Production: Photoshoot

beth sumecki's photostream on Flickr.

 This is my photography for CLASH, I used my friend Man Yee because I thought she could fit into the persona of a Rock artist well, with her long dark hair and pale skin tone, which fits into my genre and will also complement my colour scheme well. When directing her modelling, I encouraged her to impersonate an 'aggressive' style in order for the pictures to be suitable for my chosen genre of Rock/Metal music. This is how we achieved shots of her looking superior and of an authoritative position, a classic convention of featured models in most magazines. There are also shots of Man Yee screaming and pulling uncomfortable faces, I thought these worked well in my genre in an effort to communicate themes of distortion and destruction that conforms to the stereotypes evident in Rock music. Examples of this style of modelling came in my post about photography, which also inspired me to direct Man Yee to make 'smirking faces' as when writing that blog post and researching existing photography of females in this genre, I thought those types of facial expression were strong.
      I also styled her hair, dressed her and coordinated her make up. I chose dark colours, to go with her hair and embody a suitable image for the genre. The most significant element of her makeup was the black lipstick that I chose, this went well with the colours of the shoot and Man Yee wore it well, as the combination of the colour and her hair complemented the over all images. Black lipstick holds connotations of darkness, rebellion and rock music and was a theme I enjoyed when researching female photography. For accessories, I wanted to further communicate connotations of my genre. I chose a headband (that we also used as a necklace) and a bracelet that had metalic spikes on them. These items connotate themes of Rock and Roll as they are sharp and convey a certain edge/style that just reminds you of rock/punk stereotypes. I also knew I wanted to have either a white or red back ground, and so the black contrasts well with this, creating a pleasant and existing visual, that will contribute and influence my colour schemes.