TMA1431 Creative Studio: Micro Project- Sport 1

After much consideration of the direction of my commercial portfolio, i have decided to create a series of work based around the ideas of fashion and sport. This idea has steamed from a response to how i have personally felt throughout Covid-19. As something i discovered throughout this time is how important sport is as a role in my life, which i was very unaware of before Covid-19 and took very much for granted, especially have continuously grown up around sport and fitness e.g. figure skating, dance, cheerleading and the gym. I have always assumed that that something i was heavily interested in besides photography was fashion, however once the choice to participate in sport was taken away from me during lockdown, i began to see a dramatic decline in my mental and psychical health, and that fashion began to slowly no longer matter to me anymore. However was this due to not being allowed anywhere so fashion therefor was irrelevant or does my mental and psychical wellbeing have a connection to my Exterior motives. This has sparked my concept for my project in exploring the relationship between fashion and sport, and how advertisement campaigns play on both exterior and interior motives of humans for personal gain.

images 1-4: Masters, C. (2021) Hollie Baldwin. [Photograph] Huddersfield.

With this in mind my first step was taking to reach out to people i know who participate in sports regularly that would be interested in being involved in my projects research. For this micro project I have simply taken portraits of participant Hollie Baldwin a cyclist and fashion enthusiast, in an outdoor environment that she would usually cycle. Being normally studio based, taking imagery outside with natural light is out of my comfort zone, however is something i wanted to challenge myself with for this module. my intent is to use the outdoors to adapt and enhance my speed when setting up my camera settings and adapting to different lighting conditions. For this shoot with Hollie, I have learnt that in order to make my images more visually stimulating, I could use a slower shutter speed to capture more motion in the images. I have also taken advantage of this shoot to consider posing and introduce fashion items into the imagery. Overall this project was a success in creating a starting point for my research of creating work outdoors instead of in a studio setting.