Artist Statement
If you look at these photos long enough, you might just hear the creak of a old ship as it races across the Caribbean Sea. Growing up, and still today, Pirates of the Caribbean has been one of my favorite movie series. I've never seen such an old, dirty, dangerous scene have so much aesthetic. The heavy shadows, the cloudy rum bottles, an the rust covered everything speaks to me. This was precisely my goal for this series: to take us back to a time where the only light was the flicker of a candle and wood hadn't yet been replaced for plastic. We are all so far lost in technology that we occasionally neglect to see beauty in anything other than a million dollar home on Instagram or the latest number 1 on Netflix. Our well-being is now measured by how many material things we own, not by the sentimental value that those things hold. This series rids us of that. Even an old, rusty pocket knife, if you give it a chance, can be beautiful. And your great-grandmother's locket may be scratched from years of rolling around in the bottom of a jewelry box, but don't you think it deserves a second life?
IDEA FOR PROJECT
For my final project, I plan on doing product photography/still life photography. I plan on creating a very moody composition with a lot of darks and hard shadows paired with soft, warm light on the subject. I want to build a still life set with rustic looking products with heavy wood grains and textures. I want to stick to earth tones and browns to get a natural feeling. I'm also keeping an open mind to switching to a bit of a lighter mood with a more rustic feeling if I can't get the mood right in the first idea. My pivot would be to change to a white background while keeping the natural textures. Adding flowers like daisies would lighten the mood. When I get home, I will look at what I have to see which option would be better. Since I have two main ideas, I chose two product photographers with different moods to capture multiple methods and techniques. I want to use a close up method with a wide open aperture to soften the background and pull focus on the subject. I also want to use a longer focal length to get some compression in the background so I can still see all of the elements in the background, even though they are blurred. I would like to go up to 100mm, but I'm afraid my 70-300mm won't be able to focus that close as it's not a macro. Also, it's a f/4.5, which may not give me enough to photograph a dark scene. For lighting, I intend to use a dimmed and diffused overhead light to light the whole scene accompanied by a warm lamp from the side to get sharp shadows to darken the mood.
My two photographers are Peter Mckinnon, a Canadian Film Maker and Landscape and Product Photographer and Timothy Hogan, an American Product Photographer.
My two photographers are Peter Mckinnon, a Canadian Film Maker and Landscape and Product Photographer and Timothy Hogan, an American Product Photographer.
Peter McKinnon
Peter McKinnon is my number one influence for just about everything I do in the world of photography. His YouTube channel is the sole reason I took the leap into photography. It's also why I'm so interested in Landscapes. Now being given the opportunity to pull from any photographer, even instagrammers, I knew I had to choose McKinnon. McKinnon's work is known for its mood; dark, mysterious and emotional. His brand, Pete's Pirate Life sums up his style the best: he shoots what you would see in Pirates of the Caribbean. McKinnon also preaches the idea to shoot from the opposite point of view that everyone else does. He talks about this most with landscape photography, but he mentions it in his product shoots as well. What he means by this is that if everyone is shooting the same subject from the same, boring direction, the photographers that turn around and shoot the exact opposite way will produce the best photos. I want to do this in my project. I want to explore different angles and perspectives to achieve this.
Timothy Hogan
Timothy Hogan is not a photographer, or so his website says. Hogan looks at product photography as a problem that needs to be solved. He asks himself, how can I portray the product in a way that makes the most sense. He commonly uses color to portray the mood of the product. Below, you will see that some are dark and moody, while others like women's jewelry are lighter. He also uses space perspective to portray different feelings. In this jewelry shot on the very left, he uses a very close up shot to fill the space to make it feel more vulnerable and intimate. I will use these ideas as a guideline for how to compose shots based on the product. Hogan's work won't so much be a mimic source for me, but more as a reference for how to portray different moods and feelings.
5 Characteristics
- Perspective - Shooting at interesting or even odd perspectives, rather than the conventional angles.
- Space - Filling the space with objects and minimizing negative space is common in both artists I am drawing from.
- Lighting/Value - A dark range of value will make for a very moody photo and sidelight will increase the instance of hard angles to help the mood.
- Mood - Making the photo feel very dark and "piratey" is the main goal.
- Composition - using a variety of complementary objects to make the composition feel cohesive.