Yesterday the lovely Rachel Brown who works at Harper's Bazaar as a Photography Director came in to review our work, discuss her personal work and her life as a photography director. She is such a down to earth and grounded person with an infinite amount of knowledge. In the morning a few of us met up with her in groups of six and she gave every single one us such great and encouraging feedback on our work so far, as well as offering some great advice in regards to improving it further.
In the afternoon we headed to a lecture theatre where she discussed her journey as a photographer from the work she produced as part of her BA using continuous film lighting which up until her talk I had never thought about using for a photo shoot, but it is now definitely something I would like to try in the future. To the work, she produced for her MA and her first Photo Global Residency at The School of Visual Art in New York.
I found her whole approach to photography and her photographic practice captivating when working with models as a way of making it seem like a two-way conversation between herself as the photographer framing the shot and then the models who are asked to go and position themselves as they see fit within the frame. It's things like these you do not always think about, but sometimes the image won't look as staged if the model is free to do as they please.
For a lot of her earlier work, Rachel would spend time at night wandering around the streets near where she was staying at the time taking photos for her current project. She described there being a "slight feminist reclaiming of the work" because as a girl one thing you are repeatedly told is to not go out at night.
Rachel said going on an artists residency is one of the best things she has done and highly recommends it to us all, she was kind enough to give us a list of artist residency she would suggest so that is something to think about when I've graduated.
This list of resources for residencies are as follows:
- http://blog.re-title.com/opportunities/
- http://residencyunlimited.org/opportunities/
- http://www.resartis.org/en/
- http://www.transartists.org/map
The second half of Rachel's talk was on her life as a Photography director, she began her journey by interning at British Vogue before becoming a studio manager for Tim Walker's project storyteller. Where she proceeded to tell us that everything shown with the help of set designers is taken in camera rather than post-production, I found this reassuring I was starting to get the impression taking things in the camera was a thing of the past and everything was in fact created through post-production.
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| A page from Walker's book Story Teller - Rachel assisted Tim with this book. The book was published in 2012 and you can see more here |
- Rhea Thierstein -http://rheathierstein.com/
- Andy Hillman - http://hillmanstudio.com/
- Shona Heath - http://www.clm-agency.com/set-design/shona-heath
At Harper's Bazaar, Rachel gets a lot of creative freedom with what she does, as do the photographers who photograph for the magazine, whilst there are always going to be situations where people do not get along all in all everyone seems to work really well together, and the photographers get the opportunity to produce work that not only leaves the client happy but also themselves as it allows the to stay true to themselves.
Photographers who have worked for Harper's Baazar include:
Norman Jean Roy - http://www.artandcommerce.com/artists/photographers/Norman-Jean-Roy
Who shoots using a digital camera.
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| Image found here |
Tom Craig - http://tomcraig.com/
Shoots mainly on film.
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| Image found here here |
Who shoots using film mainly but when he does use a digital camera he uses a Nikon D810 a camera that I currently have access to at University and will be taking full advantage of.
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| Charleston house shot for Haper's Baazar. Image found here |
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