I began this week by taking images that best represent my personality, physicalisty and overall self through a photo booth format. The idea of this task was to display photographs which best represent you, and I did this by focusing on different parts of my Body such as my eyes for example, because they are my favourite feature, and also on objects such as my shoes and glasses that are part of my everyday style.

 I also added in objects to make the photograph more visually interesting and to build on different ideas of how myself as an individual  would he portrayed by an objects aswell, as they can help lead to initial thoughts for a final photo shoot. The most useful and interesting part of this task was to look at others reactions to my photos, as others in my group had different takes and opinions on how they perceive my personality through my images, and this also triggered ideas for a photo shoot. 

We were also required to style eachother using our own garments and accessories, this was a really enjoyable task because It was a way of creating different personalities for people through styling them with your own garments, and it was also good for discovering how to use clothes in other ways than they were intended, for example putting jackets on back to front, inside out, and using necklaces as head pieces or belts. I think that the aim of this task was to pass your personal style onto others but find ways to make that style more subjective to the physicality and personal style of the individual you were styling, which I found quite difficult. It made me think a bit more outside the box and how to combine different garments together that I wouldn't normally do. 

We then moved on to style eachother using other peoples styling kits as oppose to our own, and this was quite interesting because we had to create a new personality for the individual and give them the personality of all the different clothes and garments I had to work with. I really enjoyed this process because it was fun to try and think about the type of person or target market I would be targeting when I'm styling with the clothes I was given.

Day 2 

After styling eachother with are own garments, we were required to form into groups and create a trend report which we would later present to the rest of out group. in order for us to understand the current trends from the perswpctive if different target markets and retailers we all went to different areas of London. Some of us focused on high street retailers which were extreamlu useful in terms of what is currently selling successfully to our target market of you. Adults and students, and others including myself went to high end stores to see how the current trends differ from high street retailers.

I visited Bond Street for my part of the trend report which is home to all the luxury brands. Some stores were harder to take photographs of the actual garments themselves, however each shop window had the main trend/ style that was currently popular at that time, so I went around each store photographing the shop windows and trying to piece together any recurring trends that I noticed. Chanel initiated the leather and tartan trend which were the two most popular trends I discovered. I also noticed allot of biker Wear,  leather skirts, tailored jackets , and allot of black simplistic dresses, and these were all more sophisticated to suit the target makert that were likely to shop in high end stores. Bold prints were also a key trend that I noticed in stores such as Missoni, Burberry, and Joseph which was something quite bold and different for the current autumn/winter season. 

when our groups got back in the studio we all managed to gather the same trend information but from different retailers and target markets, varying from designer boutiques to the hisghstreet.  in order to create a clear presentation to the rest of our peers we each took a trend and presented it on an a1 board. The aim of this was to make the board obvious to the audience of what the message and key trend was, so that a designer can easily create a collection from it for example. 

To give our trend report more of a story and a message, we researched into the history of each trend. So for tartan we looked back at classic Vivienne Westwood designs to show how designs of tartan has changed and modernized over time, and for the leather tend we looked at 80's punk fashion and musical influences to give the audience more  information on the classical elements of each trend .

 Presenting our boards to our peers and tutor was very challenging, especially as most groups had the same trends and similar information. It was up to us to ensure that we identified what the key information was and made it as impactful as possible, by going deeper into the importance of the designs, colours, and patterns to show how each trend differs from market to market. What made our presentation more interesting to our peers was that we gave our opinions on why we think these are the current trends right now. Was it the economy? politics? or musical influences for example. 

more than anything this enabled me to become more confident in delivering information to a group, aswell as working with others to form a presentation and taking on board everyone's ideas to make it impactful and making the message clear, aswell as Sharing my own opinions and going deeper into my findings. 

I would say that my entire group thought that we could have improved on making our Boards more clear in terms of what the trend was just by looking at them. some of our boards needed more explaining as to what the trend was, and this could have been avoided if we had used more images to build up more of a story, however this was all down to poor time management and failing to delegate a different responsibility for each  member of our group. however it was a great experience in becoming more confident in the points I was making and being able to back them up with images. Aswell as Woking within a team. 

Day 3 

To continue with this project of identity we were required to come up with a concept for a photo shoot which had to be representative of ourselves, and this could be in terms of physicality ,

personality or personal style. I wanted to focus on showing my personality through this photo shoot and include what is important to me, to show who I am as an individual. I began to think about ways I could photograph myself in the shoot, however I wanted to show myself in a way that does not neccasrily include me, and is not over representational. Looking back at my initial mind map I focused on the ten words which best describe me, and the word that had the moat significance to me was being "family orientated". 

This word triggered ideas for my shoot, and I created five mood boards to inspire my ideas. When thinking about the type of model I was going to use to best describe this side to my personality, I decided to use my young niece and nephew, as they are a big part of my life and to me represent being family orientated. 

The idea behind my shoot was to give the impression of showing family life, and having quite a natural unstaged surrounding. My first mood board was based around my own old family photographs of myself and my brothers and sisters showing our natural relationship, which is silly, playful and fun. My niece and nephew being brother an sister have that natural instinct to argue, play fight laugh and play around so I was confident that I would get the right type of shots.  most of the images were of young children giggling and just being children! so I wanted the mood of my shoot to be very unstructured and not too controlled so that I got really natural and honest shots, that are true to my normal family life. 

for the set of my shoot It was important that it not only was a homely atmosphere but that it was a natural ulsetting because I love open natural spaces and organic structures such as flowrs and gardens. My mood board for the set consisted of really rustic outdoor garden furniture, laterns, and most importantly flowrs, shrubs, bushes and greenery. 

I came to the conclusion of using my garden as the set for this shoot because not only was it an effective way of putting across my family vibe, but it has a really understated greenery which I added roses to the bushes to give more of an impact and visual interest.  

Another part of my research for poses and gestures that my niece and nephew could do was to gather old photographs of me and my siblings when we were younger. I managed to find some fantastic photos of us Playing together, or just obliviously posing as really small baby's and these were helpful in thinking of ways to obtain that unstructured image. I used some black and white photographs of my parents as children because the poses were similar, and I placed them in the background of my shots so that I could out across my family oriented atmosphere and to create the idea that I was shooting the photos in a family home. 

Some of the shots from my shoot 

These black and white photos inspired my idea to make my own photographs black and white aswell. I think that I was successful in creating this photoshoot as the feedback I got from my tutor and peers  showed that I had put across the righ message and that they percueved their own ideas of family life by staying that they were personal images to me, and to me this is a true reflection of who I  am as an individual.