Sunday 12 May 2013

Brief 6 : Beth Owen

I've been having regular meetings with the photographer Beth Owen discussing her personal branding and putting together a concept to brand her as a person.

"Beth Owen is a fashion based photographer specialisig in studio portraiture and the behind the scenes documentation of fashion based events. Since starting her degree in Photography during Septemeber 2010 Beth has developed her style from studio fashion to clean and contemporary portraits. Collaborating with a number of fantastic creatives along the way has allowed her to develop this bright and unqiue style. Beth began photographing backstage at fashion shows in 2011 and since then has worked behind the scenes at shows around the country. Her most recent role was as one of two committee photographers at Leeds RAG Fashion Show producing promotional material prior to the event and capturing the action back stage on the big night! This exposure has lead to the photographers work being published in several local magazines and newspapers as well as the new up and coming magazine URBAN COCO and TATLER online. After graduating Beth hopes to continue working in the studio producing fresh new portraits for publications as well as continuing her backstage work documenting the even bigger fashion shows!

The project displayed at Beths final exhibition, prior to graduation, comes from her new passion for portraiture. The underlying concept is the representation of faith and religion with a unique and contemporary twist. Beth chose to create the portraits with very subtle iconography so that the audience could interpret the work in their own way. The still lives shown in this print support the portraits to create a body of work around the artists interest in the topic. Beth took initial inspiration from the shapes and sights at York Minster before further researching into religion all over Europe and how the same religion differed visually in individual countries. The photographers main focus was to create aesthetically pleaseing images in her own unique style that captured the audiences imaginations and allowed them to interpret the series how ever they chose."

The concept I started to think about was what does behind the scenes mean?, what is behind the scenes photography, and how can this be portrayed through her branding. After meeting Beth alot and discussing some of the idea's I've been having I think I've really started to understand who she is and whats shes about.







Behind the scenes, is a sneak preview of something yet to be revealed, a snippet, a snapshot a quick glimpse of something you may not necessarily are meant to see. Her work is very vibrant and studio shots reflect this with vibrant colours and photographs that are positive and deal a lot with portraiture and photographing people. When you can see any form of subject in full view you are seeing 100% of it, I started calculating what a behind the scenes, a snippet/quick glimpse of something would be as a percentage, I think to quickly catch something with your eye 30% or less is an accuracte predicition. I started experimenting with an idea of removing thirty percent from the typeface otama.