni in response to our email but he didn't really fit the part.

Models down, now to find a photographer...

www.victoriacadisch.co.uk




I contacted Vic through Facebook as I know her personally and asked if she would be interested in photographing for us. She was really up for the shoot, but being a professional photographer she couldn't do the shoot for free, which was annoying. Usually she charges between £800 and £1000 for the kind of shoot we were doing plus petrol etc, but being a friend she made us a deal of £450 for photography, editing and petrol. I spoke to J'nae but we definitely could not afford to fund this! So I sent an email out to student finance and got the following response:


We sent over an email to Amber but haven't had any response, so we've decided that we're going to have to look for a different photographer instead.

I sent an email over to Joseph Pickering, as we both really liked his style of photography.
http://www.joepickering.co.uk







We both absolutely love Joe's photographic style and think that it would suit our brand and make our photos stand out. I think we both really like the fact that he has a particular style and a certain softness to his photographs.


But we still haven't received any kind of reply!

In the meantime J'nae messaged a few people she knew but their portfolio's weren't strong enough or they just didn't reply at all.

I also messaged Scott Taylor over Facebook to see if he would be up for the shoot. www.flickr.com/photos/scotttaylorphotography/




We both thought that Scott's work was really good and of high quality, although not completely the style that we were going for as we wanted the photos to be a little more care free and soft. But after speaking to Scott and telling him all about the shoot he seems really into it and adaptable which is great! We definitely feel like he's a candidate for the job.

Received a reply from Joe Pickering:


So have been exchanging emails:















I think that we'll work with Joe over Scott because of the fact his style suits our brand already where as Scott would need to adapt his style in order to suit us, which can't be guaranteed!