Last year, when college still meant walls, studios and students at their desks I was teaching a class on Editorial styling. I wanted to create a few demo shoots for my students to understand the on-ground aspects of styling a fashion shoot like makeup, accessories, lighting, posing, etc. I had created a series of Contemporary art jewellery primarily to place them in the context of fashion photography to aid me in that effort. While the ideas had been brewing in my mind for a while, I had very little time to make them. However, I had fun designing, making and working with (student) models and photographers on the shoot. In this post, I would like to show the shoot that we did with Wilson’s bird of paradise jewellery.
Wilson’s Bird-of-Paradise
The first time I came across a Bird of Paradise flower was at Amanavana in Coorg. I was fascinated by its colours and its magical bird like form. Little did I know then, that a bird of the same name would later inspire me as well.
Cicinnurus respublica or Wilson’s bird of paradise is found in New Guinea. The male is super colourful while the female has a brown colour body with a coloured head. The male’s colour is not only in his feathers but also in his skin which makes it even more striking. The rain forest is lush and filled with fruits consumed by these birds. This means that the females are able to raise their chicks by themselves giving them an upper hand in deciding who they want to mate with. Therefore, the male bird puts on a show, a mating dance to express how extraordinarily colourful he is. The female watches with a critical eye, often disapproving as the male puts more effort into wooing her. Take a look at the Youtube video from Cornell Lab of Ornithology to see all the colours.
Wilson’s Bird-of-Paradise jewellery
My inspiration to representation in this piece of contemporary art jewellery is direct. I used the colours and textures of the bird in my necklace. I wanted to focus on softness and vibrancy as the primary qualities. The piece also must be light like the bird’s feather. Dyed cocoons and soft poly-cotton dori seemed like the best materials for the same. If you remember my cocoon jewellery experiments, then you would recollect that I had a lot of unused cocoon in my stash. I strung them using jute yarn and finished knotting inside the cocoons to make the piece secure. This eliminated the clasp and made the piece seamless.
Fashion photography
This Fashion photography shoot was actually for a makeup workshop that was a part of the class. We did one look on a female model which was classical and poetic. To show contrast the MUA MS. Wan Shazia and I thought we could do a bold look on a male model who was a student from the same class. We kept the clothing basic – high waisted trousers and a white and black tshirt worn back to front. The photographer Ms. Prerna Kolluri was another one of my students (from a different class).
The shoot with Wilson’s bird of paradise jewellery was so fun. It was mainly because of the model Ritu Raj. Had he not been willing to pose in crazy dance like poses I could have never achieved what I had in mind. Instead of obsessing about the concept we just went with the flow and did whatever seemed right. I stopped directing after a point. The bird or its dance did not matter then, just the experience of shooting fashion.
Since this was a last minute shoot, there were a lot of spur of the moment decisions being made. From my experience I can safely say that, when you work with a student team there is going to be a lot of surprises. But you can get a lot done in a short time and learn a few tricks too – not just teach them.
Credits
Make up – Wan Shazia
Model – Ritu Raj
Photographer – Prerna Kolluri
Concept, Creative direction and jewellery – Divya N
I hope you found it interesting
Cheers
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