Recently Vicki Dixon, Head of the School of Fashion, and Gavin Hewitt, Fashion Photography teacher, ventured with 20 Fashion School students into the dramatic landscape of Castle Hill for a fashion photography workshop.

The group was accompanied by four models and a variety of outfits, sympathetic to the landscape, which Vicki had selected.

Gavin had previously been working on the principles of fashion photography with the students and this was a chance for them to put the theory into practice. The object of the excursion was to give students the opportunity to learn the ropes about setting up and completing a ‘location’ shoot. “This exercise was designed to give students a supported opportunity to find out what it is like to set up for a shoot in a public place,” said Vicki. “Doing such a shoot in a place such as Castle Hill has the potential to offer challenges such as sharing the environment with the multitude of tourists who were also there, competing for the best spots to take shots.”

Students worked as a team but each individual within the team had three set tasks to complete, focusing on creating great compositions with their model and the landscape. One task involved levitation photography, which meant setting up shots with the model appearing to be defying gravity by being off the ground. A few well chosen props went with the group such as a stool, which would eventually be photoshopped out of the images. I’ll never believe what I see ever again when it comes to fashion images in magazines! Another task involved multiplicity photography: taking many images and then photoshopping them together to create a single image which ‘sells’ a single idea. How clever is that!

School of Fashion student, Georgie Hensley-Smith said that she really valued the time the students had at Castle Hill. “I came away feeling more confident in my abilities to operate a camera, pose models and work as a team.” Fellow student, Fin Currie added: “This trip really opened up the communication in the class and we benefited from each other’s input and experience.”