Brief:
'Please produce 12 photographs or 10 second videos, instagram-style, of your Christmas holiday period. Try to use what you have learned so far on the course, and incorporate fashion items that say something about you and your surroundings. Be creative, use colour and light to give strong images.'
I took a slightly different approach to this project from what was outlined in the brief and took my pictures in a snapshot style of my Christmas surroundings. Some are immediately and obviously to do with the holiday and some are more specific to my personal experience. I feel that my surroundings do say something about me but I chose not to incorporate fashion items into my original photos, wanting to have a more abstract take on the effect of our surroundings on fashion.
Original Photos (in no particular order):
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| Photo 1. |
1. The shadow of my grandmother's Christmas tree on the curtains; an unconventional tree of hanging baskets of poinsettias and various bird decorations.
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| Photo 2. |
2. The view out of the front window of the car when driving to visit family over the holidays. I felt the road lights made a nice comparison with typical Christmas lights.
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| Photo 3. |
3. A section of the thousand-piece puzzle of the Renoir painting 'Luncheon of the Boating Party' that my sister and I took it upon ourselves to complete whilst staying with my grandmother over Christmas.
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| Photo 4. |
4. Tangled Christmas lights, typically only half of which work. A snapshot image that is easily associated with Christmas for everyone.
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| Photo 5. |
5. Around New Year I visited a butterfly sanctuary whilst staying in Herefordshire with my aunt and uncle. The butterfly wing patterns obviously make beautiful prints.
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| Photo 6. |
6. A reflection in a puddle of myself and trees. I like the dark, block colours of this photo, taken at dusk and feel it makes an effective motif.
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| Photo 7. |
7. A turkey carcase, which, in its previous state, would have been easily recognisable as a Christmas image. However, a close-up of the remains inverts normal associations with the theme.
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| Photo 8. |
8. Christmas tree branches, taken close up and at the end of the holidays so the branches have dried out and are dying.
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| Photo 9. |
9. Another photo from the butterfly sanctuary. In this one the butterfly is in motion, surrounded by greenery and flowers in contrast to the concrete floors in the previous picture.
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| Photo 10. |
10. My grandmother's birthday is three days after Christmas Day, so is part of the whole holiday experience for me. I took some of the left over birthday candles and melted wax to create this motif, with typical pastel colours from the candles and a circular design that mirrors the way the light from the candle reflects in the darkness.
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| Photo 11. |
11. Holly is traditionally associated with Christmas and the winter period and this is juxtaposed with blossoming pink flower buds that I found. Taken with a flash at dusk, the colours stand out starkly against the darkness.
12. Finally, the reflection in a bauble with the lens flare of fairy light behind it. It is a bright asymmetrical photo with typically Christmas colours of red and green dominating the image.
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| Photo 12. |
After finishing my photos I took them and, to incorporate the fashion requirement of the brief, used the skills I learnt in photoshop tutorials to transfer the images onto items of clothing, creating a collection. I edited the images before transferring them to create patterns or change scale, often altering the colour tones completely. The catwalk images that I transferred my photos onto are sourced from Google images.
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| Trousers: Photo 9 |
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| Dress: Photo 10 |
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| T-Shirt: Photo 12 |
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| Jacket: Photo 11 |
The results are varied and there are I a couple that I did not like the end result of, often because the original photo was just too incompatible with a fashion item and difficult to create a pattern with e.g. the trousers from photo 4. However, there are a few that I thought turned out well e.g. the butterfly wing patterned items, and the skirt created from photo 2, which I like because of its atypical design (a traffic jam being something I have never seen printed on an item of clothing before). With this project I wanted to show how everyday, inanimate objects and sights can be incorporated into fashion prints, straying away from the conventional flower patterns etc. to create more individual pieces. In some cases I feel this was achieved, though perhaps not exactly in a way in keeping with the requirements laid out in the original brief.
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