Mark Duffy is a commercial photographer who brings over a decade of graphic design experience to his photography work.
Some of his work involves close up macro photography of fruit, using effective compositions to highlight different textures on different fruits.
In this image, Duffy has zoomed in significantly onto the strawberry to create a composition which focuses solely on texture, highlighting the light and dark parts as well as the lines and differences in each part of the texture.
My Photoshoot
For my photoshoot on texture, I decided to photograph a wide variety of fruit and experiment with their different textures to create a range of unique, interesting images. By taking straight-on, zoomed in images similarly to Mark Duffy I aimed to highlight texture using specific compositions as well as creating clear differences in tones between different fruits.
My fruit texture photoshoot imported into Lightroom, where I did my selection process – bad photos (out of focus, under/overexposed) are flagged as X, decent photos are marked 2-3 stars and are in yellow and great photos are green and marked as 4 stars. I will pick 3 of these green photos to edit and present as my final images.
Overall, some photos were underexposed whilst I was trying to adjust the settings manually to cope with the room’s artificial lighting but for the majority of the photos I feel I successfully captured effective images focusing and highlighting the unique textures of each individual fruit. I also used straight on shots to focus solely on the textures presented in each image, making use of formal elements such as lines and space to make them stand out further.
Some of my better photos:
The raw photos shown above I believe have captured texture very effectively, occasionally using a soft focus to highlight certain textures as well as most textures being in the foreground combined with a low aperture to make the textures stand out even further as the image’s main focal point.
Image Editing/Experimentation:
First editing phase:
I first decided to experiment with dark gradient overlays and a 1×1 composition to try and create a clear contrast between dark and light tones, which I found effective since the lighter reds emphasise the texture of the pear as well as contrasting the dark-toned negative space in each corner.
I decided to take a similar approach with this image, but I decided to keep the composition the same since I like the effect the out of focus pineapple leaves have on highlighting the texture of the pineapple itself. The yellow gradient overlay I wasn’t too satisfied with since it creates too many dark tones, weakening the strength of my formal elements since the contrast between light and darks is less noticeable.
I first decided to crop this image to remove the bananas to make the sole focus of the image the textures of the apple, which I find effective since the middle being out of focus as well as the soft lines around the apple clearly direct attention and focus onto the texture. Furthermore, it also develops an emphasis on lighting since the colour scheme I chose for this gradient overlay makes the light shining onto the left apple more noticeable, which overall further strengthens the use of formal elements in this image.
Second editing phase:
For my second editing of this image, I decided to try crop it so the majority of the negative space is cut out leaving just the texture with few bits of dark toned negative space in the corners, which I find effective. I also made it black and white to experiment with how this would affect the presentation of texture, and I think the lack of colours creates more focus on the texture of the pear itself which was my intention behind this image in the first place.
I thought the composition of this image as it was originally was effective due to its minimal negative space with a sole focus on texture, so I made some simple changes such as turning up the brightness and turning it black and white which I believe worked effectively since like my previous edit above I like how the lack of colour affects presentation of texture positively and clearly demonstrates that the main focus of these images is texture.
I decided to experiment with making this image black and white like the others and found it was very successful for the same reasons, so I think for my final edits I will make all three pictures black and white and present them all in a grid to show consistency. Furthermore, for composition, I decided to crop it to focus more on the left half of the image to see how the texture of the apple would contrast with the banana – I think this wasn’t really effective since I think for my final presentation it would be better if each image focused on a different fruit, so I think for my final edit I will crop it to focus solely on the apple’s texture.
Final fruit photos:
Above are my final 3 photos, presented in a triptych. I decided to crop each one similarly to the point where it removes most unnecessary negative space to focus solely on texture, as well as making them all black and white to remove colours in order to further develop the focus on texture since this was my main intention behind the photoshoot. Finally, after editing each image in Photoshop, I used Lightroom’s develop mode to manually increase presence of texture which I found extremely effective since now all my photos have a strong resemblance to Mark Duffy’s work with their minimal negative space and strong focus on textures.
Evaluation and Comparison:
Above is one of my final images compared to an image from my inspiration, Mark Duffy. I think I managed to successfully take inspiration from his work and implement it into my own photos, seen clearly by both images being straight-on shots of fruit highlighting texture – however, mine has some negative space around the subject (in contrast to Duffy) and is also in black and white which I did since I think the removal of colours cuts down on distractions to focus solely on texture. Both photos also demonstrate clear use of formal elements, with both having subtle lines to highlight the textures as well as a clear range of light and dark tones to create intrigue in the photo.
One thought on “Fruit Texture Photoshoot”
Some effective imagery being produced here!
Remember to add more description, explanation and justification for your creative decisions as you progress and make connections with the key artists too.
You are clearly working hard, so keep it up!
Some effective imagery being produced here!
Remember to add more description, explanation and justification for your creative decisions as you progress and make connections with the key artists too.
You are clearly working hard, so keep it up!