Objects

Final Images Evaluation.

Below, i will be evaluating the best images from each brief, i will be choosing one image from each category and then choosing one final image from any category that is my favourite and really shows my photographic capabilities, this includes;

• Reflective Surfaces
• Museum Images
• Macro photography
• Comercial photography
• Set design

Reflective Surfaces

I have chosen this image to represent my Reflective Surfaces brief because I think it is a good example at a different composition as it is essentially a reflection of a reflection. Editing the image wasn’t hard as I have only reduced the noise and enhanced the definition, but I chosen to give it a sepia filter because I think it compliment’s the image well. The way the image is composed and the way the clock is standing on its own in isolation adds atmosphere and character to my image so that is why the sepia filter was used because that helps to heighten the characteristics. As the clock itself is a vintage age clock, the sepia filter just adds to that because it makes the whole image look quite vintage as a whole.  Finally a little softening/feathering around the edges of the image make it seem almost quite dreamlike, again adding the atmosphere of the image.

Museum Images

I have chosen this image to represent my Museum Images brief because I think it has the full feeling of what a museum is like, all captured within one image. The cluttered shelves filled with ancient objects, tattered books with ragged pages filled with numerous stories and accounts and dark, dusty unkept areas keeping hidden secrets long forgotten. I took careful consideration with this image when it came to editing it because I wanted to maintain the dark, dusty feeling of the image. Obviously I heightened both the contrast and black point of the image and then I increased the definition. Not much editing was done with this image because it simply didn’t need it. The image is the image and I have clearly shown what I wanted to, the need to further edit the image any more would only distort and distract people so I wanted to keep it simple.

Macro Photography

I have chosen this image to represent my Macro Photography brief because its shows just what macro is about, making things look like life in both size and context but to also show an incredible amount of detail. To set up this image I placed my chosen Monopoly pieces on a product table and used a soft box to lighten flood the area in a soft white light. I didn’t use a soft box underneath the table however because I thought that would distort and dampen the reflections because I wanted the reflection to be as crystal clear as I could to increase symmetry. Editing the image was, again, a simple process, I only increased definition to bring out the texture, detail and reflection because that was all that was needed, however in ‘Aperture’ I used the white balance tool on the figures so that the whole of the image would be the same colour as I wanted the figures to really blend with the background and almost become as one.

Comercial Photography

I have chosen this image to represent my Commercial Photography brief because, in my opinion, It was just the result I was looking for and I am very proud of this image due to the fact what I imagined when I was give this brief, is almost exact to the final image, which is a very difficult task to pull off. The image is simple, clean, and elegant and has no distractions away from the product. I have also considered carefully where the description of my product is placed, if I placed the caption underneath the actual product, it would distract the viewer’s eye away, but because it is placed almost within the product, the viewer’s eye is able to focus on both the simple description and the actual object itself. In this case an Apple MacBook Pro. Editing the image was fiddly as I wanted a completely white background and was unable to move away from the grey, so in Photoshop I used the lasso tool to go around the MacBook and its reflection and from there was able to apply that to a white background.

Set Design

I have chosen this image to represent my Set Design brief because,  I think it sums up my whole idea of the tea party I wanted to, it has the messy cluttered arrangement of tea party necessaries. A dark, gloomy colour pallet and an almost hypnotic, drug like composition as the image itself is actually twisted, distorted and warped. Taking the shots was easy enough, I set up my camera up on a Tripod and started shooting but with this image, as I pressed the shutter button to take my image, I immediately zoomed out and that is the reason why the image is blurred/ warped, but what is also good is the fact this effect looks like its radiating from the tea-cup directly in the middle of the image. For an experimental shot, this turned out to be one of my best. Editing again was simple enough; I just heightened contrast and black point into dangerous levels as I wanted to keep the dark, twisted feeling from this image.

Best image evaluation

The image above is the image that I think, is the best photograph I have produced throughout this whole brief, from, museum, commercial, macro, reflections and set design, this image is taken from the Macro brief. I chosen this image because I think it is a well composed shot, I have thought about colour, positioning, detail, framing and symmetry. The colour of the monopoly figures blends well as it is the same colour as the background and so the figures and the background look as though they are the same, nothing is distracting. Because it is a macro shot, there is a high level of detail in this image and so the textures are really defined. The positioning and symmetry of the figures has turned out really well as well, both sides are symmetrical whether that be from the negative space left between the figures on the right and left side of the image, or the reflection of the objects themselves. The reflections however are also very defined and clear. This image is my favorite just because of how precise I managed to get it. From symmetry, to colour everything just seems, right. It may not be a groundbreaking photograph that has never been seen before but, it is certainly an image were everything fits, perfectly.

Reflective surfaces

A reflection can be found on a wide range of everyday objects, a reflection is almost everywhere we look and so when thinking of ideas on how to show this, i was spoilt for choice.

http://www.davebutcher.co.uk/gallery/cities/england-cambridge-clare-college-bridge-cam-reflections-sfx-ir-232101

This image from the landscape and Fine art Photographer, Dave Butcher is good inspiration because of the distorted reflection, it is almost symmetrical and due to the clarity of the reflection from the river, it is almost hard to tell when the reflection begins, if you were to turn this image upside down it would still look the right way up. A very clever and considered composition.

http://www.carlosdelarua.com/Carlos_de_la_Rua_Art_Photography/Art_Photography/Pages/The_Dance_of_Water.html#6

This is a fantastic reflection and example of symmetry because the photographer, Carlos De La Rua has considered pattern. taken from his "the dance of water" series in which he experiments with composition and reflection with a water theme, His images are well composed and create great patterns.

http://www.photography001.com/zenphoto/index.php?album=exteriors&image=21_new_york_city.jpg

This is a great example of composition and reflection because the reflection is that obscure, it almost becomes abstract. It is difficult to make out if it is a section of  building or not. Or if it is 2 buildings or just the one. A clever image that plays with out perception. Taken by: David Henderson
Other examples of his well composed, abstract reflections include;

http://www.photography001.com/zenphoto/index.php?album=exteriors&image=13_cambridge.mass.jpg

http://www.photography001.com/zenphoto/index.php?album=exteriors&image=18_new_york_city.jpg

After getting enough research into reflective surfaces, i knew i wanted to take images with both a good composition and with some abstract style to them.
These are the images i took to show reflective surfaces;

These images that i have chosen to represent the reflective surfaces brief show both character and good composition.
My most successful shots however were of the reflections on the car.
because of the way the car was made and the way the metal bends and curves, any reflection in that will make it very distorted and abstract.
For the image of the clock, i simply arranged two mirrors to reflect into each other to create a warped, unusual image as you are looking at a reflection, in a reflection. I though the adding of a sepia filter and softening around the edges made the image gain some character and atmosphere.
Finally the image of the tea pot is a good composition because i have shown the contents of a cup of tea in the reflection of a tea-bag container. which i thought was quite a clever concept.

Set Design

for the set design brief, i wanted to build a scene inspired from the tea party scene in the famous novel/film "Alice in wonderland"

The famous scene from Lewis Carol's "Alice in wonderland" from were Alice discovers the Hare and the mad hatter holding a wacky tea party.

For my research i simply looked through pictures of the Tea Party scene to gain inspiration and ideas of how to design the set. 

This image of concept art for the 2010 Alice in wonderland film directed by Tim Burton, helped alot as it was the vision i was most looking for, a messy, badly composed and thought of tea party that looks rushed and unconsidered, but mostly, mad.

Images from; clevver.com 

After finding enough images for inspiration, i was ready to build my set. Using a product table, i found some appropriate fabric from the textiles section in university.

for the decorations however, obviously i needed tea pots, tea cups and also tea plates, aswell as an assortment of biscuits and other trinkets that would compliment the overall look of the set.

After setting everything up on the table in a jumbled, mess of an arrangement, i was ready to chose the appropriate lighting.

first of all i wanted something that would softly fill the whole table in a glow so for that i used a honeycomb grid on a 500watt bulb and placed it at an angle besides a corner of the table, then i wanted a light that would create strong, bold shadows. For this i used a snoot, again on another 500watt bulb this was placed at the opposite corner of the table and placed just above to create those sharp shadows i was after.

This was the set and lighting set up that i used to take my shots.

After everything was set up, it was time to take my shots, i looked at most compositions, using a high ISO setting i took pictures both close in and wide zoomed out shots, with this i was able to take images that shown the detail of the items that were placed on the table and with the wide shots, i was able to show a further range of the tables items.

With the above images, i have edited them in a range of ways but with them all i have increased the contrast, Black point and increased the definition in aperture. Doing that adds more tone and atmosphere but Black point was important because it made the shadows highly defined and bold.

http://www.jknowles.co.uk/portfolio/still_life_one/lilly__lamp

This image in particular, From advertising photographer "Jonathan Knowles" was a great inspiration because of the lighting and composition used within the shot, it was that type of lighting i wanted to achieve within my set and shots.

With the shots i achieved, i was successful in creating the mad, jumbled mess of a tea party directly inspired from Alice in wonderland. And with the added research into Jonathan Knowles' images, i was able to get the right lighting to enhance those bold shadows and shapes. 

Comercial Photography

comercial photography is all about advertising a specific subject. another defining feature of commercial is that rather than the images being seen as stand alone art, the photographer is paid for taking the images and them passes them on to corporations to use in there advertising and marketing anyway they see fit.

comercial photography's falls into a number of different subjects, these include;

• portrait and wedding
• wildlife photography

and many more.

before i took any shots i needed to do some research and look into different methods of my chosen commercial subject which would be advertising.

for this i looked at different photographers and there take on advertising a product for a company. here are some of the examples a came across.

One such photographer was Jonathan Knowles. His advertising images use very big and bold compositions to create stark fantastic images that advertise the subject clearly but also maintain a level of art to them.

images from: http://www.jknowles.co.uk/portfolio/advertising

each one of the above images is different in the way he advertises the subject.

with the Guinness advertisement, he has used a very low comparison looking up at the subject to make it appear larger that it actually is and the use of the glass being taler than the building is the background make it appear as if it is towering above also the use of the grand, contrasting skyline and clouds make the whole image stand out and fit together.

The second image of the Heineken bottles is a good example for me because of the use of shadows and how "Knowles" has directed and controlled them with the use of lighting. the image also has a beige background so the bold green of the bottle stands out and grabs the viewers eye to draw them into to the advertisement.

finally the water shot commercial for the Lexus is a beautiful shot as it has some art to it. the message that the image is giving across is that the car itself is beautiful, composed, and flows just like water. an unusual way to advertise a car but it works as you get the main point from this advertisement straight away. beauty.

for my commercial advertising shots i decided to use my apple Macbook laptop.

i took a few test shots first to see which compositions would work best and what lighting set ups would be effective and highlight the subject.

my main lighting set up that  used throughout however consisted of using a continuous light and a soft box to give a white clean wash, underneath the product table and again the same continuos light and soft box above the subject at an angle.

these are the shots i thought would be good enough to possibly make it into my final commercial image.

finally after i taken and chosen my final shots i decided upon using the above image as my final image which i would use as my commercial/advertising shot.

the image is clean, straight to the point and has plenty of corners angles for the viewer to focus on.

to make my image look like an actual adverisment i did all the usual contrast and brightness adjustments in aperture but then i took my image into photoshop and cut around the laptop so i could highlight the grey space around it as i wanted this to be a clean sharp white.

after being able to highlight the surrounding area i put the brightness up to full so the laptop was surrounded in this crisp white.

this helps the subject to stand out more and highlight those angles.

finally i put in a caption that would best advertise this image followed by a logo and price in the top left.

i chose to put the caption in the middle of the laptop because that is where the viewers eyes will fall first and thus they will also read the caption as they look at the laptop.

Macro Photography

Macro photography in short is basically, close-up photography.

Special lenses can help to improve the quality and how close you can get to the subject without loosing any detail and create very crisp beautiful images.

Macro photography is all about filling the frame or getting close enough to your subject so the texture and definition of the object or subject you are photographing can shine through and produce fantastic photographs.

Macro photography can be used within the photographic industry in a wide range of ways and most notably through advertising.

companies will hire photographers to take pictures of there image they want to advertise and the best way of doing this is by macro shooting, getting very close to the subject so that the product is the centre of attention and will draw people to it.

A great example of macro photography within advertising is the company 'Apple' who have a range of electronic equipment from MP3's to laptops, monitors tablets and smart phones.

these images that are used to market Apple's products are very clean, crisp clear but most of all, they are simple.

the lighting that has been used is a very soft light and the backgrounds that are found on most of Apples products are block white or block black keeping things very clinical and beautiful. this allows for the viewer to be drawn directly and only to the product as there is no distraction away

from the actual product.

images from:

http://www.apple.com/

After looking at these images i was inspired to try out my macro photography brief inspired by the marketing techniques of apple, keeping things simple and clean with no distraction is the background keeping focus on the item.

The images that i have taken here are very much inspired by the Apple marketing images shown above.

by placing my objects on a reflecting table.

i used a simple light set up of one soft box giving a clean wash over the objects to heighten the detail in both the objects and reflection but to also heighten the white/grey background.

A well know Photographer who specialises in still life and macro photography is Toby Mc'farlan Pond.

his images are very stylised and could also be seen as a merge between photography and graphic design.

All of Toby Mc'farlan Pond's work is carefully thought of, for example, it is clear he thinks about composition as a massive factor in photography and how they can make a shot stand out as composition can be used in numerous ways to draw the viewer into the said piece.

Colour has been used aswell in his shots to give an impact, as with the first set of images i have provided of the red phone, Pond has used a white background to emphasise the bold brash red colour and thus enhances the overall impact of the shot.

with the grey image of the necklace, here Pond has thought about the metal and the sharp edges and has clearly reflected that in his background choice. finally the perfume bottle has been given a black background to make the deep midnight blue of the bottle look truly beautiful and he has also given the image a moonlight-looking glow around the edges to frame the bottle.

-images from  http://www.brydgesmackinney.com/photography/mcfarlanpond/index.html

After exploring Macro ohotograhy through an advertising perspective i have also looked at macro through a more predictive path.

With these images i tried going into a more natural view of Macro photography. here you can see a huge amount of detail and texture.

these images are also a great example of bold colour from the bright pink to the emerald green in the images.

As shown, macro photography can be used in a wide range of ways, from fashion to documentary and advertising to natural.

macro can be interpreted in a number of ways and that is why it is the most diverse type of photography.

Blackburn Museum visit

To get a greater understanding of our object photography brief we went to visit Blackburn Museum and was able to take pictures of the many objects on display there.

Luckily, the museum creator allowed me and a couple of my friends to have a look at the storeroom were most of a museums collection is kept, he also revealed that only 15% of any museums collection is actually displayed while the other 85% is hidden away on dusty shelves and cramped cupboards.

while i was in the storeroom i managed to take a few shots of the rustic, vintage, old objects.

The above images provide great personality and atmosphere as i have managed to capture the old, forgotten state of the museums collection, using high contrasts and increasing the definition of the images to highlight the mass amount of detail within the storeroom.

After looking around the rest of the museum and its collection i asked the curator if it was possible to take pictures of some of the Egyptian collection but with a hands on approach.

luckily he was more than willing to let me physically hold some of the Egyptian artefacts that were more than 3,000 years old.

the museum visit has given me an insight into asking people and arranging visits as i build my persona as a photographer.

for example, for me to be able to take further pictures in the museum, if i chose to pursue this more, i would have to ring up the museum, speak to the curator and arrange a day were i would be able to come up and be able to do some shots. this is  what is going to be expected of me in my later years as i will have to speak to people and arrange visits to places to be able to get the images i desire.

Object Photography

For my brief I have been asked to look into object photography, its purpose and the reasons as to why it is one of the most commons forms of professional photography. Two photographers that compliment object photography are “Martin Parr” and “Keith Arnatt” both have a very different style when it comes to shooting objects but both achieve what they set out to do and show through the use of every day objects.

Martin Parr

The first image I will be looking at is by Martin Parr; the image is a simple breakfast cereal with a twist. Titled, Obama O’s the cereal is a clever way to get the main audience of whoever eat this particular cereal, to be aware of the political debates happening in America and to draw the youth of America more to the side of barrack Obama. Although this cereal could also be used as satire and could also be used to humiliate Obama’s followers.

With a clean, crisp white background to highlight and contrast with the bright blue of the box the eye is directly drawn to it. With simple and minimalistic compositional techniques such as this, advertisers allow themselves to create obvious and striking campaigns for their products.

Keith Arnatt

The second image I will be looking at is by Keith Arnatt.  The image depicts a pig on its back with its legs in the air. This may represent a struggling amongst the animal.  The object in question is also very dirty and grimy and looks abused further adding to the struggle of the animal.

With a complete opposite to Martin Parr the background of the image is black and this also draws the viewer to the pig and also it highlights the dirty, rustic coverings of the object. The composition of the image allows for a large part of the black background to come into focus and cover the image and also add tone. With the pig being at the bottom and with the viewer being un-able to see its face it further adds to the question of the suffering of the animal yet again.

Petals 

After researching these photographers and looking at their object work I was able to go into the studio and start photographing my own objects bearing in mind what I have learnt and seen from both Martin Parr, Keith Arnatt and many other examples of object photography.

Lego 

What I have chosen to show is a culmination of techniques and styles of the two photographers I decided to look at. I chose to use a bright light to make the crisp, white background stand out and give the objects I have photographed a bold, simple look that is effective for what I wanted to achieve. On the petals the exotic red color immediately jumps out amongst the white background and the soft reflection adds a sense of serenity to the image. As with the Lego man I have chosen to crop his face and highlight his facial features, this means that the viewer does not necessarily need to see the face just the expression and clothes to know what the character is about.