Fraikin's Friday Fashion Photo Booth (4) - A hint of aviation

Heading into a long week-end and I'm wearing a mix of fabrics, with two key seasonal themes: aviation & navy.

Black satin jacket with pilot's wings brooch, skinny jeans, chunky hoody from Superdry, striped scarf and Marc by Marc Jacobs boots

Visual analogy database

Call me lazy, but instead of doing the thinking,  I'd love to be able to type the name of an object in a database, hit enter and be served with a list of things of a similar shape.

Rope would get your these results: snake, wire, hair, hose, ... and so on.
Maybe this could be a user-managed database since each object would be defined compared to another one (and not only to a trait).

What for? Visual analogy is one of the methods used in advertisement. Finding those never-seen before combos requires not to think logically but purely by association of shape, use, effect...

Delifrance, Ready to bake at home

I found a rather interesting document: "A Computational Model for Visual Metaphors" from German and Indians researchers and I quote:  

"Perceptual similarity seems to play a major role in the generation and interpretation of visual metaphors: Two conceptually different objects are associated with each other due to their similar appearance. Based on this new alignment, conceptual properties of the source can be transferred and applied to the target, which enables a completely new, metaphoric interpretation of the target. In this paper, we suggest a formal framework to analyze metaphorical relations: HDTP (Heuristic-Driven Theory Projection) computes an interpretation via a mapping based on common facts describing the visual appearance. Afterwards it transfers conceptual properties."

Now I need to find out what came out of that...
To be continued.

Blissfully shielded...

When I look for images for professional communications, I usually look on stock photography sites like Getty Images, Corbis, even Shutterstock (for anything but portraits). But you know, today, I searched in Google images again and it wasn't pretty. When looking for a "team of workers" (yes, I know) I found so many wrong, dubious, completely irrelevant images. A picture of naked team workers (posing to boost morale of the team), one of Mr T, a french pit bull with hair extensions...

If however I would find a suitable image on via Google Images, I'm not sure I'd be able to use it because of copyrights. How do you find the owner of an image posted on the web (loose from any personal Facebook/Flickr/DeviantART/... account)? I have been contacting people in the past years about the use of their images. Most of the time, people are very happy to allow you to use them for a token amount of money. With the prices of the big stock photography site, you shouldn't hesitate if it's the image you really want.

On the other side, it made me wish Corbis and the likes had a 'snapshot' library for those day to day, good but not that great images. Badly framed, underlit/overlit, wrong composition, wrong people...  Ok, Flickr might be a better place to find those but their search engine is nowhere compared to that of Getty for example (search on viewpoint, number of people, location, ...)

To find what I want, I might have to go shoot those snapshots myself. Ah well.
There's worse things in the world, like some spam e-mail claiming I shouldn't waist time at University... I wonder why.

Fraikin's Friday Fashion Photo Booth (3) - Back to black

I've worn loads of black in the past. And I've thrown away loads of black clothes but this black leather pleated skirt, I could never bring myself to get rid of it. Boy, am I glad! And since leather is at the top of the must-have fabrics this winter... How to do black (again)

Black leather pleated skirt, Belstaff boots, black turtle neck sweater, Vivienne Westwood red trench, chunky wool snood & leopard print fingerless mittens from TopShop

On empathy & photography

I've seen a lot of different people in front of my lens. Lately, due to the type of work I'm doing, they're not experienced, therefore not confident.
I can guess that for other photographers, it's a source of bother but I'm really enjoying this. It requires a lot of empathy and it seems to come as a second nature to me when I'm behind the camera. I love how you need to guide them, show them, bring them over to the fun side of it. Oh, I know it's not easy. I wouldn't want to stand on that side of the lens either. Maybe what I say to my models is what I would tell myself if I was in their place. Or what I wish the photographer would say to make me feel better.

When I see them get into it, it's a glorious feeling of achievement, and I know that the picture will be worth it because the model is enjoying being there and feels at ease.

I've heard horrible stories from models, about having hours long shoots and having to do all kinds of ridiculous things for a result of... one good photograph. Come on. When you see the sparkle go out of your model's eyes, you know you should have quit already.

So this is it. Read your models, feel what they feel and put yourself in their shoes. I believe it works better than the Hollywood stereotype of the "impatient fashion photographer who shouts at everybody on the set". Of course, if it's an expensive experienced model who can't do her job and wastes everybody's time: I might be like that too.

Whatever works for you of course, for me, I think empathy is a must.

Fraikin's Friday Fashion Photo Booth (2) - Summer's back?

Today, 22°. Amazing weather for an 8th of October. So it kinda felt like a last chance at wearing summer-like clothes so there you go!

Sarah Pacini beige thin sweater with TopShop military brooch (bringing in a bit of Fall trends here), McQ harem pants & MiuMiu wedges (will miss them during winter)

Petit Gateau's amazing creations

These were taken at Petit Gateau's stand last week-end at a bridal fair in Antwerp. I worked with Petit Gateau for my latest project "Let her eat cake" 

 

Petit Gateau:  http://www.petitgateau.be/

Today on my desk - Vogue 90 ans d'exces

Ok, better late than never. I know you lot had it when it was still warm from the presses... And yes, alright, I confess, I'm an Elle girl so I didn't :-)

But I couldn't miss the Vogue anniversary edition could I? Well, I can't tell you much about it though.  Save that I've waded through the first 50 pages of ads and that's all the time I had then.

Must add reading Vogue to my to-do list.

Louise Night 30/09

Last night I was at the Louise Night for an evening of shopping in the fanciest neighborhood of Brussels. I would have loved to be at the Fashion Night Out in London in September, but this kind of satisfied my need for fashion & bubbles!
As my tweet said yesterday "#TodayImWearing Gap beige military roll up cotton pants, brown heeled hiker boots, white shirt and @Burberry aviator jacket ♥" and so I was.

What I loved about it was the atmosphere in every shop, people talked, shop assistant to customer, customer to customer, very relaxed, no rush, no push. Chanel was brilliant, got nails done there and grabbed one of the limited edition "Khaki brun" polish, perfect fit with the aviator jacket. I also got a darkblue Mayfair Hackett tie for my boyfriend who sadly couldn't be present. I also visited the brand new Burberry shop, it has a nicer collection than the one in Antwerp but still pales in comparison with those in London.

I've not been in every shop/venue. There were about three hundred locations and that was a bit much for a few hours. Especially if you're having a drink in every shop (make a mental note for the next edition: rent a room at the Sofitel, have champagne in every shop and have midnight food in the Crystal Lounge)

Great initiative, we want more!