I had two possible ideas for this brief. I have travelled quite a lot and been to many places which inspire me. Places where I have had great experiences and adventures big and small which have created great memories. These places and the memories of them are significant and important to me. Drawing on this my first idea was to take photographs of objects which I have brought back from my travels, which I keep around my house as reminders of these trips. The second idea was closer to home, literally. My idea was to explore my home environment and capture its essence through photographs from each room which focus on the colours, textures and shapes in the structure of the house (brick, stone, wood, tiles etc) and the objects in the house (rugs, baskets, furniture etc). This idea is helping to develop my style, which you can also see elements of in my work on urban, countryside and alien, environments, and which focuses on elements of colours, textures, patterns and shapes to look at everyday objects or scenes from a different (often abstract) viewpoint.
Inspirations
As research for both concepts I explored photographs of household objects. Here are a few examples of what I found.
Images below from Google Images http://www.google.com/imghp?hl=en):
Fitz Goro
Jan Groover
Sophie Calle
Wols
Victor Schrager
Donna Corless
From flickr.comphotosdonnacorles
Images below from http://www.vazaar.com/topic:abstract-objects/
Ulf Buschmann
Dominik Fusina
Szilard Locsei
Pixim
Planning, execution and outcomes
1. Objects representing places
To create this series of pictures I set up a makeshift “studio” space at home. I set up a small table against the wall in my living room. I chose the location because it provided me with a neutral backdrop and was lit reasonably well with halogen spotlights. I covered the table with a cloth the same colour as the background wall.
I used a Canon EOS 5D that I had borrowed from college with an EF 100mm f/2.8 macro lens. I wanted all the images to come out the same scale, tone, contrast etc. The camera settings were ISO 200, 100mm, f2.8 with a shutter speed from 1/8 to 1/20. I made small adjustments to the shutter speed to allow for some objects being lighter or darker in colour and needing a slightly different exposure. This did mean that the background colour varies slightly, which could be edited in Photoshop.
I made two luggage labels for each object, one with the name of the country of origin and one with the country flag, and took three photographs of each object – one with each flag and one with no flag.
Post production I converted the images to black and white and reviewed both the colour and black and white versions. Unusually for me I felt that the colour versions worked better. Based on the colour versions I felt that the flags worked well. Here is one contact sheet and a couple of larger imagesto give an idea of the concept :
This is in a handmade "rustic" simple style with images printed on textured paper. Opposite ecah image is a list of words which reflect memories of the place.
The finished book is in my final portfolio.
My home is a cottage dating back to c1740. When I bought it I had to completely renovate it and set out to use as many natural materials as possible - oak, stone, brick, terracotta, wool, cotton etc. I wanted to take a series of images that would capture the essence of my home including the shapes, textures and tones of these materials.
To take the images I chose a bright day when there was lots of natural light coming into the house and used the room lights to provide additional lighting where necessary. I set out to take two to three objects in each room of the house. All the objects were photographed in close-up using a Canon EOS 5D with an EF 100mm f/2.8 macro lens. I aimed to take some photographs where it was clear what the object was and others which were very abstract.
From the outset I intended for the final images to be in black and white, which I feel adds to the abstract effect and helps to focus on the shapes and textures. However, I initially reviewed the images in colour and made a selection of images which I then converted using a Lightroom black and white preset and reviewed again.
Here are example contact sheets in colour and black and white:
From the black and white versions I then selected 24 images. These were taken to Katy’s workshop where I had the opportunity, working with classmates, to try out different combinations of images. What was interesting was that everyone who came along had different ideas of what they found a pleasing arrangement! The pictures below show some of the groupings that were put together during the session. (These were taken just for reference using a compact camera - a RICOH Capilo R2).
Curves and bubbles
Verticals
Textures
Shapes
From this I initially selected 12 prints that I thought worked well as a series that could be included in a book. I used blurb (www.blurb.com/uk)to look at some possible book layouts. These are some examples:
At this stage I decided not to go ahead with a book but to select 6 prints to include in my portfolio. I selected two groupings from the above examples - one of verticals and one of textures. These are the 6 images which I feel do capture the essence of my home through the shapes, textures and tones of the materials of which it is made:
