Still Life

In the brief for the studio lighting project I found out that I was being paired with Will Heason, which I thought would be interesting as I had not been in a group with him before, and so had never worked with him.

The first brief that we were given was the still life brief, which is apparently the most difficult brief compared to the high-key and low-key briefs. We have been allocated with another group and have to take images of objects that reflect their personalities in some way.

To get an idea of what we are going to take photos of, we had to interview the group that we were allocated with to take photos of them/their objects, to get an idea of their personalities.
The sort of questions that we asked were:
-Favourite colour?
-Favourite food/drink?
-Do you enjoy any sports/outdoor activities?
-Favourite childhood cartoon?
-Is their any particular childhood memory that stands out?
-How would you describe your personality?
-What is your worst nightmare?

We wanted to ask some simple questions to get the basis of their personality, and then ask ones such as 'what is your worst nightmare' to get an interesting and unique subject for our shoots.

We got lots of answers from the pair but nothing that really stood out to me.

Before taking the images on the 11th of March, I want to research different still life photographers to see what influences me the most:

James Day:

James Day takes images of portraits, landscapes and still life. His still life images are really inspirational to me because there is such a range of them and he manages to make simple objects look really interesting. The images that really stood out to me were his 'On Black' images. He used a strong light shining in front of the object and used a black background. This made the objects really stand out and didn't create any shadows. I really liked how the objects looked, even though he used quite random and 'boring' objects such as a bowl of lettuce and a dustpan and brush. The idea of making simple things look interesting by the way it is lit really inspires me and I hope to achieve this in my still life shoot.

Giles Revell:

Revell's still life images also really inspired me. I love the colours used in some of his projects, and the contrast between the complicity of some images and the simplicity of others, but they are all as interesting as each other. One project that stood out most to me was his 'medicinal plants' project. At a glance this image just looks like a black and white image of a flower, but it's meaning is more complicated than that. The plants were digitally sectioned across defined planes revealing their anatomical form. The photos were taken to emphasise their clinical usage rather than their aesthetic beauty, but when you glance at the image (especially the one below) it simply looks like a black and white photo of flowers. This links to James Day's work because the images seem simple at a glance but they are more complicated than they appear.

My Work:

After looking at the work of James Day and Giles Revell, I was inspired and knew that I wanted to do something simple yet effective in my shoot. However, after interviewing Alex and India to get an idea of what to do, myself and Will weren't exactly sure on what to do. We had to do a shoot on the following Tuesday after we received the brief (18th of March), and so we thought that we would just experiment with the lighting and then use the studio again later that week to shoot our final pictures. Therefore, we decided to bring in simple blue and pink toothbrushes in a glass to test.

After learning how to do simple lighting techniques in the Uni workshops, it was quite easy to set up the lighting. I had never worked with studio lighting before the workshops and so didn't find it as easy as Will did, who has worked with it many times before. I found working with studio lighting really useful because I'm sure that I will need these skills in the future.

This was the lighting set-up that we did with our experimental shoot. At first we weren't sure how to light the glass, as you can see from a couple of the photos below. Will had the idea to put one light below the glass and light it from there, but I thought it looked too dark and you couldn't see the glass properly. We then asked the Uni technicians how to do it properly, and we found out that we needed to set it up like it is above. 

After taking away the light from below the glass, we lit the toothbrushes from around them to try and get the high key effect. However, I thought there were too many strong reflections of the light on the glass and I didn't like the shadows.

After experimenting lots with the positions of the lights, I was happy with the final picture. We also places black objects either side of the glass to create the slightly black colour on the edges. Even though I'm not going to use these photos as my final Still Life images, because they don't have anything to do with Alex and India, it was fun to experiment with the lighting.

Final Images

After thinking more about what we could shoot, I thought it would be a good idea to ask Alex and India 'what do you have in your uni room that you've brought from home, that you couldn't leave behind because it means too much to you?'. It was difficult to get in touch with India and she didn't turn up on the day of the shoot so we did not manage to get a still life shot for her. However, Alex answer was his toy Kermit the Frog. This was quite surprising as he does not look like the sort of person to have toys in his uni room, so I thought it would be a good thing to photograph. This is because it is a simple object (a toy) but has a more complicated meaning behind it (Alex couldn't be without it). I thought that we could also make the lighting more complicated to make the images look really interesting.

We decided that we wanted the lighting to make the toy look quite dark and mysterious, which is the opposite to how it makes Alex feel and how it is portrayed on tv; as a friendly childhood character. We experimented quite a lot with the lighting. As you can see from the first image, the light was too bright and had a slight yellow tinge to it.

Final, printed images:

I didn't heavily edit these images at all, I turned up the contrast slightly and make them a bit darker, so the shadows on the toy's face blends in more.

Evaluation

I found the still life shoot quite stressful because, probably because it was the first shoot of the project, I found it hard to get answers from Alex and India and so get an idea of what to do for the shoot. However, it was good to experiment with the studio lighting and even though I didn't use glass in my final shoot, it was good to learn how to light it because I might need it in the future. I liked how we lit Kermit in the final shoot as I think we made it look quite dark and mysterious, which is the complete opposite to how it makes Alex feel; comfortable and at home. I liked learning about the lighting and it was very beneficial to me as I know I will use it in the future.

I did not like our subject of simply photographing a toy as I think it is way too simple an idea and is not interesting enough. I think that it was fun to experiment with the lighting but the fact that it was just a toy makes me feel like it wasn't the best idea that I could have come up with. I did like my question 'what is in your uni room that you brought from home, that you could not live without?' as I think this has a lot of meaning, but I didn't particularly like the object.

It would have been better if we could've shot India's object, however she did not turn up on the day of the shoot. I would've booked out the studio on another day but they were all booked up. This is disappointing as if we took photos of her object, I would've had a lot more choice to choose for my final still life image.