After finding numerous abandoned objects and taking Still Life images of them I began to tweak them slightly within Photoshop. This left me with the following photos to arrange into my final triptych….

I wished to remain inspired by the work of Edward Weston, and immediately chose two images that reminded me of other things, the rat stampede and the snake doing yoga I think are both such powerful images on their own (the yoga snake remaining tranquil whilst the rat stampeded represents panic and disorder) that they needed to be present within the triptych regardless. I then decided to try and use the love figurine as a juxtaposing center figure between the two, a catalyst to set off the emotions I wanted the other two images to create for an audience. This gave me this triptych…

However, it was the structure that let the piece down. The baggy platform of the center image made it stand out from the other two meaning they didn’t run alongside each other perfectly. Something had to be done. I Swapped the center image for a third animal piece, the scrunched up wrapping paper insect. I tried to arrange the three from darkest to lightest, allowing the creatures and the emotions I wished to evoke from each image to reach across the triptych and connect the three images more, however my first attempt at this new triptych didn’t represent this very well.

But there were still problems, as not only were the images not in the right order light-wise but the focus on them seemed to dissipate when I put them together in a triptych. I imported the images into Photoshop promptly (Lightroom refuses to work for me) to try and fix the problems. I altered the opacity of the duel layers for each image to try and increase the focus as well as changing the order of the three to create a flowing light effect.

I think the final Triptych works well in its concept more than anything, the technical aspect of my photography definitely needs work. For example my focusing still needs practice, as well as my use of white balance to nail the warmth of my images but  overall I think the idea is good enough to not let the piece be dragged down by the minor problems.

I continued searching for my abandoned or discarded objects within a launderette near the center of town. Whilst looking within the old machines I found pieces of lost clothing, most often pieces of fabric or socks that had most likely fallen out of bags when being carried either in or out of the launderette. I collected an old, thick sock that had been abandoned as one of my objects and began to mess around with the lighting of my image, as I liked the idea of my adjustable, warm-lighted lamp being seen as the sun. This made me want to try and create a night image for the opposite end of my triptych of images.

I started by reducing the amount of light by switching off one of the lamps and allowing the leftover light to cast a light shadow, but this only made the image appear dark. I then uploaded the photo into Photoshop and edited the dark spots and made the light a cold blue, similar the the light of the moon. This also hardened the shadow given by the sock which was an effect that I liked, though I still didn’t feel the image was working when it was this dark so I decided to go back to the light image idea.

I began to change up the shape of the sock, trying out different positions the way Edward Weston would make shapes appear as creatures of other images. Some proved more inspirational than others, when I finally found one that appealed to me.

 The image on the right is the structural shape I decided to go with, as it both reminded me of a slithering snake and a person doing a yoga position – something that is often done in the morning as the sun rises which I would be able to show in my photograph. I then created similar lighting to the images I had taken before and shot the sock in the same way, noticing that the snake imagery would work alongside the wrapping paper insect imagery from before – but I still needed more found objects. Again whilst at the launderette I scraped through the insides of the machines and gathered up the leftover dirt and dust from numerous amounts of washes before packing it into a bag and taking it back to photograph.

 I then repeated the process with the fluff and dirt, attempting to limit the amount of light to try and give off a sense of night time. It was here that I noticed the objects bared a striking resemblance to a pack of rats scurrying along, again in keeping with the theme of small animals from my other two images. The dark, admittedly plain background also works well here as a scummy back alleyway backdrop for the rats and various creatures to be inhabiting, something that I was looking forward to creating with my triptych, though I felt I needed one more object to fall back on just in case.

It was here that I came across a small, lost love-based figurine on the pavement. Due to the heartwarming nature of the figure I thought the very notion of it being abandoned changed its context entirely and I again attempted to create dramatic lighting to reflect this idea.  The morning light scene was then recreated using the figure, giving it a more hopeful feel which would contrast with my other, more negative photos if put together within a triptych.

Finding abandoned ‘rubbish’ items from the street for my triptych of Still Life images at first proved to be tricky. I didn’t know what kind of thing to look out for and as the majority of items I found whilst outside were pieces of rubbish I then grabbed whatever looked aesthetically pleasing to me. Now, with the nature of this being a student-inhabited city, many of the items I found happened to be empty alcohol bottles, and after almost an hour of searching I managed to find an unbroken wine bottle which I thought would tell a nice story within my images.

The set up for my Still Life photos involved me darkening my room and placing two coffee tables on top of one another next to a white light source that could help me control the strength of the items’ shadows. I covered the platform table with a neutral-coloured bed sheet not to distract attention away from the objects I was photographing. I then placed an adjustable lamp on the opposite side of the white light so that I could change the light source and played around with these settings whilst moving the found bottle into different positions.

However, it was at this point that I realised how cliche’ and probably generic the idea of old alcohol bottles was, and I began to start playing around with another object I had found outside – a squished up sheet of dark wrapping paper. The shape the paper had been formed into gave the object a playful image, almost like some sort of insect. Combined with the fact that I could play around with the shadows it would cast meant that I spent ages trying to get the perfect image with this object. Whilst the white light provides a nice backdrop for the image against the dark background, the warm spot on the backdrop from the adjustable lamp gives across a sun-like image that makes it appear as though dawn is breaking. This is a nice effect and is something I wanted to attempt with my final triptych piece.

The next items I found whilst out searching were a trio of club brand plastic tube shot glasses, immediately the trio of items meant that I could play around with the form of the image more. I filled each tube with a differing amount of vague liquid to simulate the alcohol that would have been within them and began to try out different poses for the three.

I eventually decided to go with the three tubes standing up alongside each other, though it proved difficult to get the objects the stand up yet the final result was nice, it allowed the shadows from each tube to overlap and become larger adding to the shape within my photo. Though yet again, the object remained rather generic in keeping with the theme of alcohol which made me want to keep searching for more objects.

For our second Photography brief we are required to create a triptych composed of three, still-life photographs that we have taken of items that have been found by us. Before even thinking about the kind of thing to go for, I decided to do some research on still-life photographers online and see which ones inspired me.

Still life Photography followed on from Still-Life paintings, which featured, mostly exuberant yet aesthetically-boring objects painted together to cement them in artwork. As the majority of Still-life paintings were created before things such as planes, to witness an exotic fruit (a pineapple, for example) together with a British apple would have captured the imagination of a painter altogether. This changed slightly with the introduction of photography into the genre….

Edward Weston

Edward Weston was an American Photographer and is often cited as one of ‘the masters of 20th century photography’. He often found great beauty within natural objects he found in his garden and in the wildlife around him, and would spend days photographing the same objects again and again until he felt he perfectly captured their beauty. Photos like the famous ‘Pepper No. 30′ (1930) evokes an almost feminine figure in my head, with the creases and curves of the skin resembling that of an interlocked woman – despite the fact that the photo is of a pepper. Whilst the lettuce photograph beside it, despite being recognisable as lettuce brings across images of long, interconnected strands of hair upon a head keeping in with the theme of beauty.

Weston’s power to make objects appear as other, such more alive beings fascinates me and is definitely something I’m going to try and create within my images.

Irving Penn

Irving Penn was an American Photographer known for his fashion photography, portraits and still life images (in which he mostly focused on metallic objects and discarded items he found). Like Weston, these metallic still life images were often monochrome against a dark or industrial backdrop, though in Penn’s case this is mostly due to the relevance to the objects in the foreground of the image. His other photographs however prove more playful and witty, with animal remains such as lobster  tails and crab claws being utilised to create fluid patterns and shapes that lead into the next object nicely. It’s this playful tone with the objects that I also wish to try when experimenting with my images.

Marcel Christ

Marcel Christ utlises special effects work within his photography to create purposeful sequences to be captured mid-movement. ‘Nothing happens by accident’ he says, as every still life image he creates is so bursting with colour and fluid movement that it instantly comes to life before your eyes making it unlike any still life images I have ever seen before. Whilst this is something that I will be unable to do in my first foray into Still Life Photography, it’s something that I’d look into trying after seeing the dynamic work Christ creates.