Terry Richardson Inspired Shoot!

This week I decided to do a shoot completely inspired by the fashion/celebrity photographer Terry Richardson. Actually, it's a bit more than just an inspired shoot because it was in fact a pastiche shoot.

Now, for anyone who isn't sure what I mean by 'pastiche'; it's essentially where you try and replicate another artist/photographer's work but by also adding in your own unique twist. The main thing I love about pastiche shoots is that you can gain so many ideas from the image you're studying that you can use in your own photography and it also feels so great if you manage to replicate an image convincingly!

I think it's probably best to start by telling you a bit about who Terry Richardson is. He is an American fashion photographer who has shot for so many different campaigns for people like Marc Jacobs, as well as this he has also done magazine editorials for GQ, Rolling Stone, Vogue and Vanity Fair. What inspires me about his images is that they all appear very stripped back compared to other photographer's work. He often uses a blank, neutral background so you have to focus on the model/celebrity's expression and body language which makes the images feel more exciting because it all feels more natural. I'm so unbelievably inspired by his work and I think it's fantastic! If you're interested in knowing more about him I'll put a link to his own website where he uploads images of all his recent shoots. The images are fantastic and if you're interested in portraiture or fashion photography then i suggest you give it a good ol' look! http://www.terrysdiary.com/

Anyways, on to the shoot itself! Now this is still part of my 'personal response' project I mentioned on an earlier blog post last week and I decided I wanted to portray a character as being quite cocky and arrogant. I spent a fair while on the internet trying to find an image that inspired me and I then came across a set of images of the actor, James Franco shot by...(yes you've guessed it) Terry Richardson! The shoot they did was I believe for GQ magazine but it was some time ago now so I'm not 100% sure how recent the shoot is. The images are fantastic and like I mentioned before they show a lot of expression and they are beautifully simplistic (to me anyway). Here are just a few of the images that inspired my shoot!

For my shoot, I chose to do a pastiche of the top-left image where James is holding his tie and showing a little bit of a smirk. I chose the image because that is exactly how I imagined my final image to look so really it was a no brainer! I also really love the strong, bold contrast in the images aswell. Now it's time to show you how I got on:

As you can probably tell I did get a bit carried away with the shoot and when I finished the pastiche I carried on and ended up with some really nice, crisp images. This was such a fun shoot and I'm definitely going to carry on and end up doing some more Richardson-inspired shoots; maybe with colour in the next ones but I guess we'll just have to wait and see!

I have done a couple more shoots recently but I'm still editing most of the final images and I'm also in the middle of planning a couple more shoots so I'll be sure to have them up in the next couple of weeks. In the meantime I hope you all enjoy the images.

Thanks for reading!