Walker Evans

Research –

• Evans showed interest in photography during a trip through Europe in the late 1920s.
• His first photos were published in the 1930s.
• He also helped to publish a book called “Let us now praise famous men” with the author James Agee.

Darren Harvey-Regan

Research –

• Many of his photos were inspired by the work of Wallace Evans “Beauties of the common tool”.
• He has taken part in many solo and joint exhibitions.

Comparison –

My Photos

Here are the different set ups which we used in the studio to create our photos –

Here are photos that I have taken of vintage objects in various ways and put into adobe Lightroom, selecting my favourites to present.

Editing

Here I edited some photos on Adobe Lightroom so that I could use them to create a piece of work which is similar to the work of Wallace Evans and Harvey-Reagans “Beauties of the common tool”.

An experiment of my work similar to theirs –

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Walker Evans

While a staff photographer at Fortune magazine, Walker Evans produced a photo essay titled, “Beauties of the Common Tool,” which ran in the July 1955 issue. Dr. Chris Mullen has scans of the five-page spread as published, on his Visual Telling of Stories website. Images of a reamer, an awl, a bill hook, an auger, various pliers, a couple of variations on a T-square ,some wrenches and a trowel were among the tools used in the collection.

Darren Harvey – Regan

Harvey-Regan first constructed a montage of Walker Evans’s images to make new forms. He then sourced matching tools, cut them in half and re-joined various halves together, with the resulting physical objects being photographed to create his final work. The montaged tools become both beautiful and bizarre objects, in which a ratchet wrench is combined with a pair of pliers and a Mason’s trowel joined with a pair of scissors.

Harvey-Regan finds photography that photographs objects – whilst in itself being an object – interesting as a concept. “It’s a means of transposing material into other material, adding new meaning or thoughts in the process. I think photographing materials is a way to consider the means of creating meaning, and it’s a tactile process with which I feel involved. Touching and moving and making are my engagement with the world and my art”.

Photoshoot

In our photoshoot, we used 3 different types of lighting: a copy stand, soft boxes, and flash. We used an infinity curve as well as coloured background on a product table. We used 1 and two point lighting, allowing shadow to be manipulated in our images.

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Shoot 1 – Outside

For my outside photoshoot I went to the La Crete Shellfish van that sells outside Homefields Farm Shop. The guy there was very friendly and was happy for me to take photos of him.

About La Crete Shellfish:

This is taken from their page on getfresh.je:

La Crete Shellfish is committed to creating a sustainable supply of seafood servicing both wholesale and retail customers. Our seafood trailer is located at Homefields Growers in St Clement.We pride ourselves on supplying quality seafood at affordable prices whilst supporting local fishermen and producers in these challenging times. Our range of products includes local shellfish (lobsters and crabs, cooked to order), oysters, fresh crab meat and hand dived scallops as well as a wide selection of fresh fish (mackerel, salmon, bass, seabream, brill and many more), smoked fish, prawns plus additional products such as seafood soups.

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Best Image:

Shoot 2 – Inside

For my inside photos I photographed a worker at Reid’s Pharmacy. Unfortunately it was a small shop, with prescriptions behind the till that had peoples names on them, so I could only photograph from a certain angle to protect the patients confidentiality.

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Best image:

Creating still life compositions can be done in many different ways due to the diverse combinations of lights, backdrops and camera height, and camera settings that join together in order to create an interesting set of photos, even when using the same prop throughout the photoshoot.

For example:

Smaller Set Up:

This set up allowed the lighting to be 100% controllable as the lights allowed the temperature to be changed along with the brightness through the use of nobs on the back of them which could give the photos a yellow or blue tone whilst saturating the colourful background. Along with that, the lights had ‘barn doors’ which could subtly change the direction of the light without moving the whole light itself, making it easier to eliminate shadows.

Some examples of our photos:

Bigger Set Up:

This set up used flash head lights that only flashed when the shutter button on the camera was pressed which created harsher lighting and increased the exposure of the photo, especially as the product table was white as it helped brighten the image further. The product table was had an infinity curve which eliminated the shadows from the images and gave the photos a professional look.

Some examples of our photos:

Birds-Eye Set Up:

This set up was difficult to use as we had to stand on a stool in order to see what we were photographing which led to a lot of trial and error as we couldn’t tell if the photos were in focus until after they were taken. We changed the light set up and used flash head lights which took some time as the lights didn’t want to connect to the camera but it created better lighting for our images.

Some examples of our photos:

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My portraits from Hamptonne, I lightened and edited the images to make them look warmer and softer looking.

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As a class we took a trip to the Jersey Museum to take a look at their exhibition- “People, Power, Protest”, which looks at the history of protest on the island. One of the earliest subjects is The Jersey Corn Riots, a historic event where farmers on the island protested about food shortages and the increasing price of wheat. This event has paved the way for Jersey’s democratic journey, and recently had its 250th anniversary.

Other subjects were Apartheid, LGBTQ rights, and BLM, giving the exhibition a more contemporary view. Downstairs they also had an exhibit looking at the history of the island, with information on Neolithic times, Farming and Tourism. This allowed for a large range of imagery.

My Images-

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