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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Walker Evans

Walker Evans was an American photographer who mainly focused on documenting the effects of the great depression however he also produced some still life images using tools which he published in a portfolio named ‘Beauties of the common tool’. in 1955.

Darren Harvey-Ragen

Darren Harvey-Ragen was another still life photographer who was known for taking more abstract images of sculptures positioned on a solid white background while both Walker and Darren photograph still life Walkers images are very consistent as the objects are always centred and taken from an above angle without shadows, while Darren uses a landscape approach and plays with angles and shadows in his images.

What am I photographing?

For this photoshoot I will be taking portraits photos of people in their working environments

How am i going to produce the images (lighting / equipment etc)?

I will be using just my cannon DSLR camera and possibly my phone camera with no extra lighting tools

	location	subject	photo type
Inside	Homefields	Fishmonger	waist up, headshot
Outside	Grouville Bus Shelter	Grouville School Site Manager	full body, headshot
Multiple people	Hautlieu Canteen	Students	Full body

Environmental portraits are portraits taken in the subject’s usual environment home or place of work, showing both the subject and the background.

Mood Board-

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Artist research-

Michelle Sank is a South African photographer who uses environmental portraits to explore societal and cultural differences, especially in the UK.

I like the simplicity of her work, often it is a single subject surrounded with an intentionally limited background, the lighting is often neutral and the interest comes from the models themselves.

Planning-

One of my friends is dying her hair so I decided to take pictures of her doing that. Another friend is coming to help her dye it so I can take my pictures with multiple people at the same time. I will take pictures around her house, but specifically her bathroom and bedroom.

The Shoot-

Contact Sheet-

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Evauluation-

I enjoyed taking all of these pictures but if I were to do this task again I would have taken more and tried to organise the composition a bit more. In the future, I want to communicate more with my subjects to get better images. The lighting was not great and I probably should have done the shoot a little later in the day.