Part 1
For part 1 we were put into groups of three and asked to write a brief which would be given to another group to complete. I was put in Group 4 with Anna and Ellie and the brief we wrote asked for a product photograph of Starbucks coffee. Unfortunately our group was too busy to meet up so we had to write the brief over Facebook Messenger. Ellie wrote a first draft which Anna and I checked over to see if anything could be added in. I then wrote a second and final draft based on what Ellie wrote and the corrections we made. Anna then printed the three copies we had to bring to class. The next day we presented it to the class and our classmates and teachers gave us feedback on how we could improve it. We then handed our brief to Group 3 and recieved Group 1’s brief.
Part 2
Our group now had to complete Group 1’s brief under their supervision. We also had to supervise the completion of our brief which was now in the hands of group 3.
We began by going to the library as a group to do some research. We had each read the brief several times. It asked us to create a still life photograph for a book called ‘ The Night Circus’. We first researched previous book covers which, as the brief stated, were not photographs but graphics. We printed them out to take to the tutorial with Sally:
We drew inspiration from the simplicity of these for our own cover. They also asked us that the image be monochromatic with red being the only colour. With this in mind we set about finding the objects that were listed in the brief. We found very quickly that the only objects we would be able to provide and use were gloves, tarot cards and rings. The tree, umbrella, fire, ice and birds would all be impossible to photograph with these. Either because they are too big, too dangerous or too impractical.
We managed to find a way around this:
I remembered this album cover I had seen so I showed it to the group and suggested we do something similar. Obviously it would not have been possible for the artist to photograph this scene in real life so they constructed it using paper, paintings and photographs. The result is pretty magnificent. This then reminded us of a Tesco advert which has a photograph of a constructed reality made of food. I have searched for it online but can’t seem to find it. The only places I have seen it are on the sides of Tesco delivery vans and on billboards. Drawing inspiration from these our group decided to construct the objects we would be unable to obtain or photograph out of paper. When we told Sally about this idea at the group tutorial she liked it and recommended we watch ‘The Science of Sleep’. A movie about a man who creates a constructed reality from household objects and lives in it:
Our group met up afterwards and drew out our composition on a piece of paper:
We decided to have the gloves holding the objects and the constructed objects in the corners and around the edge of the frame. We had looked at a website linked in the brief before the tutorial with Sally. This link had been very useful as it had told us all about the book, it’s themes and what colour everything should be. We decided to make the birds, umbrella and ice out of white paper and the fire out of red paper. At this point we were unsure if anything else would fit in the frame so we decided that we would have a red tree if there was enough space. We decided to photograph all of the objects seperately and combine them on Photoshop. We originally intended to photograph all of this in one frame but getting the birds and the gloved hands to stay perfectly still and lit along with all of the other variables would have been near impossible. Furthermore, had we managed all of this we felt it just wouldn’t have the same effect as a composite image. Also most lenses are soft in the corners and suffer from distortion because of the way they are designed. This would have caused a loss of detail in the paper objects and a strange looking persepective. We would have had to have used a telephoto lens (in the small studio space) with a narrow aperture, meaning either a slow shutter speed or very high ISO would had to have been used. This just wasn’t possible.
We booked a studio slot for the following Monday at 12pm. Unfortunately Ellie messaged us in the morning to say she was sick. As much as we would have liked to have postponed the shoot until Ellie was well, we were meeting Sally on the Wednesday so that she could suggest improvements and/or whether we needed to reshoot. This meant it had to be done that day. Myself, Anna and Louise from the other group met at 12pm in D20. We asked Louise if she would be happy to model for the shoot as we needed someone to wear the gloves and hold the tarot cards and rings.
We set up a black backdrop on a chair, using the backrest to hang it from and the seat to place the still life on. We then cut a hole in the backdrop so that Louise could put her hands through, before setting up a camera and tripod in front. The backdrop definitely looked odd, however if Louise’s hands and the lights were positioned correctly it was not noticable and looked a very deep black. We positioned the lights so that there would be a sort of ‘halo’ effect around Louise’s hands. This was to seperate them from the backdrop because although they were shiny they were still black. Anna had the idea of actually having the gloved hands interact with the objects (wearing the rings and holding the tarot cards as if they are being used):
At first it was tough getting a fast shutter speed and a low ISO without motion blur occuring in Louise’s hands. So we decided to up the intensity of the lights. We were cautious of doing this at first as we were afraid it would over-expose the rings or reveal the strange backdrop we had constructed. Thankfully it turned out fine and we managed to get the shutter speed to 1/100, the aperture to f8 and the ISO to 400. The result was very sharp. It was now just a case of moving the lights and objects around until we were happy. After a few attempts we were pleased with the result:
It was now time to photograph the paper objects. Before the shoot Anna and I had made fire, ice (in the form of icicles), three birds and an umbrella out of white and red card. We first photographed the fire. We simply stuck it to the chair and shone a single light on it from the side. This created shadows which gave it more depth. We then photogaphed the icicles. We were able to shoot it the same way we shot the fire but instead we flipped the image upside down afterward so that the icicles were pointing down. We decided against photographing the umbrella. We felt it looked too clumsy so we decided to have more fire on the other side instead. We felt this would make the composition more balanced. We also decided against photographing the tree as there was no space for it and cramming it and the umbrella in now would over complicate the composition.
Now came the hard part. The birds we cut out really needed to be suspended to give the illusion that they were flying so we attached fishing wire to them and hung them underneath the chair. Getting them all to sit in the same position was incredibly tedious but eventually they were all in the same place under the same light and the wire was not visible:
We would have photographed the birds seperately to combine them later in Photoshop, however we wanted to do as much as we could in camera as possible so we refrained. Besides we were already going to be doing a fair bit in Photoshop as it was. (We asked Louise at the start if it was alright for us to use Photoshop and she said it was absolutely fine).
Now that we had finished taking the pictures it was time to combine and edit them. I offered to take the images home to do a rough draft edit. I began by using a desaturation tool to remove all colour besides red from the images. These are the 4 images after selective colouring and flipping the icicles the correct way round:
I then combined the images on Photoshop, leaving space for the title:
I sent it to the group chat and we decided how we might be able to improve it for the final edit. After this and the group tutorial with Ron we decided to redo the fire to make it more pointy and curvy. We then added in a title and printed it ready for the pin up on Wednesday:
We also brought along a version without the title as that was what the brief asked for and a full sleeve version to show roughly what the final product would look like:
Feedback
The class seemed to respond well to it. Mary-Ann and Sally commented on how the framing, lighting, and composition were good. One thing that came up however was that the hands were not bright enough. One person said they had thought they were smoke at first. I think this is a fair cristicism and it has made me realise that in future when communicating something in my images I need to make it as clear as possible to avoid people interpreting it differently.
Overall I am very pleased with the final cover and I think that my group and I responded well to the brief. Despite our idea requiring heavy Photoshopping, I think we did well to do as much in camera as possible (photographing the birds together and getting the lighting right there and then). All we did in Photoshop in the end was combine the images, selectively colour them and flip the icicles.
Adam Kitchener 