McQueen Catalogue

Last week (before my meeting with my client) I prepared a catalogue for my client. I use the images form the two photo shoots I did in the store.

Below is the layout for the catalogue.

Presentation

Today I completed my presentation. In this presentation I discussed what my client brief and I explained the how my client has made difficult for me to do my job. I also included the magazine Then There Was Us. In the magazine I explained how we asked people to submit their work and then how we started contacting photographers directly and asked them if they would be interested to be in the magazine. 

After the presentation was over I got feedback from my peers. I found the feedback helpful and it gave me more to think about. I should have included pictures of McQueen to give people an idea of what the store looks like. 

Something I will mention because it came up when Sian asked me how I handled my client and how I pushed through her difficulty that she presented me with. It made me think of the beginning of this brief. I presented my client with so my ideas that would benefit her store but she discarded the majority of the things on the list because of money and mainly due to the fact that she told me “its another thing to do”. Because my client can’t find time to promote her shop makes me wonder what exactly I’m doing. So to answer Sian’s question I said if I didn’t take control of the situation then I would still be listening to my clients many ideas. I narrowed her ideas down to a few and ran with them.     

Meeting With My Client

On Friday the 13th of December I met with my client. This is the first time I spoke with my client in three weeks. As I mentioned in previous posts Sarah has not responded to any of my emails but this has not be rectified.

During this meeting I took control and told Sarah where we are up to. Sarah appreciated this because I believe she had forgotten about the original plan. I started of the meeting by bringing up the website. I told Sarah I didn’t want to go ahead with the website until we were on the exact same page as what was going to be on the website. I asked what categories Sarah wanted on the website. Sarah told me that the categories are, LOOK (this will be the photos), Take Part (this is events that happen in the store), Drop Us a Note (people getting in touch), Share Your Stories (past and present customers sharing stories, for example people could write in to say they have been wearing the same ring they bought from McQueen 10 years ago), Join Our Mailing List (People getting alerts or updates of the latest fashion that arrives into the store), Archives (bits and bobs form over the years, Sarah’s Words).

With the website out of the way Sarah asked me if I can do another photo shoot at the beginning of January. I said yes BUT I can only do a few as my deadline is at the end of January. This photo shoot will be shot in either a park or on some other location because Sarah doesn’t every image to be shot with a grey background.

Following this I then showed Sarah the catalogue I created. Sarah liked it and she thought the layout was great. When I told her that the cost of the catalogue was going to be around £6 Sarah said that is a lot of money. Personally speaking this is not a lot of money, I’m a student and this is not a lot of money to me. This is a perfect example of how I have pushed this whole brief as far as it can go. The solution I instantly came up with was asking one of the models who owns a small printing company to print the magazines at a discount. Sarah liked this idea.

I have to be honest and examine the behaviour of my client. On both shoots Sarah never supplied any food or drinks. It wasn’t until someone brought a bottle of beer with them that she then bought a few bottles of beer. I know this sounds stupid but I am working for free and my client hasn’t got the decency to buy me a drink or even a sandwich. If Sarah asks me to do a photo shoot for free after the brief has finished I will ask her how much clothes has she given away for free in her life. The reason people don’t want to pay photographer is because they told at our job as a hobby. This insults my intelligence and the three years that I have studied photography.

Then There Was Us

Yesterday Jonathan and myself worked on the magazine. The issue we were faced with were submission. Photographers have told us they will submit their images a week ago and they have not yet submitted after many emails that were sent to them explaining that if they haven’t submitted their work along with a statement then they will no longer be in the next issue. 

We place everybody (who has submitted) in the order we want. A few weeks ago I wrote up a Q&A for Ian Simpson and Spencer Murphy. We think it would be nice to have someone such as Ian in the magazine as he has a world full of knowledge in the industry. Ian sent us back the answers and we couldn’t be more than happy. He stayed true to his word and answered almost everything. What Ian didn’t want to talk about was Slaughterhouse Studios. There are some legal matters that he can not discuss. 

Spencer Murphy sent us his images and a short statement. Spencer ask if it was okay if he let the series speak for itself instead of adding a Q&A. I replied and said that would be fine. 

Sian and Graeme Vaughn have told me they should have there work submitted within the next few weeks as I have told them that the 18th of December is the deadline. Both of them are writing about each others work so we are looking forward to seeing what they will produce.

There are currently 14 pages to fill in the magazine. If Graeme and Sian’s don’t fill the rest of the magazine then we have another photographer to enter into the mag. We will be printing 200 copies of the magazine which will cost us around £400 in John Dalton behind MMU. We will get one print there to see the quality and if we don’t like it then we will go elsewhere. Marc the printers and MPG are the other options for printing the magazine. We want similar quality to Of The Afternoon as we believe the quality of the finished product id hugely important.

Now we are waiting for a few one more submission from an American photographer. His work would go nicely into the magazine but he is taking a long time to submit his images. 

 

Up Date With Client

I have contacted my client. I asked Sarah if I can arrange a meeting with her and she said she can’t meet until Friday the 13th. I understand that December is a busy time for someone who is running a business but that fact that she knows I have a job to do, (and a deadline) and the meeting would take approximately 30mins is some what insulting. I have gone out of my way for this client even though I am not getting anything in return, except a good education on how to work with a client, which has already taught me valuable lessons on how to work with clients in the future.

By the time I meet my client three weeks will have passed with little or no communication. I will go to this meeting and outline what I need from her NOT what she needs from me. I understand she is the client and I am working for her but in reality I am on my final year and I will do whatever it takes to pass this course.   

Issues With My Client

All communacaition with my client has come to a halt. The last time I saw my client was on the 22nd of November. On this meeting I did a shoot. I shot three seprate models and it was successful (well it was successful for me, as I havn’t heard from my client until the day after the shoot. Sarah contacted me a few days after the shoot and asked what we ahould do next as she has hundereds of ideas and plans. Up to this point I was getting anything else done. My whole sechudle was consumed by my client as she as hundreds of ideas. I told Sarah I am under pressure with Uni work , this is the email I replied to her,

‘Sorry for the late reply. I am up to my neck with uni work. So at the moment I am about to restart editing the pictures. When this is done I think we can start choosing which ones we should use. I can start the website at the beginning of next week. I will upload images onto the website to give us an idea of what it could look like.

How are things going on your end’?

Sarah has not replied to this message. I Then Sent her a follow up email because I was worried in case we fall behind on the brief. This is the email I sent to her.

‘Hi Sarah,

How have you been?

I have the pictures edited. Do you want to meet some day this week to look over them? I’m free any day except Sunday.

I think the images came out really nice. Obviously some came out better than others.

We should also discuss where we are up to now and what we should do next. I have a few issues with the website I’d like to go over.

Speak to you soon’,

Emmett

I sent this email on the the 2nd of December and I am still at a loss as to why my client is failing to respond to my emails.

The last time we spoke Sarah expressed enthusiasm about getting customers involved by asking them to model the clothes they have purchessed in the store. Sarah also wanted me to shoot pop up events that take place ini her store which would go up on the website. Last night I saw on Facebook that McQueen have a Pop Up baby boutique in the store. This is the message they put up on Facebook.

“We’ve got Our Kid baby boutique playing over tonight, 6-10 pm. Join us for a glass of wine and a lullaby”!

I am confused as to why Sarah has not informed me of this. At the the moment I am going to contact her via text message. If she doesn’t replay I will stop everything and pursue a different brief. I already have the TTWU magazine and I have been working hard along with Jonathan to contact photographers and advertisers.

 

Tutorial With Sian

During a tutorial with Sian I talked about where I am up to with my client. I explained that I have all the images edited and I am waiting for Sarah (my client to respond to a email I sent to her asking if she would like a meeting this week. Sian asked me if I got the models to sign model release forms and licensing agreement forms. This is important and because if the forms are not signed and the images are up on the website the models could request that I remove their pictures from the website. And it is also important that I ask Sarah to sign a licensing agreement from because without this it will be unclear between Sarah and I how the pictures should and can be used. For example, if I use these images for my own personal website and without having this form signed Sarah could potentially request that I remove them from my website because we have not agreed or signed the correct papers that state how the images can be used. I will inform Sarah that these papers need to be signed before the images go up onto the website.   

Research for Essay

I have been researching portraiture. Today I read Charlotte Cotton ‘The Photograph as Contemporary Art’. The section I focused on was Deadpan portraiture because I wanted to know if there is anything on truth and portraiture.

What I found interested me

Deadpan portraiture is something I have always appreciated but never read much about. In this part of the book Cotton looks at different photographers work and gives us examples of the deadpan aesthetics. For example one photographer she talks about is Thomas Ruff. Ruff was the photographer who too the passport like portraits of people. Ruff instructed his subjects asking them to remain emotionless. The reason Cotton gives as to why Ruff does this is; the reason Ruff asks his subjects to remain emotionless and to look directly into the camera is to take away the visual triggers, such as gestures, confound our expectations of discovering a person’s character through their appearance. In this example we learn way the photographer chose to use deadpan to capture this but does it work? I believe both does work and does not. When I look at the images I see emotion in some people. I find it difficult not to look into a persons eyes and not find some degree of their character. So I believe the portrait is not detached from things such as emotion and gestures. The photographer is almost attempting to hide the ‘truth’ by instructing the subject to remain emotionless.

Moving on from Ruff, Cotton then talks about Hrioshi Sugimoto’s photographs of museum waxworks. Here Cotton uses Sugimoto’s images as an example because she wants to look at how we automatically search for evidence of character, even in a waxwork. In this paragraph I found this part the most interesting, “If there are realities or truths held within the deadpan portrait, they revolve around very subtle signs of how people react to being photographed; the observations artists make are about how their subjects address the camera and photographer in front of them” (Cotton 2009, 107). This quote confirms to me that the portrait may hold some degree of reality. The reality could be delivered in small signs or gestures and through these small signs the subjects identity or reality can be captured. If these small signs or gestures come through in the portrait I would like to ask; are they reality or the essence of the subject? It is a hard question to answer, one that can be debated for a long time and possibly arrive with the same conclusion, yes the portrait can capture the reality to a certain degree, but how do we know that what reality in portraiture looks like.

The photographer Joel Sternfeld takes street portraits of people. Sternfeld approaches random people and disturbs them from their daily routine. Cotton describes Sternfeld’s approach. “Sternfeld has negotiated with a stranger to photograph them at a polite distance, asking the simply to halt what they are doing and prepare to the photographed”. The subject’s reaction to what is happening, which includes their resistance, their ambivalence about this brief break in their routine, becomes the portrayed fact” (Cotton 2009, 108).

In this example I can except that there is a higher degree of reality in these portraits because Sternfeld is photographing people in their own environment. By stopping people in the street and asking them to stop for a picture automatically allows the portrait to carry more weight on the subject of reality because the photographer is not controlling the scene, he has no control over how the person is going to stand, he has no control over the lighting and he has no control over the clothing the subject is wearing. There for reality is present in these portraits because of these elements. The photographer could be lying, he could be asking the subjects to pose in a certain way it is at this stage we have to believe not only the photographer but we have to believe to the image on a whole.

Research for Essay

I have begun to develop my essay idea. Following a tutorial with Dave I realised my essay plan was much too broad. I need to simplify my idea because I am overcomplicating things. I have been write all of my research onto Evernote. During this tutorial Dave asked me what my idea was. I told him my idea is focusing around truth in photography. I tried to explain what I have been researching and I think I confused everyone. I explained that I want to see if there is any truth in photography and portraiture. When we look at an image what is reality, how do we know what we are looking at is real or fiction. Has the scene been constructed or has the image captured reality. Dave found it difficult to respond to what I just told him. His advice was to simplify my idea and keep it relative to my practice. Dave suggested that I focus my essay on portraiture because after all that is what I am mostly interested in. This might sound remedial but when but, when Dave said that to me I realised that I am over thinking what I want to say in this essay. After the tutorial I went away and looked over my research. Almost immediately I realised that I should focus on ‘truth of the portrait’. I have already researched this from the beginning and now I have come full circle and I am now comfortable writing about this. I feel that there has been a huge weight lifted from my shoulders and I can continue with my essay.

I have now begun to research in more depth what I want to say with this essay.

David Bate is proving a good source to research. Bate has supplied me with a starting point and I can understand everything he is talking about. I am also researching many other books such as Susan Bright and Cotton. I have also drawn research inspiration from Berger’s documentary ‘Ways Of Seeing’. This has helped me to take my essay in a direction that is inspiring my photography.