development
With how my week 3 project went I decided to take a step back and simplify things, so I removed everything I found to be unnecessary. Removing the coloured lighting was my first thought as it could take too long to find what colour worked with what objects. The second thing to go was the voiceovers, I felt that if it is going to exhibit the object it should do most of the speaking, ‘show, don’t tell’. Last was the whole concept of making a separate short video for every object, it was not needed and the effect I was trying to create with it needed a camera with a little more power to be recorded to the quality I wanted it to be, also the editing and rendering time would be too much with the time I had.
What I am keeping is the lighting and studio setup. Without colour the black backdrop would not look as well as a white backdrop with lighting, I want the light to bounce all over the objects, illuminating them. I used sheets of A4 and A2 paper to build the white backdrop and also made two white podiums to assist in holding up objects, the idea behind making them white was an effort to not remove as little focus from the objects.
I thought about using Photoshops ‘Merge to HDR Pro’ feature but I found it to be limiting without a way of suspending the lighting as I was using both hands in operating the lights and after doing some experimental photos I found that I could not to make it work with the method I was using, I had no time to research and revise my method so I dropped the concept.
My thought when taking the photos was to treat the objects as if I were selling them online, I tried to show their merits and make them as appealing as possible. My second thought was to make the photo look reasonably interesting, this meant using shadows and highlights to create an interesting contrast and playing with the positioning of the objects. I looked at a lot of apparel sights and even pop opened the old Argos catalogue to get an idea of how they show off the features of an item, I found that most take multiple photos which were not attractive to me, I wanted to fit everything I can in one single photo like I did with the first week but on a per-object basis.
I used a digital contact sheet with the help of photoshop.
Editing
Editing was kept to a minimal, I wanted to see what could achieve with a phone, camera, tripod, 2 desk lamps and paper. Cropping was the only editing I used, I had the photos cropped into squares to control the space and to hide any unwanted things in the frame.
Pre-Crop Cropped
The theme of these set of 26 objects are the same as week 3, objects that are personal to me, small enough to fit in my mini studio and I will be taking with me to London. I did make a few changes with some of the items because of size or accessibility to the object like my phone which I was using to take the pictures or my wallet I simply can not find.
The revised list:
- Alarm Clock
- Bookbinding Kit
- Cocoa Butter
- Durag
- Earphones
- Family Photo
- Flask
- Glasses
- Headphones
- Iron
- Keys
- Lucky Watch
- Mini Canvas
- Mini Tripod
- Mouse
- Clipping Kit
- OFFBLACK Tea
- Pencil Case
- Piggybank
- Sketchbook
- Skipping Rope
- Slippers
- Student ID
- Toiletries
- Tv Remote
- Xbox Controller
Outcome
I was not sure on how to present photos on an online open exhibition so I settled for a digital photo book, with objects sorted into categories, I will come up with the how I will categorise everything as I edit the photobook. Below is only the cover, I am really not a fan of the title font, other than that the rest I’m happy with. I will add a full PDF after I have slept. I noticed that 17. Clipping Kit is out of place.
Caption
Ismail TNI Sansui
26 ITEMS
Traveling to London for university was my first long-term venture outside my own city Birmingham, I was not sure on what to carry at the start of the academic year which ended up in me spending unnecessary spending money on moving stuff I did not use once in my time attending Central Saint Martins, so I put together a list of twenty-six items I am not leaving without the next time I settle in the city of London and organizing them in various ways using some of the aspects from the LATCH organization system (Location, Alphabet, Time, Category and Hierarchy) using a digital photobook.