My Interpretation of Vee Speers: Thirteen and The Birthday Party.
Vee Speers' collections The Birthday Party and Thirteen both contain strong emotional effect that really makes you think about the photo itself and the message behind it. She uses a plain background that instantly makes the model the focal point and uses lighting to compliment the pale colours in the photograph. A lot of the photos in these collections use the rule of thirds very well, most of the time the model being in the centre. In my interpretations i have tried to capture what Vee does, a meaning behind a photo, and i have tried to use the studio available at school and the lighting equipment provided to my advantage.
In these photos i have tried to use the meaning behind Thirteen, and have used a teddy bear to symbolise childhood. I have made my model hold the teddy bear close to her to show that she is clinging onto that childhood, and she has a plain facial expression to show the deepth of the meaning. I used lighting to make the colour scheme fairly pale, although in the first shot (top left), i used flash, which made her skin tone look darker. I prefer the shot (bottom left) because it keeps the pale tone to the photo. I have tried to use the rule of thirds like Vee has, centring the model and doing a half body shot. I asked my models to wear dresses, to try and replicate the models in The Birthday Party, and i asked either one to wear a different type of dress, so i could add my own touch to the photos, e.g i asked one of the girls to wear a dress with lots of colour (photos to follow) and the other to wear one with plain and simple colours, black and white. I found that the way they dressed showed what type of photo i wanted to feature them in, for example, i used Emily in the black and white dress to do more of the Thirteen collection interpretations as it worked better. I used Katy (who wore a colourful dress) to do more of The Birthday Party.
This one was my favourite shot of the whole shoot. I developed the meaning behind the photo above and made Emily smile, and drop the bear, symbolising that you can let go of your childhood but still keep hold of the memories that came with it. The facial expression shows that its okay to let go, these photos ended up providing a deeper meaning than what i expected them to, but overall i was really happy with them. I tried this shot without the smile, it still looked good but i didnt prefer it. Also it would need some photoshopping, as the studio has a lovely white wall but a horrible black skirting, that creeped its way into my photos.
For this photo, i took a shot from The Birthday Party and made it my own. I used a lot of colour in this photo which was different to the interpretations of Thirteen because the meaning behind this collection is different (find it here). Again i did not use flash to keep the photo pale, and positioned the lights in the room so that there was as little shadow on the wall as possible. I used a red balloon in this shot to go with the red on the dress, so the basic colour theme was red, white and blue, not random colours all over the place. I think i could of made it look more like an interpretation by making the photo portrait rather than landscape, but i still kept in all the details that i needed. I also decided to try this shot with Emily, and realized that even though the plain colour scheme did not fit the idea of the collection, it still looked quite good. I think this is probably because the wall i used behind was white and plain too.
Next time i will probably try more backgrounds rather than using the same plain one to make the photos come across more interesting and will exeperiment with interpreting other photos in the collections and maybe other collections to, rather than the same two.
Below is another shot, compared to Vee's. I used minimal costume which was the soldier hat and the photo came out very pale as i took it with no lighting equipment, just the daylight shining through. I like the colouring of this photo better than the rest because of this. I also think the blank expression on Emily's face works really well, and shows that i was interpreting this picture.
For this photo, i took a shot from The Birthday Party and made it my own. I used a lot of colour in this photo which was different to the interpretations of Thirteen because the meaning behind this collection is different (find it here). Again i did not use flash to keep the photo pale, and positioned the lights in the room so that there was as little shadow on the wall as possible. I used a red balloon in this shot to go with the red on the dress, so the basic colour theme was red, white and blue, not random colours all over the place. I think i could of made it look more like an interpretation by making the photo portrait rather than landscape, but i still kept in all the details that i needed. I also decided to try this shot with Emily, and realized that even though the plain colour scheme did not fit the idea of the collection, it still looked quite good. I think this is probably because the wall i used behind was white and plain too.
Next time i will probably try more backgrounds rather than using the same plain one to make the photos come across more interesting and will exeperiment with interpreting other photos in the collections and maybe other collections to, rather than the same two.Below is another shot, compared to Vee's. I used minimal costume which was the soldier hat and the photo came out very pale as i took it with no lighting equipment, just the daylight shining through. I like the colouring of this photo better than the rest because of this. I also think the blank expression on Emily's face works really well, and shows that i was interpreting this picture.
