Evaluation

This project was built upon the concept of the portrayal of image manipulation within beauty and fashion advertisements, my research was drawn from my dissertation and practice idea and I wanted to further the aesthetic side of this concept. Image manipulation, such as airbrushing, whitening teeth and altering body shapes using the popular tool Adobe Photoshop causes a massive controversy within society and distorts their perception of an unattainable body image. This was the frustration I wanted to portray within my outcome and from what I tried to pursue within my practice of the dissertation. I propositioned within my final major project proposal that I wanted to created a series of images that reflected the emotion and frustration caused by the over excesses image manipulation in beauty and fashion advertisements. I decided the images would be presented in a website format to show my current work together as a whole. To get started I experimented with various shoots and using the word manipulation as a way of physically distorting the images. It was a way of manipulating them in a different way, rather than perfecting them, I wanted to almost destroy the initial meaning and using textures and collages to create the emotion and frustration of how society feel. This work was very different to what I had been creating over my past years as a makeup artist, I used to enjoy experimenting with different media and textures, especially creating abstract elements. This aspect I especially wanted to include and link with my makeup artistry, therefore thought this was a great chance to combine my two passions.

It was important for me to experiment many times in terms of collaging and using different tools and media to find the best possible outcome. I firstly collaged physically with cutting up areas and almost distorting the models face that I had photographed. Secondly I tried experimenting with layering and distorting the images within photoshop, again I was manipulating the images in a different context. Overall I enjoyed creating them but began to feel uninspired and thought the outcomes looked random and felt I wasn’t truly conveying the concept how I wanted it to be perceived. This may have been due to over working this practical idea, as I was obviously furthering the aesthetic outcome from my dissertation and practice, as I felt that wasn’t strong enough, therefore wanted to challenge myself, in how I could push the concept. I still felt very strongly about the idea and felt quite passionate about how photo shop and retouching is perceived within the fashion and beauty market of today. I thought it was necessary to researched more thoroughly into other artists and photographs that have worked around the concept of beauty retouching to feel inspired again in terms of the practical outcomes. I felt it was extremely important to stay passionate in what I was creating throughout this project as it will be an aspect of my career and university experience that will I can remember as my best piece of work and especially because I wanted to showcase the project on a website, it is a new platform to promote myself and potentially move forward after this project.

Peter Lindbergh sprung to mind when trying to find relevant research, as him as a photographer feels very strongly about the overuse of photoshop within the beauty and fashion industry. Recently, he captured Kate Moss in a black and white, authentic photoshoot with no beauty retouching whatsoever. Every aspect looked beautiful and it extremely inspired me in a way of pushing my concept forward. I knew I wanted to push and challenge my makeup artistry skills. Having no beauty retouching meant I had to plan my makeup looks very carefully as well as spend a lot of time practicing the looks and ensuring the final looks had quality, precision and fitted the concept. I have always felt strongly about not relying on retouching makeup within postproduction. As a makeup artist it really opened my eyes in how much time and effort I had to put in to ensure every detail was how I wanted it to be. In terms of makeup application, it was extremely helpful to practice my looks and create face charts to ensure every detail was taken care of. As my theme throughout I stuck to no beauty retouching, it was very important in the models I chose, as working with healthy skin typically made it easier. As well as choosing the right lighting to work with the skin as well. Finding models was definitely one of the most frustrating stages of this project. Many models I asked dropped out last minute, even though I ensured I gave myself enough time to source models, plan when I wanted to shoot and organise a time best for the both of us. It was an aspect that I could not dwell on and needed to work quickly when finding a replacement model and I just had to make it work. Of course the set up, makeup and styling helped massively.

From the beginning I decided to shoot all my work myself and felt quite confident in photography and what I wanted to achieve. However, I do felt after collaborating with a couple of other students, I felt it would have been a great way to learn what it is like within industry. I felt like it would have been less stressful if I asked a photographer, however, regardless of this I did thoroughly enjoy photographing my images and felt the majority were quite successful. I felt this was because I knew exactly what I wanted and the vision I saw as the outcome, therefore was easy and quick for me to create. I did have to reshoot one of my shoots, as I felt as my concept grew throughout the project this one started to look a bit odd and I wanted each shoot to be in conjunction with each other. As well as makeup, the styling was very important in how I wanted the images to be perceived as. I obviously had a solid concept within my mind however struggled how I wanted to stylise the shoots to link with each other as well as sticking with no beauty retouching. I began to research current fashion trends and knew I wanted to produce fashion forward images, which are inspired through beauty and fashion advertisements. I found it difficult finding the style direction at first, As I believed it would look slightly random as a whole project if I was to style each shoot differently. I thought they should all work together and flow into one another. Which is why I ended up reshooting one of them. As I finally decided to style each shoot in the influence of androgynous fashion, I felt this worked well as I wanted to style each shoot in the unexpected to the typical ‘perfection’ you see within beauty and fashion advertisements. I was extremely happy with the styling and felt each outfit was very successful in how it worked with the concept and theme.

In terms of time management, I felt I worked quite thorough to my time schedule, however due to personal circumstances I was not around university a lot, which did pause my work load slightly, however even though I was not able to attend many feedback sessions due to being at home a lot, I always made sure I was constantly reflecting within my journal, as well as speaking with other peers, to see how they were getting on as well as asking for their feedback and any constructive criticism. I would often ask my boyfriend on what he thought, as I felt it was always important to ask someone who isn’t aware of this sort of concept or industry. This helped a lot as he actually gave me some helpful pointers in terms of website layout and small details that I didn’t notice before. Before finalizing my website I found it helpful to see my lecturer Jennifer, to confined in her advice on how to layout my images within my website. As I struggled with this aspect in particular, as at first I felt it didn’t flow as well as I had hoped. However, Jennifer suggested that I definitely put some sort of introduction to my project beforehand and that actually helped massively as already it started to make sense. I then felt it was important to add small details, like a paragraph under some of the images to explain some influences and to ensure the layout and each image flows into the next. Researching and finding inspiration from other makeup artist and brands lay their websites out, this was important to understand in terms of reaching out to target market and the audience. I ensured the website was easy to access and everything was simplistic and clear.

I felt the makeup and styling was very successful on all of my shoots, after each one I felt proud and happy with the final outcome. Although I enjoyed photographing most of my work, I felt it would have been less stressful for me to collaborate with a photographer, I managed to use a photographer for one of my final shoots and I definitely saw a difference. Due to my theme being ‘no beauty retouching’, it was very challenging ensuring every little detail was perfected to my taste and time consuming as it was a case of photographing and zooming in on the image to see every aspect. However, this was a challenge in a good way as it really tested my makeup skills and I honestly feel and hope my skills reflect within my work. I honestly found some other students work threatening as sometimes you only naturally compare you and your work to others, and at times I started to doubt myself and my idea. This may have been at the beginning when I was changing the direction of my outcome slightly and almost felt like my concept wasn’t good enough however I kept motivating myself and I feel happy that I stuck with this idea as I believe each shoot was successful and now they are together on my website, I can see they work well with each other. Lastly, if I were to embark on this journey again I would most definitely do more practice shoots. Even though I practiced many makeup looks, I thought I could of probably experimented more with different photo shoots. Overall I am delighted with the overall outcome and thoroughly enjoyed putting my website together and hope others enjoy pursuing at their pleasure.