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.