#2015BestNine

Now that Christmas is over and everyone has eaten more than they can handle this holiday season, it's time to start counting days and hours to the clock turning to a new year. It has been a big trend these past two weeks as we're getting close to starting the new year - every social media I opened I've been seeing people post their nine best pictures from 2015. I thought this was such a lovely idea and a quirky way to reflect on the year. I have decided to share a little personal side of my life here and show you my highlights of this year.

Market Visual Awareness Project | Part One

As a part of my FCP course, just before we broke up for Christmas, we were given a new 'summative brief', which will be marked. The brief is to continue the trend category from our 'formative group brief' and create an individual report in a 16 or more page magazine style on In Design . Following our last trend category, which as I've mention on a few of my previous posts has been Denim. Picking out a sub-category for that, I have a chosen to focus on distressed denim for this project. The project has been divided into 3 categories, retail, cultural and our communication. Since I don't have a lot of experience with working on In Design, I decided to start as early as possible so that I have enough time to perfect it when it comes to working on the magazine. My last post was of course of me making my sketchbook covered in denim fabric to anchor the theme. Now I have collected images as research and chosen my images to visually analyse for part 1 of the project.

Cara for TopShop S/S15 Ad Campaign

Kowsley Safari Park

Have you ever driven through a safari with your own car? You know those days when you're going through old folders of random pictures on your computer? Well, today was the day I decided to clean my computer of random things that wasn't serving me or the space on it. To my surprise, I found some old pictures that were taken at Knowsley Safari Park in Lancashire. My mom, her friend and I went there for a day out a few months ago and I took these pictures to go into my project for A Levels but I'd 'lost' them until now. I thought, since I didn't get to put them in my project, I'd share pictures of some cute animals that I came across on my adventure. 

We drove through the safari with our car, looking at all the animals living their everyday lives. I remember we drove through the baboon section, which is an option because these baboons jump and break things on your car and will sit on your windscreen until you drive through their section. A wonderful experience but it did cost us a wiper! Lions walk right by your car but unfortunately, the day we went, they were all lazy and slept as we drove past them. After the drive, there a small cafe and gift shop to browse through. It was such a bizarre yet wonderful experience and I'd recommend anyone that lives in England or visits for longer than a few days to check this place out.

I'm happy I found these pictures because I had completely forgotten we ever went there! Brought back such fond memories. 

The Ultimate Christmas Playlist

MVK's Kala Pranjali

DIY Distressed Denim

Nottingham Fashion Market

Now that it's officially December, there are a lot of interesting places to visit on the lead up to Christmas. Over the weekend I had the wonderful opportunity to go experience the Nottingham Market. I heard about this through University and decided to go have a look. The market was held over three days on the 4th, 5th and the 6th of December in the well known Lace Market. The main idea behind it was to bring, up and coming designers and brands under one roof to display their products "in a carefully curated and beautifully presented setting". The area is particularly known for its unique fashion outlets. This was the first time I have been to the Lace Market and the 'Nottingham Market' was definitely the best way to step into Nottingham's fashion finest.  

Denim Street Style | Trend Report

As a part of my course, I went on a street style shoot trying to find people A/W15 trends on denim. 

Here are some of these photos. 

Does Levis Stick To Trend?

Today we had our first formative university presentation. It was focused on the brand Levis and whether or not it was on trend. This presentation followed a series of others focused mainly on trend. The reason my group and I chose Levi's is because our category was Denim. My last blog post also follows suit with street style photography on Denim. We saw a lot of raw hems, rips, holes, distressed denim and we wanted to see how that translated from both retail and street to a brand. Levis is of course extremely well know because the man who started the company - Levi Strauss is who invented jeans, so what better brand than Levi's? 

Fashion Photoshop.

 Throughout my life I have been a very creative person and with that comes learning about digital creativity. I have always been exposed to photoshop and it's tools. I mainly used it for the everyday touch up with lighting, selecting different parts of the photo that I didn't like or to change or remove something, but now that I'm on the FCP course, the usage of digital editing software has been heightened. We have recently been introduced to colour strips, colour stories, changing of colour to match the theme etc. Here is some of my work. Im really glad I'm back in the roll using photoshop and I'm excited to be learning new things and techniques that I am sure will come in handy in the near future. 

Fashion Conformity & Rebel

Tim (Our lecturer) was talking about how fashion has a way for confirming and rebelling over the years. As an example, he used the classic suit. It, throughout history has been conforming, and signifying a certain stereotype. Common denotations associated with it are, power, structure, strong, crisp, which are all words that are also used to describe a man, but Marlene Dietrich was one those rebels who removed sexuality or body stereotyping and wore whatever she pleased. She was known as one of the first celebrity, who was extremely contradicted for what she wore. She chose to wear a suit to places where all women were expected to wear dresses and look pretty. 

Pre Arrival To University

I have now officially started University! Its been a crazy busy with freshers week. I am absolutely in love with my course Fashion Communication and Promotion. It's exactly what I expected and everything I want to be doing. Before the course started, we were all sent a brief to start on a pre arrival task, where we had to explore and identify with examples of what we feel Fashion Communication and Promotion touch points. What and who, in our opinion, is translating, projecting, exploring fashion codes in an exciting or innovative way. Here are some of my examples from a range of different media.

For my digital example, I chose three of my favourite bloggers from different social media platforms like Instagram, YouTube and Blogging websites. Clothes encounters, SunbeamsJess and TessChristine. I think they are communicating fashion in an exciting and innovative way as the platform they are showcasing their style on has come up to light very recently. 6 years ago no one would buy clothes because someone on the internet said they liked it. However, in todays world, blogging is one of the biggest ways to market and promote a brand or product. I personally love these individuals because of their style or communicating. For example, SunbeamsJess isn't like any other girl on youtube who does a haul showing what she bought, in fact Jess showcases her love of fashion through lookbooks, where she has to find the perfect backgrounds, music and style of shooting that expresses her theme for the video. Tess on the other hand, is also a blogger but I have chosen to focus on her Instagram account as everything on there is also thought about; The layout, the theme etc. This picture for example, she wants to display her recent outfits, which is showcasing her opinion on the latest trend but it is a picture of Polaroid's. Polaroid's are a big trend this year anyway and mixing them together to them post as in Instagram is quite innovative.

A - Level Photography

I have recently been in the process of putting together my creative portfolio with my best photography, textiles and media work. These were the subjects I'd taken at A-Level. Now that i'm done, I wanted to share my work on here. You will notice a common model who is my best pal, Erin. She is a professional model so who better to use than her? All the images are from a variety of projects and themes. You can also see a clear improvement in my photograph over the two years. This has given me such strong foundation to the photography I might need to do at University. 

Distortion. 

Oslo, Norway

Hello everyone! 

I know its been a while since I posted any updates but I have some exciting news and pictures to share with you. After four years of travelling, moving schools and colleges, I have officially finished and passed my A levels! (HSC/PUC or whatever you want to call it) with flying colours and have gotten into my first choice uni at Nottingham Trent University to study Fashion Communication and Promotion. To celebrate my achievement, my mother surprised me with tickets to Norway! She had to visit Norway for two weeks on work and I tagged along. 

My two weeks in Oslo was spent visiting all the local locations while mom was at work and and on the weekends, we would go to all the tourist attractions. It was possibly one of my favourite holiday I've ever been on. 

Here are some pictures I'd like to share with you 

A - Levels Exhibition

I have officially received my grades from A-Levels and I've done extremely well! I am so proud of myself as I've gotten into my dream University with this. I wanted share some photos of my work from the last two years. I have made some really cool stuff if I say so myself but then again I am biased, so you'll have to be the judge. I hope you like it. 

This all things I made in my Textiles lessons 

My best friend Erin Parkes wearing the corset I made

This is a lamp shade I made out of plastic and Indian yarn

Wall hanging inspired Australian aboriginal dot works with embroidery on top

Media studies posters, articles, CD covers

Photography Exhibition of sketchbooks, art work, dress, photobook

Dress made out of photos

Sanjana

xo

Happy Medium Photography

Over the last three weeks I've been in india for some visa work to go back to the UK. It so happened that it came in the right time as we got given our new photography project brief. We had to pick our own topic and photograph it; contrary to older projects, where we got given the topic. I chose mine on education in india. I've spent my time here at a range of different places setting up photoshoots. The local food market, farm,  factory etc. I wanted these pictures to be the best they possibly can look, as it's the last project before I finish A-levels for good. This is half of my final grade for the year. Taking these pictures, my plan is to make a photography journal book, which will be called 'Happy Medium'. Almost like a newspaper article about education in India but in a journal form. I will write all the articles and create the book myself. I am really looking forward to seeing how it will all come together. I hope you like some of the pictures I have chosen from these shoots.  

Inspiring Museums

Snow day

Hello lovely readers,

It's been snowing in Sheffield! I know, how exciting! Now, if you're one of those people who moan about the snow because 'it disrupts everything or its too cold' then i'm sorry, but we can't be friends. 

Nah, I'm only kidding. Seriously though, how can anybody not like the snow? It's so magical.