Blog
Miss Aniela is coming to Tallinn to hold a workshop on fashion photography (11.02.2016)
On Thursday April 7th 2016 Miss Aniela, a photographer from Great-Britain holds a fashion photography workshops in Tallinn. We asked her to shortly introduce her views on today’s fashion photography and talk a little about what is going to happen in her workshop.
Miss Aniela does not doubt that being aware of fashion trends benefits the photographer. The more the photographer understands the different eras of the fashion history, the more deftly they can help infuse their intentions into the looks in the images. But she also believes that it is possible to allow the stylist's knowledge and expertise take over in that regard and simply let the photographer be the person with the camera who is making the end image of that styled subject. The photographer is still the one who has a conception and who leads the creative process. Miss Aniela is the mix of both. She is interested in fashion and she also lets the stylist know about her expectations. Miss Aniela and her producer partner Matt make moodboards, briefs, storyboards to help get what we want on a shoot, but they also welcome the specific industry knowledge that comes from stylists and designers who then work on their starting point and help polish the final result.
In her workshop, Miss Aniela focuses on styling and photography. She is going to explain how ideas are born, how moodboards and briefs come together, as this is all part of the shoot as well as the practical techniques. Whilst shooting she will then hope to demonstrate what is going through her mind and how she relates to this and that camera angle and lighting. She is also going to talk about post-processing the images.
In this workshop, the teacher would like the participants to watch the process without shooting themselves. She believes that this is the way participants benefit the most from what they are seeing. The reason for this is that her stationing of the camera and lighting lends itself well to one person shooting, rather than multiple shooters. 'Paparazzi style' shooting on workshops has limited benefits and inhibits the participants' attention on fully understanding the process that is being explained.
The shooting location most definitely influences the photographer’s thinking and final results. When Miss Aniela sees images of the location beforehand, she is already thinking in terms of creating an image which suits the venue and taking a certain level of inspiration towards the actual brief for the image. During the shoot, she may be further inspired to use props or murals in the location which would affect the result even further. And then in post-production, she continues to interpret the location; its architecture, colours, details, in her choice of frames, stitching, composition etc - to make a result that is both a pleasing shot of the model and of her environment.
Miss Aniela and her partner Matt are fairly in tune with what inspires them both. They take ongoing inspiration from the work that inspires many others, such as fairytales, beautiful big dresses and the usual dramatic feminine flair you see in fashion. But what characterises their evolution is the feeling of being regularly drawn to the cutting edge of new ideas and things that have not been 'done before'. For example in her Surreal Fashion series she felt drawn to doing something she had not previously seen, which was to take elements of classic paintings to infuse directly into her compositions. Also, it is odd to have a series of images that have in their captions both the fashion team credits and the fine-art print dimensions, as she did with her series. Trying to please both fine-art and fashion conventions could be off-putting to both, and confuse gallerists and fashion world alike. However, Miss Aniela follows her instincts to do both. Matt and she do not follow the fashion world with any sense of obligation to trends or labels, they always follow their own sense of what can make a dramatic image.
