Other Foods

Claudia suggested that I explore other food types other than eggs/eggshells. I've returned naturally though perhaps not permanently to the lighting studio to photograph these objects, including avocado, rock salt, fortune cookies, peaches and pickled onions etc. I chose these foods for their texture, sculptural form and organic aesthetic. I've continued with the close up crop composition which I felt was most successful in the egg photographs, and really pushed to abstract the objects themselves so that the images rely more on form, colour, shape etc than the subject matter.

Photoshoot 1

I've been collecting egg shells for weeks now, and last week I finally put them to use in a simple photoshoot using crushed shells within a domestic environment... I'm trying to overcome my tendency toward the blank studio background by working in a natural space with tungsten lighting: lamps, sunlight, windows etc.

tungsten light: have to be careful of that yellow colour temp

Image Selection

Here are some photographs I've been taking in the studio, there are hundreds of them so I've only chosen a small selection. For my finals I will be choosing 12 to print: 6 people and 6 objects which will be paired but them shuffled around like our memories often are. I want the connections between each pair to be unclear to the viewer - they may try to guess at which memory belongs to which face but in the end a photography can only tell us so much about a person's emotion, history, thoughts etc. This is what I wish to outline.

Some photos like the two shown here (headphones and dvd) are very clearly photographed with quite a high exposure compared to some others. Though these are perhaps better photos is the formal sense, I think they lose a lot of the nostalgia and mystery which some other objects hold in their shadows and the dropping out of focus which sometimes occurs as objects disappear into the black. I probably won't be using these two photos for this reason and also because although they were chosen by two models I photographed, their associations with technology and the future might overwhelm the nostalgic mood I am trying to create, diverting the themes of my final series down an unintended path!

This photo exemplifies the fading into darkness I was speaking of - though the features which are lit are clearly that of a face, you lose a lot of the person to darkness and I think this is reminiscent of the confusion often associated with memory: we can never remember the entire thing but only fragments. To create this effect I have used a few light sources: window light and tungsten as this was not shot in the studio. However all light sources were positioned on the one side of the model's face and so although there is dimension in the lighting there is also that blacking out of the left side.

All in a Day

A study of colour temperature and light throughout the day, I've taken photographs on the same camera (white balance) settings, every hour for 12 hours in a day. You can see a gradual change in colour temperature: growing colder toward the evening. Obviously exposure, shadows and the angle of light alter as well.

morning

midday

afternoon

evening

Project 1 finals

I'm going to print these a little bigger than A3, at 12" x 18" on gloss. The reason for the gloss is to mimic the shine on the original photos held my the models, I want to replicate that original asthetic (without resorting to the nostalgia of 'retro' stylising), Irena Werning style.
The order will go from Grandma, to Mum, to Me. I considered displaying them vertically (like below) to imply a family tree format, but this symbolism would perhaps be a little obvious and I'm so pleased with the identical complosition of the three shots that I'd really like to bring this out by lining them up horizontally - when I do all the models heads, shou;lders and hands line up beautifully!

Gregory Crewdson

Studio Portraits

Playing around with lighting in the uni studio - we were trying to really bring out bold colours and rembrandt lighting: however I think perhaps we went a little overboard on the shadows! an interesting effect but only if it's conceptually relavent! 

here, Hannah was trying to capture the inbetween, unco moments of speech - I was telling a story about my childhood and the nostalgia really opened up my face.