Men in Skirts

I was in the studio recently with Rosie Bertuello. The styling and concept is completely down to this girl.  This was just a test shoot but - I already love it! I can see it's going to progress and she is really on to something. 

Rosie approached me and asked me to photograph this for her. For part of my FMP I am exploring off-screen space within photography. So I took this opportunity to experiment with this. She wanted crops anyway to portray her concept and I wanted to see if offscreen space can compare in the studio with location. Now these are not edit so bare with me (Rosie wanted black and white so thats why they are currently):

Off-screen space is world that is existing or occurring beyond the frame (public view of knowledge). It is the space that is imagined and not seen by the audience which can relate to areas behind the camera, outside the edges of the frame or noises. These evoke curiosity in man as we automatically want to know what is in the extended scene and often try to create our own narrative. 

This was just a little experiment for myself to see how it works in the studio without the help of scenery. I love the shots and concept alongside and I do feel like I want to know the extension of the scene. However, I feel this idea of the extended scene works better on location with a surrounding that completely changes the fashion story.

While in the studio with my beautiful model in front of me, I took the opportunity to take some portraits: 

All my recent test shoots for Body London have been black and white, and with Rosie wanting black and white I just sort of followed suit and everything I am dong lately has followed too. However I do really love the odd colour edits I have achieved like the one above and the one shot in this post. I definitely need to push myself towards colour more, I'm getting too comfortable in a monochrome scene.

Model: Edvin @ SUPA

Styling: Rosie Bertuello

Photography: Jessica Gates

More Moths

Following on from my previous post experimenting with the Swallowtail Moth, I've been playing around with a different species. This time I chose the Elephant Hawk Moth (again this is what I got from google, so correct me if I'm wrong).  

Starting off with a few more from the previous moth:

And continuing with newer experiments, I made a different kaleidoscope pattern using a different moth. By copying, reflecting and layering the same image repeatedly I created this pattern; and then played around with layering further and photo manipulation:

Using the pattern above and the black and white pattern from my previous post I combined the two, to  create these further variations: 

All Imagery: Jessica Gates

More Testing

If you've passed by my recently you would have seen several posts on what I have been up to... I've been keeping myself very busy with model test shoots, here is an update with my latest:

Photograhy: Jessica Gates
Hair/Makeup: Chhimmi  Gurung
Styling: Emily Grimes

Today was spent...

...in the studio test shooting Joanna and Derrick from Body London. For this the agency wanted really clean images to show of the models and I wanted something raw and natural - being on the same wave length was a great start! 

Having done very little shooting for months; I got completely lost in it, my finger got extremely trigger happy and I took hundreds of photographs. This abundance of shots therefore results in a mega amount of retouching (making more work for myself as usual). The lights did their fair share too - we soon realised it was time for a break as a cloud of smoke emerged from the main light. 

I manages to get a few quick edits in whilst finishing up in the studio, stay tuned for more...

MUA: Hannah Spencer

Model: Joanna

Photography/Styling: Jessica Gates

Photography: Jessica Gates

Instant Newton

I am beginning to venture my interests further into instant photography as a result of my infatuation with film photography. I have been meaning to buy a Polaroid for some time now, and after writing this post and looking at these images I think I might just order do so straight away. Photographers often use the form of instant photography to test their shoots. The one off prints that develop in a matter of seconds from the click of the shutter allow photographers to preview a shoot before capturing final images. 

Helmut Newton has been for some time and I'm sure will remain one of my most adored practitioning photographers. Newtons book 'Polaroids' is a collection of his Polaroid test shots and after looking at these wonderful photographs, as well as purchasing my own Polaroid camera; I think I'll also buy the book.

Images: Helmut Newton