Irving Penn was an American photographer known for fashion photography, portraits and mostly still life. He was born on June 16th 1917 and died October 7th 2009. Penn attended the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Art, where he studied painting, drawing and graphics. Penn first worked as a freelance designer for three years. After this he was invited to go join vogue magazine. He worked on the layout of the magazine before beginning photography. He then worked their until 1950. After this he began his own photography studio.

Penn’s still life images use a collection of lots of different things such as food and other objects. The imagery depicted within Penn’s still life images varies a lot, and usually has lots of different items that aren’t related.

The image above is using artificial lighting. It is placed in such a way so that shadows around the sides are completely removed and only shadows within the objects remain.

This image consists of lots of different items, from playing cards, to dice and chess pieces. These items add colour to the image and create an interesting look with the lighting reflecting off of them.