I initially decided to base my ‘Found Object’ on stationery, specifically items that are found lying around a house or classroom. There are many different stationery items of all different shapes, colours, sizes and use. This led me to believing that there was a wide variety of routes I could go down. Most stationery items are relatively small, therefore it would be possible to put different items together in unique ways. I looked around my flat and two uni classrooms to see what stationery was lying about, meaning I found the objects that I ended up photographing.
In my mind, I was looking for a variety of items, rather than just pens and pencils. I found chalk and pins in a classroom, as well as a mini post-it-note pad. I used a small glue stick from home, alongside some marker pens. The two television remotes were also found lying around at uni. They do not fit the stationery theme as well as the other items do, however I decided to use them for a few reasons. Firstly, they were found in the same location as the chalk and pins which I found interesting since they usually wouldn’t be placed next to items like these. Secondly, the size of them is very different to all of the other objects, I felt like some size diversity was needed. I also like how the colours of the remote buttons contrast and stand out from the plastic base of the remote.
I took several different pictures of each object placement, adjusting the aperture and shutter speed until I felt like I had some images that I could work with. It’s important that I also shot the photos in raw, allowing me to be able to edit them further. The white balance was not quite right in some of my photos, therefore I had to adjust this quite a lot on Photoshop. I didn’t do much editing on the photos beside this, mostly because I like how the overall look of the photos is soft and natural.
One photographer that I took inspiration from is Lorenzo Vitturi. In many of his photographs he has set the objects up in very particular ways. There is always several objects that he combines into one arrangement, rather than just using one found object.
This is where I took inspiration to use a variety of objects in each picture, but also keep to the same theme. In the photo above it is clear that Vitturi has stuck with the theme of fruit.
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