Wes Anderson Influence

Posted on April 14, 2016 by Lillian Isobelle Hulley Stoddart

“I have a way of filming things and staging them and designing sets. There were times when I thought I should change my approach, but in fact, this is what I like to do. It’s sort of like my handwriting as a movie director. And somewhere along the way, I think I’ve made the decision: I’m going to write in my own handwriting. That’s just sort of my way.” – Wes Anderson

Anderson is a filmmaker who focuses everything on the centre of things. I’ve taken influence from this throughout my whole project and really like the central style he displays. This video shows how his shots all have a central line in them and everything is symmetrical, similar to my work. He also uses quite pastel colour schemes which I haven’t really followed in my photography work as I prefer more contrasting and darker photos. However I do like his colour schemes too. I also like that with Anderson’s work, it’s very individual and unique and I hoped to create photos that are similar to this. I wanted to have a style of photography that is recognizable as being by the same photographer and I think I have achieved this, especially with my portraiture work.

I’ve been influenced by Anderson’s work throughout most of my briefs and think he’s applicable to most of my photographs. Examples of how my work has been influenced by Wes Anderson:

Rusty mould pt.2

Posted on April 2, 2016 by Lillian Isobelle Hulley Stoddart

A few weeks ago when completing my Found objects brief I took photos of a lot of objects that were rusty and forgotten. When at home I took these photos which were all fitting of this theme. This was a good way for my to experiment with different elements to photography, especially close up and detailing. And although these might not be very conventional ways to represent home, they’re all memorable parts to my life and I can relate these photos to my home.

Rusty Mould

Posted on February 12, 2016 by Lillian Isobelle Hulley Stoddart

When I went to the specified found objects brief location I noticed a lot of rusting, moss and decaying around the area. I was interested by this and thought they related back to my found objects final images well as they are like different ways of natural moulding on different objects. For this first image I explored the way man made and natural elements can combine to create different textures, colours and moods. I wanted the pipe to be directly in the centre as I find central images pleasing to the eye and can create a balanced and comfortable image. The green moss and red brick contrast against each other which creates an interesting and dynamic photo.

For this photograph I decided to experiment with rule of thirds by placing the sign, which is the focus of the image within these. The sign is battered and looks like its been standing for there for decades. The twigs and nature have grown around it which shows how nature could be taking back its own land.

These three images have a very orange and rusty theme to them, with the bricks, metal chain and metal sheeting. All of these have been eroded over time and look like they havnt been cared for in a while. All three also include a lot of lines, mostly vertical and horizontal

For this photograph I thought I’d include the grey sky, some of the barbed wire and some of the fence. This photo reminds me of a concentration camp image even though it’s just taken behind a warehouse. This image also has contrasting elements in that the sky looks soft against the barbed wire and the smooth but hard fence. I originally had a bit of extra fence and pole in the top right and bottom left corners which weren’t necessary or clear so I cropped these out in post production.

Still Life triptych

Posted on February 12, 2016 by Lillian Isobelle Hulley Stoddart

This is my final piece for my still life brief. Our brief specified to go to a certain location and take photos of found objects around the area, however I first experimented with taking photos of mouldy/half eaten food in my flat. I started with the apple and think this looked really effective. I decided I wanted to do a mouldy food series as I thought these would look good as a triptych. I originally thought of using mouldy bread with the apple but the bread didn’t mould very quickly and when it did the photographs weren’t as effective as my banana and grapes images. I also thought of using an apple, cactus and something else that was organic and had a green colour scheme to it. But I couldn’t find anything that would be suitable and be a good match with the apple and cactus so didn’t use the cactus image in the end.

For my final 3 images I allowed the half eaten fruits to mould for a few days as I thought this would give a much more interesting effect to the image and the object than if they were ripe fruits. They now have creases, different colours, lines and details that they didn’t before. I took lot’s of images of each of them and then used lightroom to edit and choose the best images. Although I tried to use the best settings on the camera I still did some editing so enhance the colours, textures. Although the raw images were slightly noisy I thought this could enhance the details and make the objects look more gritty. I also used lightroom to make the objects slightly glow. As the grapes were dark purple they didn’t show up very well on the black background like the apple and banana did. So I made the centre of the image glow slightly so that the edges were still a dark black but the grapes could be seen better. I did this slightly on the other 2 images too so they were consistant.

I chose to arrange the images in this order as the lines in the apple curve inwards, the grapes point towards the centre and the apple curves inwards. This means they all point towards the middle, making it a comfortable triptych to view and the lines are easy to follow. I think this was important to my images as the actual subject of them (mouldy food) isn’t very comfortable or enjoyable to look at, so by making the photographs enjoyable, its balanced out.

Cactus photographs

Posted on February 7, 2016 by Lillian Isobelle Hulley Stoddart

Initially with the apple photos I didn’t experiment much with the camera, just with the composition and the lighting. For this project I’ve been using a Samsung NX3000 digital camera with a 16-50mm zoom lense. Although this isn’t the camera ideal for photographing my found objects I think the pictures came out a good quality. I experimented with the white balance, lighting (using my desk lamp), aperture and shutter speed.

Shutter speed: When i changed this the camera wasn’t steady enough to take the photo and it usually came out blurred, so i left it on the cameras automatic settings. As the object was still, the shutter speed wasn’t an important element to change.

White balance: I tried using a white piece of paper in front of the camera to adjust this but my camera didn’t respond well to this as the lense is slightly broken. To experiment properly with this I would have to use one of the DSLR cameras. Although the white balance was off int his photo, I quite like how it came out anyway as it has kind of transformed into something else, its not obviously a cactus anymore.

Lighting: I used a desk lamp to light my object, which I had placed in front of a plain black paper background. I wanted to use black paper as I think this can really focus the viewers attention on the image. I could have used white as well but I felt this would look too much like a stock image and this wasn’t what I wanted to achieve. The desk lamp was successful to light the object and i moved it around to try and eliminate shadows and create a dark background.

Aperture: I experimented slightly with this as I wasn’t totally confident with what I was looking for. I just tried different settings and saw which produced the best images. I enjoyed changing the focus between the front pins on the cactus and the back ones and think this is a good way to change the image.

Lilli Stoddart

Photography

Category Archives: Still Life