A profile is a feature story which focuses on a person or a subject and what's important or interesting about that at that moment. For example, the journalist Gay Talese did a famous profile of Frank Sinatra, called "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold" and spoke to the singer's entourage since Sinatra would not grant an interview.

Feature articles provide readers with a written analysis of a certain topic. These articles are intended to serve readers with the writer's interpretation of a story, unlike news stories, which simply provide the facts. Feature articles appear in several different forms

Feature stories aren't defined so much by subject matter as they are by the style in which they're written. In other words, anything written in a feature-oriented way is a feature story.

Like a newspaper feature, a magazine feature is delivered in a style that is more entertaining or thought-provoking, weaving a story, even when delivering the news.

I researched articles that Vice Magazine covered. In the press lately there has been a lot of talk about A.I .(Artificial Intelligence), and how high end jobs like banks and law firms etc, are using this to help recruit their job candidates. The reason why they are doing this is to avoid unconscious bias against race, disability, religion etc as well as saving man hours sifting through unsuitable C.Vs. Unconscious biases are social stereotypes about certain groups of people that people don’t realise they hold. It made me think about stereotypes that we still perceive :one of them being that a house wife should be a women and a butler should be a man. Because my model had long hair, his looks were quite androgynous so I thought it would be interesting to show him in a stereotypically female role as a 1950’s house wife and the perceived male role of a butler. I thought this would be the kind of subject that Vice would use as a profile feature.

Earlier this year I watched Marvellous Mrs Maisel on Amazon Prime TV. It’s about a house wife living in New York City in the 50s. Everything about this programme is very stylised. And the imagery stayed in my mind. 

While I was researching I found images of Doris Day, she was a Hollywood icon famous for her wholesome, girl-next-door image in the 50s and early 60s. I found this picture and compared it to one of Mrs Maisel. Looking at both photos I see a sense of fun, full of energy and light heartedness while also looking glamorous. The poses they both do in the images is something I wanted to capture in my shot.   

For my inside spread, I wanted to contrast the light hearted, fun housewife with a serious and formal butler. 

   

Lighting Styles 

Light and Bright to show fun and movement, a colourful background that is lit 

Dark and sombre for the butler. 

Light the face and suit while behind slowly blending it into the background.

Phrase one camera 

Elinchrome Octagonal soft box

Elinchrome Rectangular soft box 

Phase one camera 

Tripod 

18mm lens 

Turquoise background 

Elinchrom twin lighting stands 

Elinchrom ELC Pro HD 500 Flash Heads

Hair curlers 

Make- up ( foundation and lip gloss)

Apron 

Dress 

Morning suit 

white shirt

hair brush with hair tie 

floral scarf

White butler gloves 

black tie

Scarf 

Blue cleaning gloves 

Wash cloth 

Beforehand I did a test shoot at home to see what props and poses would work for my shots. 

All the props and costumes which I later put it in a suitcase dividing the outfits between two sides for the different shots, along with my test shoots that I’m going to show my model and studio assistant.  

At the shoot I showed the model and the assistant the photos of my test shoot, as well as the poses and style I wanted to capture. This enabled them to help create it, as well as understand what I was asking them to do. By doing this I saved time explaining what poses and style for my shot.     

4 Hair/ make up styles ​​​​​​​

Mood boards 

Before the shoot, I did a test run at home to see how long it took for my subject to change into two different outfits and how much time I had to shoot. 

My first outfit fitted my subject perfectly and I had all the props too

I managed to successfully change his character.

During my shot, I played Doris Days song ‘Que Sera Sera’ to help bring light heartless to the shoot while also trying to relax my subject and get them in the mood.  

Beforehand I did a test shoot at home to see what props and poses would work for my shots, this enabled me to prep all the props and costumes which I later put it in a suitcase dividing the outfits between two sides for the different shots. 

After my test shoot, I printed out my photos so I could show my model and studio assistant the poses and style I wanted to capture. This enabled them to help create it quickly, as well as understand what I was asking them to do.

On the day I arrived to find that the studio space where I supposed to be shooting, was empty and nothing was set up like I had thought. I also had no one to help as my other two group

members were late. This meant I had to set it up all on my own and it ate into my time slot. 

We didn’t have enough time to do any of my butler shots. 

I struggled to get the camera to focus with each shot, which made it stressful. 

The settings I had estimated would work, were either overexposed or underexposed. 

3 What would you do differently? 

I would arrive at the studio an hour earlier to set up so that I won’t lose time shooting.

I would spend more time getting to know my equipment beforehand.

The test shoot I did beforehand I did with a different idea, but I had to abandon this due to no props being used. Next time I will make sure that if my idea changes, to do a test shoot before the final shoot so that I know my settings and shots I want beforehand. 

We had been briefed on being early for our shoots so that we can set up, however I forgot this and learnt the hard way.