We’ve been given a new task which is to create 3 photos that can be presented together. In the lecture we were shown past students work, some that were really good and some that were a little amateur. I like the concept of finding something in a public place and then photographing it. This was obviously something that had been done before as the first thing I did after coming back from the lecture was create a moodboard of other people’s work in order to gain some insight into the project and some inspiration for my own photographs. 

 

When I looked at other peoples work, I found that a lot of the found objects were rotting or damaged. This is something I liked and wanted to use ‘rot’ as a theme for my 3 photos depending on what I could find. I looked into a photographer..

Klaus Pichler

who over the course of 9 months, photographed rotting fruit. I had previously found his work in the National Geographic and wanted to recreate his style but in a slightly different time scale. I was interested to see how much fruit could rot in a few days. I liked the way that Pichler composed his photos, placing them on a black background and photographing them either by themselves or in beautiful pots/plates. 

I wanted to recreate this but in a way that fitted into my brief so I went searching through the bins in the city centre and did infact find the remains of a banana peel, an apple core and part of an orange peel. These automatically reminded me of Pichler’s work as some were slightly mouldy and some were just hard from the air getting to them. In terms of the photos themselves, I wasn’t too keen on doing a simple mid shot of the objects. I wanted to do something more experimental and use my macro lens to zoom in on parts of the fruit, like a photographer 

Jefz Lim

who has a photography blog based on close-up images of fruit and vegetables that he has taken and edited himself. I like the texture and artistic approach Lim has by using a macro lens and photographing the objects up close. This was something I wanted to incorporate into my own work with the mouldy fruit from the bins. I also wanted to use Lim’s editing techniques in terms of making a solid white background for the fruit to be on. I felt like white complimented the fruit colours better and allowed them to be more vibrant and interesting to look at. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CONTACT SHEETS

As you can see, I took over 200 photos of my fruits, experimenting with different angles, aperture sizes, shutter speed, ISO and changing the lighting for different effects. I wanted to show my understanding of apertures etc and the difference this has on an image taken. Hopefully this is clear through my occasional black photos and the odd one with extreme exposure. 

After I had my contact sheets done, I then needed to pick about 12 of my strongest photos, allowing me to find 4 of each fruit type to work with. I then needed to edit them in the way I had previously explained with the inspiration of particular photographers. 

FINAL IMAGE

When photographing, I captured many different angles and close ups of different parts of the fruit, for example, I photographed the end of the banana and part of the body to make sure i had a wide range of images before tidying up. I’ve always loved macro photography as it is able to capture just tiny detail, most of which we probably ignore on a daily basis. The beauty and delicacy of an orange peel most people would think is crazy but I wanted to show that even mouldy fruit has it’s beauty. I used several different apertures throughout the shoot to show my knowledge and understanding. Each photo had a different aperture and ISO as they were different shapes and caught the light in different ways. I used a desk light as my main source of light and then held a mirror on the opposite side to make the subject evenly lit. 

The composition of the photo was pretty straight forward, I had in my head that I wanted the main focus to be in the centre of the photograph which i think works really well. Despite the fruit not having that much mould on, I wanted to still create this idea that it was rubbish, using an apple core and peel from a banana and orange really encompasses the overall message I was trying to convey. 

I didn’t want to edit the photos too much so just adjusted the brightness, contrast, saturation and hue to enable a more crisp photo overall. Some parts of the background I painted white and there was some off grey tint behind the fruit and I wanted to avoid any shadow. Overall, I think the photos went really well, I’ve photographed in macro before but it’s very difficult and extremely tedious to get a well focused photo. I really enjoyed the project itself and hope you agree that the photos are good!