Photographer who uses Texture – Edward Weston

Edward Weston (1886–1958) was an American photographer who played pivotal role in the development of modern photography. He took pictures of landscapes and objects in black-and-white, transforming them into modern images that were ahead of their time. His technical and photographic skills were wide-ranging, but he was known to many as a professional of black-and-white images.

Texture was key to Weston. Using large format cameras, he took pictures of objects and landscapes that had shape, tone and colour depth which are key for a good texture photo, such as, bell peppers or ridges in a seashell. His use of lighting and contrast brought out every subtle detail, giving his photographs a textured but almost three-dimensional quality. The focus on texture made bland, regular objects abstract and pleasing. I will put some of his pictures below.

I plan to take inspiration from the use of depth and shadows from what would otherwise be a normal every day object and turn it into something abstract and visually pleasing.

My contact sheet –

As you can see above I took over just over 100 pictures of some objects until I found the one that I wanted to use, I then proceeded to take lots of photos of one object with different camera settings and different lighting conditions to get the ideal photo I was looking for. I will now show some of the first objects that I didn’t like the look of and explain why and what I wanted to be different.

Objects I didn’t like –

Flower Outside –

Although this was a good image and did have good texture, it didn’t align with exactly what I was looking for, such as the lighting conditions and it wasn’t what I had in mind from my inspiration from Edward.

Bush Outside –

Again, although this was a good image and did have good texture, it didn’t align with exactly what I was looking for, such as the lighting conditions and it wasn’t what I had in mind from my inspiration from Edward.

Bubbles –

Although this one was closer with more black-and-white colours, it wasn’t what I had in mind and again it didn’t quite fit in with my inspiration from Edwards work.

Lamp Shade –

This one I liked quite a lot and could have been quite versatile to take pictures of but I decided to keep looking after this and found something that was more what I was looking for.

Selection process

as you can see above I used P and X to flag my images to filter out the bad ones from the ok and good ones, next I rated these images 4 or 5 stars as 4 being ok ones and 5 being good ones, finally I gave them the colour yellow or green, green being the best and yellow being good. I will now edit these images that I selected and present them bellow along with the raw images.

My Final Images – Rubber Band Ball

Without Visual Noise –

With Visual Noise –

As you can see in the images above I have taken pictures of a rubber band ball with and without visual noise. I took the idea from Edwards images of using the randomness of the lines in an object and the depth that it creates to represent texture in my images, I will now edit and represent them in black-and-white and not in black-and-white and show them below.

Edited Images

Edited Not In Black-And-White –

With Visual Noise –

Edited In Black-And-White –

With Visual Noise –

As you can see above I used a black and white filter on these images which I got inspiration from Edward to do, in doing this I can see why he used this effect on his work. From this i completed the goal I set myself at the beginning which was to use of the two most simple colours on a simple everyday object and turning it into something that is abstract and visual pleasing which I believe I did successfully.