One Day Brief - Flash Fiction

Flash Fiction is a style of literature telling short stories usually no more than 300 words. For this one day brief we each picked out of a hat a folded piece of paper showing our own roughly 50 world flash fiction story. We were asked to produce a series of five images communicating the story we had been given. My flash fiction story was:

'Two Unfortunate Displays of Bad Taste'

'It happened quickly. One day we stood in a museum, gazing at a Vermeer. 'Quite slick' said I, 'Now thats a smooth, smooth painting'. 'Stupid prick' said she, 'what a bastard'. We split up forever that same afternoon. I never knew if she hated Vermeer, or my comment, or both.

As there was a museum setting in the story, and the mention of a Vermeer painting, I decided to head to Leeds Art Gallery to take my photographs. I had to be quick and subtle when photographing as I wasn't 100% sure I was allowed to be taking photographs in there, and I couldn't think of any alternative photos to take based on a painting without visiting the gallery. My first image is a close up detail of the 'smooth' painting, and some of the frame, as if the photograph was taken from the character's perspective while initially looking at the painting. My second image shows the girl in the story looking at the painting, and the third pointing at it as if they were talking about it. I think they could have been more effective and sucessful in showing the story if I had included two people in my images. In the last two images I slightly desaturated the colours using Photoshop, to show the relatively negative ending to the story starting to come into effect. In the last image I wanted to show a blurred figure walking away, to represent the couple's break up at the end of the story; this was something I visualised when first reading the story and is probably my favourite image from the series. Looking back on these images I wish I had been more creative in showing my story, or I wish I'd had a more abstract story that I could have played around with the concept and meaning of it. Overall I found this brief to be a good practice for working to a strict time schedule, and also showing a narrative in a series of images.

One Day Brief - Shoe Advertising

We were given a One Day Brief on the theme of shoe advertising and put into groups to work together for the day, 9:30 - 3:00. The rules were to only use the shoes available within the class, and to present three final images complete with a logo for the chosen shoe brand. We were told to use the studio and any resources or props available in uni on that day.
My group decided to create advertising images for the brand 'Vans' as on of our group was wearing a pair, and we knew a few other people who were also wearing some. Therefore our initial ideas were shots featuring several pairs of Vans shoes. The Vans brand has a sporty, grimey image, often associated with skateboarding, alternative music scenes and urban culture. We wanted to try and communicate this in our images.