Brief 2 Found Objects

Found Object:

The second brief we have been given is “Found Object” the aim from the brief is to capture three images of objects we find on the streets or in the countryside, or to borrow and object and give them a new lease of life by using relocating the objects and our knowledge on lighting and camera techniques.

One of my inspirations for my work is Russian photographer Vladimir Shipulin, two of his photos titled “Dust” and “Levitation” were the most useful to my research into bringing found objects to life. “Dust” I found the warm lighting to be the most interesting, the way the lighting is used to illuminate only the jar draws the audiences eye straight to that object, making it the centre of the audiences attention and focus. I found this image useful as I believe it clearly shows the importance of lighting, the objects used in the image are old and time-worn yet with the use of the lighting and the placement of the objects Shipulin brings the objects back to life and this is helpful to the brief I have been tasked with and influences me with my work to hopefully produce something similar with my final three images.

“Levitation” was also one of Shipulin’s still life work I found interesting as even though the image is quite simple and takes a minimalist approach the image still influences my work, for example the composition and background of the image have influenced my project because I was interested in how it creates a strong focus on the object being photographed, this was done by placing the object in the centre of the frame and having a plain, dim lit background.

This image looks simple but the longer you study it you notice more details for example how the lighting is warm and a brighter white around the centre which illuminates the object, the tiny spiders and the lime is the most noticeable component of the image due to its placement in the centre of the frame and the bring green vividly contrasts against the warm white lighting for the background and from this I looked into contrasting colours for my own work, finding black and white to be the strongest contrasting colours which influenced me to use white fairy lights to light up my object against a black background as it would be a stronger and more appealing over using white lights against a lighter coloured background like grey. Red appears most vibrant and intense against black and often photographers will edit an image in post production to intensify an image by only showing the colour red in an image by editing the background to be black and white in order to make the image more interesting and eye catching, the red on black gave me the idea for my practice images.

An example of this:

“Ladybug Chic”

Practice/Process

For my practice images during the process I borrowed a feather from a friend as my object and used some black card as the background, I took these pictures using ISO 800 to increase the light sensitivity on the Nikon D5300 camera. The reason I used the black background was to exaggerate the colour of red on the feather and make the image more intriguing and visually interesting, the framing and composition of the feather is slightly to the side in the first two images, this was to show the prominent shadow of the feather as I believed this made the photograph more compelling, this was influenced by the work of André Kertész “a master of composition” and his work “Fork” 1928.  I find the strong shadows create a dramatic effect and increase the impact of the object, the image gives the audience more than one subject to look at which was another influence of my practice images, to focus on the object and its shadow. For the last image I experimented with the placement of the object to try and create a more interesting composition instead of the subject just being placed in the centre, however I believe this image shows too much empty space because of the framing but I find the image still looks interesting as it looks as though the feather has fallen to the ground .

My final images:

My three final images are all based around jars/glass objects and white fairy lights against a black background, The idea of using fairy lights first came around when I was researching still life photography as I came across an online blog from a photographer called Gemma Williams, her image of a tea light placed in a jar was captivating as it illuminates the entire jar and the details on the jar. as she took the image at night with a dark background it influenced me to use a black background to intensify the effect of the white lights against the colour black as these are contrasting colours.

My triptych:

These are my final images for my brief presented as a triptych, the reason I chose these three images from my shoot was because I was pleased with the composition and framing of the images, all these images were shot in portrait and were taken with the same camera settings and shot using a high ISO, I used a tripod for my images in order to make my angles more interesting and easier to control. The shutter speed I used was 1/10 of a second in order to let more light into the photograph.In post production I edited my images changing the contrast slightly and turning the sharpness up as the raw images were slightly softer than I wanted. I believe my triptych makes for an interesting series of images as I have used a common theme of fairy lights in and around different objects which brightens up the dull transparent jars, making my images visually pleasing and eye catching.