As fashion creators, ELKBI ‘brews’ unique textile craft brews, standing against the swash of high streets uniform fashion creations. At Elkbi we strive to avoid excising trends, but rather innovate and create trend; blending with our unique brand ethos to design ethical and local fashion, hand illustrated, silk screen printed items, coupled with rare techniques to produce un-paralleled fashion for the trend aware fashion shopper, without the huge price tag that normally goes hand in hand with bespoke style. We produce textiles from Scotland, our home and where we learned our skills, and since it served us so well up ‘til now, we’re keeping fashion here, as proud Scottish producers, we aim to create locally inspired fashion garments to appeal to the worldwide market, We are fashions independent fashion brewers, distilling since 2013.

We have tested the waters with, what turned out to be, a hugely successful first fashion range recently, highlighting the beautiful Scottish flora & fauna that surrounds us, through silk screen printed hand drawn graphics on loose baggy tee’s and long vests, dyed with festival flare…

One of our Silk Screen Printed Altered Vintage ladies tops

This takes us up to our present point in time, building on this collection, its fans, media attention and blogger interest and truly showcasing what we can do…

We have set the date of May 10^th for our full launch, a substantial campaign with high quality garments taking centre stage, which are currently in the latter stages of the design process, nearing the point of trialing our new prints…

So we are now at the point of planning our next fashion shoot, and as such I’m researching techniques and styles I can draw upon to best portray the items, the theme & create the style we seek, which to announce a snippet of new information will be ‘urban’ in nature.

Our first shoot used our friend, and model, Ania from Poland. The set was inspired by the natural beauty of our Scottish region, so we shot locally and kept it ‘green’. The location was river side in a valley near Lockerbie, Scotland.

However this new set will require a new take on style and location, our set needs an urban theme & as such my photographic approach will differ. Gone will be the leafy greens & flowing streams, replaced with urban art, strong geometric pattern and high contrast. But I want to add something to this, more depth to add interest.  I’ve been questioning the idea of using long exposure, light trails and depending on the timing of the shoot, a neutral density filter to help create though provoking images to demonstrate the garments.

Shooting in long exposure will allow me to portray the fast passed nature of the city, showcase its dynamic nature & ultimately complement our new set.  I’ve been looking into ‘painting with light’, and using additional lighting to create trails and motion. Long exposures using a dSLR Camera involves shooting an image with an open shutter for a few minutes, or for a minimum of 30 seconds  in my opinion, as typical subjects require the minimum of 30 seconds to obtain an interesting level of motion blur. As the camera’s shutter will be open a lot longer than normal (typical photography is around 1/100^th of a second), if I’m shooting in the day I’ll need an ND Filter to block out a majority of the light to keep it from becoming over exposure.

Looking into light trails, a few interesting images I stumbled across were by Artist/Photographer Eric Staller. His light trails are among the most interesting and relevant to what I wish to produce, as as such I’ve found them to be very interesting.

Take this shot for instance, rather than a simple urban backdrop to what could become a fashion photography location, the light added during the extended shutter time has created an interesting tunnel… This is the depth and intrigue I will replicate through my work, although it will not be as clean cut and structured, but inspiration can be taken.

More information on this new set & some sample shots to come soon, but until then please ‘LIKE’ ELKBI on Facebook to support us & Stay in the loop by visiting us on facebook ... WWW.FACEBOOK.COM/ELKBI