Bela Borsodi
The first image that came to mind when I discovered that we were doing still life was created by Bela Borsodi as an album cover. I didnt know this to start and I had to dig around a bit to re-find the image, which I had only seen on Tumblr before.
This image caught my attention straight away. At first you think it is 4 images, but then after looking at it for a while you begin to see it. Even after being told its one image, its still hard to believe that there isn’t a little bit of photoshop magic going on here. Because of this Borsodi released the image from another angle.
This image is mesmerising, the way colour and objects are used to create straight lines on camera, straight enough that its so hard to believe that the image isn’t actually 4 stuck together.
All of Borsodi’s works are just as fascinating, she uses everyday objects in ways that make them amazing. Some are incredibly abstract and off the wall.
When it came to creating my own still life pictures, I didn’t really use any of the same techniques or styles that Borsodi uses. I just found her stuff very interesting visually.
André Kertész
André Kertész is a famous photographer from the 1930s. One of his most famous pieces is ‘Fork’
When I first saw this image, I liked it straight away. Deep contrast in photos is one of my favourite things, something that I like to use when editing my own photos. I’m not experienced enough to do it with lights yet and when taking the photos for my Tryptic, I had to muddle around and experiment.
In ‘Fork’, Kertész uses light in a way that makes it seem like its almost caressing the silver, and the deep shadows give something so normal a real life. This works especially well in this photo as it is black and white, if this photo was in colour, it would probably not work as well. Another thing that makes this photo so extraordinary is the fact that this is one of the first examples of still life photography, before this, taking pictures of objects for artistic purposes would have been seen as a frivolous waste of money.
Vladimir Shipulin
Vladimir Shipulin is a photographer that takes pictures of ordinary objects or found places and makes them look amazing through his use of light and shadows. Most of his pictures look ‘grungy’ what with the absence of light. This is what makes me like them so much, they are very expressive and the opposite of what you normally see in retail photography.
I especially like this photo of his. And its one that I used as inspiration for my own photos. It has a very narrow depth of field that brings attention to the boat in the foreground. However at the same time the background is just as important to the story of the picture, the way light is used to highlight the bottom of the glass and how it reflects off the table shows this. Overall, I just really love the composition of this photo.
Experimentation
Before starting to create my tryptic, I had a go at photography other objects. I played around especially with shadows and light. I really wanted to utilise contrast in my pictures, as I think that it helps the images look more interesting and three dimensional. To achieve this I played with both natural light; bouncing onto my subject with a reflector, and artificial LED lights. When working with the LEDs it was hard to find the right position to make the best shadows. I had to keep adjusting the strength of the light and offset this with the settings on the camera so that my pictures didn’t turn out over exposed but still had stark highlights.
Here are a few examples of this experimental work:
The ones taken with the blue backdrop are using natural light. The one with the yellow background is using LEDs.