The plan for this photoshoot is here: LINK
This was the first object photoshoot I took for this project. I gathered the objects from the woodland shoots I took previously. I used white foamboard as the backdrop for this photoshoot, giving the images a clear background. I laid this foamboard outside on a sunny day which provided plenty of light, as well as some interesting shadows into some of the images, which I thought would add variety and shape to the images (however they do make some of the images deviate from the style of Blossfeldt and Talbot’s images. I tried to experiment with placing many objects in a sequence to create some juxtaposition or repetition (depending on the image) in some of the images.
Contact Sheets
Editing
Firstly, I used the ‘Pick’ and ‘Reject’ tools to choose which images I may use and those which I consider weak and will not use. These are the images I thought were strong:
Next, I gave each image a star rating which allows me to see how strong each image is, with 5 stars being the images I will definitely use in my final pieces. Below are my 5 star images:
Next I used the colour selection tool to further narrow my selection down, below are a selection of 4 star and above images:
Best Images from this Shoot
These are the images I chose as final images, as I believe they are the strongest in terms of composition. I did little to no editing for these images as I think the lighting and colour provided by the sun was enough (I did use the spot remover and cropping tools to clean up some images).
Black and white versions:
Comparison to Blossfeldt’s work
The biggest difference between my images and Blossfeldt’s is my inclusion of a shadow. This shadow is due to my use of natural lighting as opposed to balanced studio lighting from both sides. The lack of a shadow in Blossfeldt’s image gives them a more scientific aesthetic (due to them being images for his students to study art from), while the inclusion of the shadow in some images (such as my twig image) gives them a more complex and interesting appearance. A lot of Blossfeldt’s images capture complex and unique looking plants and flowers with many lines and shapes, however the objects I chose as subject matter were fairly simple in shape, as I chose to adhere to the ‘Simple’ side of the project theme.
Evaluation
Overall I am content with this shoot as a first try, as I think the images themselves are strong and are fairly different in comparison to my previous work. I do like the shadows in some of these images, as they give some of the objects a more interesting shape, however, their inclusion does make them different to the shadow-less images created by Blossfeldt and Talbot. I think the colour on some of the images (especially the green) are nice to look at and provide a nice contrast with the brown leaves/twigs. The black and white versions of the images are closer in style to the scientific images I was referencing, and could offer a contrast to my other images in this project, not only colour-wise, but also compositionally.
What went well:
Considering I don’t photograph objects too often, I feel like these images will make a very solid addition to this project, and will tie in nicely to the cyanotype and AI images I will create later in the project. I like the way these images were framed as they look uniform, even while I was trying to create something slightly more artistic out of these images.
How I can improve:
As said above, I feel like my inclusion of a shadow, while it is difficult to remove the shadow from a shoot involving natural light, makes my images stray from the scientific methods of Blossfeldt and Talbot, as I chose to incorporate the shadow artistically in some of these images.