L'Oreal Brandstorm

So Uni and this competition have taken over my life for the past few weeks which has resulted in me being a reaaaalllly bad blogger!!

So I'm going to give a little update.

Yesterday was the L'Oreal Brandstorm competition 2011. The day began with the two teams being divided into two rooms- Team Manifest (My team consisting of myself, Rose Letley and Pippa Richardson) were placed in the larger room with 4 other teams, 2 of which were from Trent. We were first up and it went really well. The other teams were all really great too with some amazing ideas and research. Presentation skills were also very high!

We were lucky enough to get to the final 2!! (a team was picked from each room to go through to the final) This was amazing!

We went head to head on the evening and our presentation went without a flaw, although very nervous everyone said they couldn't believe how confident we were!!

Unfortunately, we came 2nd. Pierre said that he felt our presentation was a lot stronger but our idea wasn't quite what they were looking for. We got some amazing feedback, incredible in fact and although it was disappointing, I am so tired of this project at the minute the thought of doing it any longer than the University deadline on 27th May makes me want to cry in a corner!

I had an amazing day, this has been an amazing experience and something I am so proud of and will never forget!!

Here is a cheeky pic of us presenting

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Sorry about my absence

Things have been hectic and not going so great.

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Wildfox- again, I can't get enough!!

Sunshine

Is making everything better.

6 weeks and counting until I can fully enjoy it.

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Wildfox, 2011

Right now

This picture sums up how I feel about life (minus the dissertation). Things are going just perfectly.

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Sunday is a day of rest

Not so much when you have a dissertation to write and L'Oreal Professionnel Homme Presentation to create. Hmmm, I want to be a Wildfox girl, it looks fun.

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Wildfox

Spring 2011 jeans campaign. In a word- amazing

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I want long hair that covers my boobs and a stomach like this. p.s. loving the body paint!



These following images are my favourite kind... I love the use of the sun in images to naturally fade our areas. This is an effect we used when making our promotional video for our zine last year at Univesity (This is... Frankie) Check it out on my website: wix.com/meganjoanne/meganjoannegrant. I can't wait for uni to finish so I can play in the sun with my camera, aimlessly.

Me, in an illustration

So one of my best friend's Sarah drew a little picture of me in a letter during a sad time in my life last year to cheer me up.

I have since used the basis of this image as the starting point for some of my self-promotion work for our third year degree show at Nottingham Trent.

After a few hours of painting and some photoshop editing here is the finished piece. I took inspiration from Erin Petson.

Enjoy ♥

Tom Ford

I have blogged about this picture before, however I love it and realised, I have done a pretty shoddy attempt in my self-promotion work at recreating it. This girl, I personally think is amazing. So mine was never going to look as good. But, despite that, I still like it.

Enjoy

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Tom Ford


Megan Joanne Grant

A bit of Moss on a Saturday

For International women's day in 2008 Hedi Slimane released some black and white images of Kate Moss (yess.. b&W and Kate Moss, perfect combination if you ask me!) Seeing as it's mother's day tomorrow, I thought I'd post one in honour of all the Mums out there.

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I love the relaxed feeling of this photo, as if Kate is just sat, chilling in her gorgeous dress, looked up and that is the moment right there. Her facial expression is almost blank and dare I say gormless, however, she still looks breath-takingly gorgeous. Kate never fails to please.

This made me smile today...

Canard De Bain, 2007, Inflatable. Photo by S. Bellanger

Mark Enstone

We had our shoot today with Mark Enstone... it was brilliant.

Here is one of my favourite images of his. I think it's beautiful. I love smokey eyes and big (although arguably HUGE- maybe a bit extreme for me) blonde hair.

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Mark Enstone. www.enstone.net

L'Oreal Professionnel Homme

I don't think I've blogged about this yet, so here it goes!!

Myself and my two course mates Rose Letley and Pippa Richardson have been lucky enough to get down to the final 10 teams in the National finals of L'Oreal Brandstorm.

This is a competition that ultimately puts you in the position of a Brand Manager. This year our brief has been to create a male only product range and accompanying service. Due to it being a competition, I can't really reveal out concept until after May 3rd (D day). However I can give you a sneak peak at the direction of our campaign. We have our actual shoot tomorrow with Mark Enstone (enstone.net). I'm very excited to work with a professional photographer! However we did some test shots on Friday to work our executions as we don't want to waste Mark's time.

Below is an image I took. It's not been done on an SLR, just my little point and shoot camera, however, I love it. I think the shadow really adds something nice to the image.

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Behind the scenes

So here are a couple of pictures of Friday's self promotion shoot.

Model: Sarah Bonner and here you see Rose Letley playing photographer. The finished images were a combination of both of our photography and styling skills.

Enjoy

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Rose

Here is the shoot we did with my beautiful friend Rose Letley yesterday. Such gorgeous images (wouldn't work without a gorgeous model!!) I've been editing them today, I'm quite proud of the result.

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Me, myself and I.

So yesterday Rose, Bonner and myself took to the photography studio at trent and went snap happy! We wanted to do some self promotion shots:
1. Because they're good to have
2. So that we could get the swing of things before we put our concepts into place and are using models.

Here they are, enjoy.

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Colour Fun

Myself and my course mate Rose have just been discussing a potential photoshoot based around playing with makeup to create fantasy looks.

This obviously will not be in black and white!! Here is a moodboard of inspiration which I have just created. Enjoy.

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Paris

I went to Paris last February on a University trip. I do have a blog (oohh la la) which has a write up of my days. However, the whole trip was overshadowed by the appauling accommodation we had to stay in. I mean, if you look back at my blog to my travelling diary from the summer just past whilst in America, we often ended up staying in hotels. However, when we did stay in hostels, not a single one was as dirty as our Paris accommodation.

Anyway, I'm not here to moan!! I'm here to say, my memories of Paris are happy ones for totally wrong reasons (the laughs me and the girls had over how awful the situation we were in was), however today I came accross this photograph taken by myself whilst there.



I think this is beautiful, even if I do say so myself. I want to go back, but in the summer time, in a nicer accomodation and repaint my visions of Paris so that each one matches this!

I know my obsession with black and white photography might be getting a bit boring, but I'm going to keep going with it because I feel it makes everything stand out so much more for what it is.

Don't get me wrong, I love colour, I just think in certain circumstances it can be overpowering and controlling.

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Caged Animals

I really want to do a fashion shoot in a zoo.... I have this vision of girls in a monkeys cage in animal print, hanging from rubber rings, trees and generally being ANIMALS.

I may try this concept for my portfolio... need a willing zoo with an empty cage however!!

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here is some of my muse... sorry it's not a great moodboard, just quickly wanted to visualise it!

Black and White

In every sense. Beautiful photography by Robert Mapplethorpe.

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Smoking Hotttt

I have a thing about images of women smoking. I think it's beautiful.

I'm not normally a fan of Madonna but, I adore this image.

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Everything is better in black and white...

Including Zac Efron... even though I didn't think it was possible for him to get any better!!

Today I've been looking at black and white photographer for inspiration for the shoot that myself and my L'Oreal team will be doing within the next week.

Zac has been a good starting point.

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Bangers and Fash

Last night some of my friends on Graphic Design has their t-shirt's shown at an event in Nottingham's gorgeous bar, Eschucha.

The event names 'Banger and Fash' has ran successfully for the past few years. This year however Graphic Design at NTU used it as a fundraiser for their degree show. Each third year student was asked to design a tshirt and screen print it five times. It was very successful raising over £1000 and a fun evening was had by all.

Here are some of the t-shirt designs. Talent of the future.

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Disney Dream Portrait Series

So photographer Annie Leibovitz has teamed up with Disney to create a range of images based on the most famous Disney films.

I love this idea, I love Disney and so now I want to be in one!! The images feature a series of Hollywood hot name, such as Penelope Cruz starring in Beauty and the Beast. The photographs are being displayed at Disney theme parks, here is a selection of the one's I like best... Enjoy!

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Penelope Cruz and Jeff Bridges- Beauty And The Beast



Olympic champion swimmer Michael Phelps and actress Julianne Moore- The Little Mermaid



Marc Anthony and Jennifer Lopez- Aladdin



David Beckham- Prince Phillip, Sleeping Beauty

This is my favourite:



Queen Latifah- Ursula, The Little Mermaid

All images taken from: http://www.thescribesdesk.com/2011/03/03/disney-magic-annie-leibovitz-and-the-stars-of-hollywood/

All Man

I couldn't believe it when I came across this article on The Mail Online by Eleanor Harding. Andrej Pejic is a MALE womenswear model. An extremely beautiful male. Not beautiful in terms of Brad Pitt, but beautiful in terms of Angelina Jolie. Breath-takingly gorgeous.



She appeared at Couture Week in Paris, wearing a wedding dress created by Jean Paul Gaultier which impressed Rihanna so much that she wore it to the Grammy Awards.





At only 19 years old I think Andrej is going places. Andrej models both women's and menswear. This diversity will take his career from strength to strength if seen in a positive light.

I think that this is brilliant, deceptive yet genius. Unless told I don't see how anyone could ever tell that Andrej is male. He is, as said above beautiful.

Whilst sat thinking about this, I realised and, I am making a generalisation here but, because some female models are so uncontrollably skinny, they get stripped down to bare basics. We are presented with skin and bones and hair. When we die, as morbid as it is, we become skeletons. Now I argue that unless you are an expert, it is impossible to identify a person through their skeleton. Now models, are the closest example of a skeleton. Therefore, because Andrej is so slim, as are many female models the only way we identify their sexuality is by the way they are presented. By this, I mean, their hair, make-up, facial structure and facial hair. However, Andrej has quite clearly taken hormones to prevent facial hair growing. He also has a very chiseled jaw line and high-cheek bones. Two favoured qualities for models due to the shadows that can be created on photography. He has long hair, and, of course we do not see his genitalia. In terms of breasts, female models tend to be very petit and therefore often have little or no breasts. Out of clothes however, it is slightly more obvious that what Andrej possesses is not breasts.



However, despite this minor detail which is often hidden behind clothes. Andrej makes, in my opinion, a fantastic model. Although I will argue not a fantastic woman as I associate the word woman with curves. Woman to me says mum and mum to me says child-bearing hips. However, I believe his face is gorgeous. Well done that man.

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All images from Mail Online

Awaiting Your Arrival

Summer, please come. I want to shoot beautiful videos like this again.

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Still from video created for my Zine, last summer.

Dior

John Galliano...

What have you done?... I feel like Dior is slightly poisoned by your outrageous words.

Yes, he's been fired straight away. However, word association does not end that bluntly.

As I always say "The beautiful people usually have the ugliest personalities."



Dior Spring 2009 Collection.
A beautiful fantasy turned into the ugliest of nightmares

Denim Overdo

Do, this trend isn't doing a lot for me. Infact, nothing. Now, don't get me wrong, I love my denim hot pants, skinny jeans, shirt and jacket. But, I do not like them all together. No, no, no. This isn't something your average Jane can wear. These models look hooottt.... but, they also don't have the hips and curves to ruin their looks.

Special note on the make-up, KUDOS!! Red eye-shadow and nude lips? LOVE LOVE LOVE.

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Derek Lam (Vogue.com)

Today

I want to be back here.

Hurry up Summer.

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Miami, 2010.

22 cheers for 22 years

So on my 21st Birthday I wrote a list of things I wanted to do in the next 21 years, they were as follows

1. Ride an elephant
2. Kiss a seal
3. Go to Hawaii
4. Sail on a yacht
5. Go on roadtrip
6.Go to disneyland
7. Swim with dolphins
8. Go to a festival
9. Go skiing
10. Start a family
11. Buy a house
12. Buy a mini
13. Visit America again
14. Visit Thailand
15 Visit my sister in China
16. Take my mum somewhere amazing to show her how amazing she is
17. Sit front row at a fashion week (ha)
18. Mingle with some amazing stars
19. Go travelling
20. Skydive for alzheimer's (the disease which consumed and killed my father)
21. Show and tell the people who I love so much, just how much I love them for the next 21 years.

The things in bold are my completed tasks... not bad going in a year.

Plus I'm researching a trip to Thailand as we speak.

I'm excited for the next 20 years of completing these aims

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Happy Valentines...

I made this because I could, not because it means anything.

Because it's beautiful

By Erin Petson
A beautiful illustrator, an inspiration.