For this photoshoot, I wanted to explore capturing the essence of Taylor Swift's 'reputation' album through props and atmosphere. A lot of the existing album imagery revolves around portraits and images of Swift herself, however at the same time, the album holds a lot of themes and motifs circling around certain objects, aesthetics, feelings, and lighting.

 

I used a range of props such as - bags, sunglasses, red lipstick, and snake jewellery to explore a scene which plays with the idea of luxury and fame - particularly the sunglasses which I thought could symbolise the way Swift hid away during this album's era and wanted the shield herself from the media and public. The snake is also an important feature as that is what Swift was called at this time and instead of letting it get to her, she embraced it and filled the album and era with a strong theme of snakes. 

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I used a mirrorball, candles, and typical 'new year's day' imagery to resemble the song with that title. I wanted to capture smoke coming from a purse to explore the idea of the truth leaking out and also the way that a purse is supposed to hold your belongings safe where as with smoke coming from it, she got burned in places meant to be the safest, I think it has also a strong feminine energy that shows she is not weak. 

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Additionally, I placed flowers onto the strings of my electric guitar to resemble the idea of her finding her voice, the white flowers symbolise the way the public expected her to be fragile and gentle but laid on top of something loud that makes a lot of noise changes the idea of fragility as a weakness to fragility as a strength. 

For lighting and set up, I created a small white backdrop with paper and curved a piece on top to create an infinity curve, I also used the vinyl inserts as a background as they have the newspaper effect that I wanted to capture, I also had a few vinyl records in the back to create depth and added texture and pattern. One thing I struggled with was making sure the entire frame was covered with the white backdrop and in some shots I did miss this and had to crop the image, but when I noticed it, I did add extra paper and made the background as big as I could.

 

With lighting, I used the torch on my phone as my main light source as I was doing this in the dark and natural lighting was not an option nor did I want to use that for these images. I experimented with a number of different lighting techniques such as, silhouette, rim, split lighting, and overhead lighting. I wanted to create interesting shadows and harsh light/dark areas. I feel like I achieved this, however, in the studio i'm sure I'll be able to better capture this aesthetic. I also used objects such as the mirrorball and a textured glass jar to create interesting light patterns and add texture and depth.

 

I found it hard to create well exposed images as it was so dark I had to use a very high ISO of 6400 which did make me worry about the grain in the images but after seeing them, the grain isn't noticeable. I also used a low aperture of f4.5 to create a shallow depth of field as the images are quite busy, I wanted to pull focus onto certain objects. Specifically the candles were hard to photograph as the scene was so dark and the camera was set for that, therefore with bright candles, they appeared overexposed, this is when I experimented with using the flash, I thought it would help me gain one exposure over the whole image which it did. The candle lights and objects were all visible in the image and I think with editing I can reduce the exposure on these images to create what I wanted with everything well exposed. 

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I did experiment with using a tripod at one point so I could have a slow shutter speed of 1 second and play with zoom bursts and motion blur and while these images did turn out okay, I felt that the tripod was limiting what I could capture and the angles that I could reach. I also felt that motion wasn't the right style for this photoshoot and wanted to focus more on harsh light and dark shadows. The tripod and shutter speed of a second also allowed me to lower the ISO to 200 briefly as the shutter let a lot more light into my photos, however again, the limitations of the tripods movement made it harder for me to capture the shots and angles I wanted and therefore, resorted back to a high ISO.

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Overall I think this photoshoot went well and I am happy with the final images, I found creating a small studio at home interesting and is definitely something I want to try again and hopefully get better at.