Independent project intentions
The word I have chosen to inspire my independent project is ‘entropy’. I have interpreted this as ‘gradual decline into disorder’.
I have chosen this word over the other options because I come up with an idea which was a better option than other ideas for the other words. I also thought that ‘entropy’ was the most interesting as it could be interpreted and presented in many different ways.
The idea for my project is to photograph the progression of the decaying of fruits. Each day for 6 days I will take a photograph of the same piece of fruit on plain background. I will produce one typology for each fruit, and from this you will be able to see how time has affected the fruit.
Personally, I really like typologies, because they are satisfying to look at. So, I took the concept of a typology and merged it with ‘entropy’, to come up with this idea.
This project will hopefully encourage people to produce less waste, by showing the beauty of fruit and showing how long it will stay good for.
Research
For this project I wanted to research into typologies, photographers that create typologies as part of their work and photographers that specialise in food photography.
The first photographer I researched into was Natalie Thomsen.
Photograph sourced from – http://thetypologist.tumblr.com/post/81192326062/fruit-typology-photography-by-natalie-thomsen
I couldn’t find much out about Natalie Thomsen, however I found this photograph credited to her on multiple websites and articles.
I like this typology that she made with photographs of fruit because its simple yet very interesting to look at. I took a lot of inspiration from this photograph, and its style.
Personally I don’t like that some of the photographs are taken from a side ways on angle and that some are taken from the top, looking down. This makes the background of each small image look different from one another. I prefer the look of repetition and similarity with specific differences. For example the different fruits and their colours.
From this photography I am going to take inspiration from the layout, and the idea to take photographs of fruit. I will make it fit with my theme of entropy but taking progressional photos of the fruit I choose.
The second photographer I looked into was Francesco Tonelli, a food photographer from New York.
Photograph sourced from – https://www.francescotonelli.com/
This photograph by Francesco Tonelli is one of my favourites by him.
I am using this photograph in particular for my inspiration because of its use of symmetry, circular objects and its downwards angle. I like the contrast in colours and the use of the dark background. Lots of food photography uses a plain black or plain white background, this is done because it makes the colour and the detail of the food stand out.
From Francesco’s work I will be using the idea of photographing on a plain background and the use of circular objects.
I also looked into the photography of David Griffen.
Photograph sourced from – https://www.davidgriffen.co.uk/food-photographer.htm
I chose to look at his work because his style is different to that of Francesco Tonelli and Natalie Thomens. His style is more macro and he takes photographs that have a more homely look. I really like his photography and the photographs that he produces as they are high quality and pleasing to look at. I won’t be drawing much inspiration from him however, because it doesn’t fit with my chosen theme of ‘entropy’.
Progression
I am planning to use Francesco Tonelli’s themes of circles in my photographs. I will combine this with inspiration from Natalie Thomens fruit typology. I will cut up my fruit so that is shows the natural circular cross section of the pieces.
I decided that I wanted to use a plain colour as the background for my project. I took some of the photography studio backdrop to use for this, I chose to take yellow, purple and grey.
Final Idea
My final ideas is to take pictures everyday for 6 days of the cross sections of fruit, showing the progressional decay in its vibrancy, structure and health.
Shoot 1
For my first shoot I decided to use the yellow background. I chose this because I wanted the images to look bright and colourful to show the vibrancy of the fruit. My favourite photograph from this shoot is the strawberry, because there is the least shadows showing and the red of the fruit really stands out agains the yellow of the background.
Final Idea Updated
I will take the pictures on a plain grey background, so that the colour of the fruit can really stand out and it is easier to see the decay in comparison the the other photographs.
Shoot 2
I decided that my project would work better using a grey background, because it would help each colour of the fruits to stand out more and for the fruit itself to have the focus of the image.
Final Images
Reflection
I am happy with how my final photographs turned out, I think it it clear that I took a lot of my inspiration from Natalie Thomsen’s fruit typology, however I added my own ideas to it to make it different and so that it would fit with my theme of ‘entropy’.
From this photography module I have learnt a lot about cameras and editing techniques. We did lots of different forms of photography such as still life, portraiture and studio photography. This enabled me to learn lots more about cameras and how to use them in different situations. My favourite workshop session was being in the studio, this was because it was a very different experience to what I have had before with cameras and studio equipment, such as the lighting.
However some improvements could be made to my final images, including ensuring that the lighting is the same for each photograph so that all of the background would be the same tone and contrast. This would improve the photographs because it would allow the audience to see the contrast between the fruit and the background as well as being able to see the progression from each image more clearly. The lighting was very difficult for me to get right as I did not have access to a studio or any studio lights. To overcome this problem I used many smaller lights from different angles to try and eliminate the shadows, this was not as successful as I would have hoped.
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