My understanding of the settings used manually is that the aperture (will affect the shutter speed and the depth of field). As the aperture increases the background comes more into focus.

ISO (increasing it makes the camera sensor more sensitive to the light). Enables the photographer to use a faster shutter speed/ higher aperture. In low light you can increase the ISO too make the low light photograph more visible/ good exposure.

Exposure Settings:

The final check before you snap a picture. At a glance the exposure setting will tell you how our picture will turn out (based on the aperture, shutter speed settings and ISO settings. It works as a guide and exposure is a matter of personal preference.

Flower basket-  Jan van den Hecke

Nick Church Photography

Pieter Claesz, Still Life with a Skull and a Writing Quill 

Still-Life Painting in Northern Europe, 1600–1800

Still Life Metaphors and Meanings

Formalism describes that the most important aspect of a work of art is its form, the way its made and its visual aspects, Formalism includes line, shape, form, texture, colour, size and depth.

Line – The lines on an image or whether the photo has leading lines or lines that guide your eye to the focal point.

Shape – How interesting the shape of the image is, has the photograph been taken at a specific angle to make it look more interesting.

Form – Is the photography 3 dimensional, how is the object displayed or positioned.

Texture – The surface of an object is it smooth shiny, rough. How can that be photographed to make it look as interesting as it can.

Colour – The composition of the photograph is one of the most important things of a photograph, it guides the viewer to wear you want them to look on the photograph and where the main focus of the photograph is.

Size – How do you take pictures of the object to make it look larger than it is or smaller than it is or making it look like the same size it is in real life.

Depth – How much of the photograph is in focus and how much of it is in detail. Is the main focal point of the image in focus and the background blurred to make the focal point standout .

Walker Evans –

1955 – “Beauties of the common tool.”

Darren Harvey-Regan –

2013 – “Beauties of the common tool, Rephrased II.”

Taking inspiration from Walkers work in the 1950’s, Darren Harvey-Regan made his own attempt on his original photoshoot.

Walker Evans –

As Walker Evans puts it, “Among low-priced, factory-produced goos, none is so appealing to the senses as the ordinary hand tool. Hence, a hardware store is a kind of offbeat museum show for the man who responds to good, clear ‘un-designed’ forms”. This can be vividly shown through his portfolio he named “beauties of the common tool”. Using Objects he had in his home, Evans was able to create his photos, using props to make the tools look as if they have a 3D levitated affect. Using what he had, his overhead lighting of his home, was the desired effect he wanted to use to diminish the opacity of shadows had on the objects, This allowed lots of texture and clarity to be seen on the tools.

(His portfolio can be found here).

https://fotoform.co/walker-evans-beauties-of-the-common-tool

Darren Harvey-Regan –

Inspired by Evans work, Harvey-Regan put together his own portfolio named ‘Beauty of the common tool, rephrased II’, in which he sawed and then re-welded separate tools together. Advantaged by the modern era, he was also able with studio lighting and editing software to alter his photos to reduce shadows from his photoshoot, Rather than relying on what was around like Evans.

(Under the same name of Evans portfolio, Harvey-Regans work can be found here)

https://www.theravestijngallery.com/artists/

comparison –

Photographing the same genre of still life, both photographers are similar in their composition, however they differ in lighting, texture and clarity. Lighting is noticeably different as Walkers objects shine with the reflection of light, whilst Harvey-Regan’s do not or just slightly.

A similarity they both share can be seen with the use of a Birds Eye shot, capturing their still life images from a camera angle of 90 degrees.

By Using a plain white background Harvey-Regan’s photos are able to be directly focused on whilst Evans allows the grainy texture of the film he used to generate an aesthetic to the objects within the picture.

my personal attempt –

Walker Evans style:

Inspired by the Evans use of partial shadows and reflections of light, i tried to recreate that in this photo.

Darren Harvey-Reagan style:

By using photoshoot i attempted to remove any noticeable details leaving a plain white background and limited shine on the tools like Harvey-Regans work.

Formalism is the basic structure made up of 7 basic elements:

Line

A line through an image which creates a path from one specific point. Lines can be straight, curved, solid, implied or even psychological. Implied lines can be seen in the horizon line and psychological could be the point of a finger. These lines can also hold meaning i.e. Vertical – stability/static, Horizontal – distance, Diagonal – dynamics and Curved – fluidity. This is especially true with the horizon line which creates a sense of calm.

Shape

A shape is a universally recognised formation of lines and space. These can be an outline of an object or a gap in a surface. Shapes can overlap to create new ones or change in angle and appear completely different. A silhouette contrasts with its backgrounds and contains no textures – this is the most visually obvious use of shape in photography and is clearly 2D.

Form

Shape and structure distinguished from its material. It is 3D with height, width and depth. Shadow creates depth that would otherwise be missing in a photograph. Highlights, midtones and shadows capture the spectrum of tone.

Texture

Characteristics and appearance of something. Texture can be described as: soft, shiny, wet, bumpy etc. These can effect factors like light, reflections, shadows. Similar to form this is shown with shadow.

Colour

Colour is the aspect of appearance of an objects that differentiates between objects with hue, lightness and saturation. Colour has 3 properties: hue (description of colour), value (relative brightness or darkness of a colour) and saturation (intensity of a colour). Colour can draw different emotional responses for example: red – danger, blue – calm and purple – wealth. Bold and bright colours are good for catching attention however take away from the subject which is where black and white shines.

Size

Size is the physical size or bulk of an object seen in its proportions and dimensions. Size is often manipulated in photographs to create illusions. Using familiar objects is useful to create proportion in the eye of the viewer (a basketball for example). Without a recognisable object it can be difficult to understand the scale.

Depth

Depth is the direct linear measurement from front to back. Depth is broken down into 3 parts: Foreground, middle ground and background. The clearer it is between, the stronger the sense of depth. It is provided by visual cues: further away objects will have less clarity.

Image Analysis

We broke down these photographs into four sections whcih allows for great detail analysis of images:

• Techincal (i.e lighting and ISO),
• Visual (colour and pattern),
• Contextual (significance and inspiration) and
• Conceptual (meaning and ideas).