Tag Archives: Apple

Still Life triptych

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final found objects piece

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.

Apple Contact sheet

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apples contact sheet2

For my second brief, found objects, I wanted to look into moulding food as I think the decay can create really interesting shapes and colours. Usually people either don’t get the chance to observe mouldy food to a close degree as they’re too disgusted or never actually see it.

To look at something that had naturally changed over time and become unusable could relate to the photographer, David Maisels, Library of Dust. His work was very inspirational to me as I think the use of repeat patterns, in a contact sheet style, is an effective way to display pictures of the same subject matter and image size. I also think the meaning behind his work and how the tin cans were filled with ashes of patients from a state run psychiatric hospital is a beautiful way to display the uniqueness of each of the patients. I also really like the way Maisel has used very black backgrounds so that the focus is completely on his subject matter. I tried to achieve this with my apple photographs by adjusting the position of my light, some were more successful than others.

maisel-library-of-dust

I intend on using mouldy foods for my found objects brief, I will either try other angles and lighting on this apple or try another apple to achieve a photo that would be suitable for a triptych of photographs.