The photographer I chose to use as inspiration for my midterm project is Irving Penn, more specifically a body of work of his where he took multiple still lifes of cigarette butts. I began thinking about what subject I would use for the still life and kept thinking of things that looked like cigarettes and settled on matches since you can use them to light cigarettes. I started the project by studying the photos taken by Penn, I noticed that he used a macro lens so he was able to get very close to the cigarettes and have great detail, the lighting wasn’t very harsh but you were still able to see a lot of texture in his images. I wanted to replicate the textures, the black and white, and the macro feel but with a more harsh light with more shadows and intense blacks.
Week 1: I feel like the first set of photos I took was more rushed than the rest. Although I spent time composing the images the way I wanted I didn’t really experiment much with the lighting or the exposure, the photos just all look flat. I also feel like using the white backdrop was a little bland and didn’t add much to the photo and seemed like an easy way to make the matches stand out.
Week 2: I was looking forward to shooting the burnt matches but didn’t foresee the difficulty of arranging them without breaking off the hypersensitive tips. The lit matches really made each match seem more unique which is something I wanted but the photos didn’t turn out too great. However, I learned that I enjoyed the texture I was able to get from this grey background and I also played more with the lighting and got some nice results that I knew I would want to pursue and be more mindful of in the next shoot. In this shoot, I also used a tripod which I ended up not liking because it didn’t allow me to get close enough to the matches like in the week prior.
Week 3: For the last week I knew how to get what I wanted which resulted in most of the photos I selected for my midterm being from this week’s shoot. For this week I planned out the compositions I wanted and took my time with each taking the same photo with different lighting so I would be able to choose which ones I would like later. I also experimented with putting the matches upright at times which resulted in interesting images too, darker backgrounds rather than the flat backgrounds in the photos.
Post Production: I had a fairly easy time with this part, I knew what I wanted in terms of shadows, texture, and blacks. The selection was also fairly easy, I mostly chose from the last week since I wasn’t satisfied with the first and second week of photos. The printing was also fairly easy, I printed some in glossy and some in matte but I wasn’t able to get the blacks I wanted on the matte paper so I settled on the glossy. I printed the whole set of 10 and then selected 5 once they were printed and then refined them in photoshop to get better whites and blacks.
What I would’ve done differently: I would’ve liked to have used more photos of burnt matches so I guess I would’ve attempted to be even more gentle with them. I would’ve also liked to be able to get closer to the matches to be able to replicate Penn’s photos even more but I didn’t want to depend too heavily on cropping the images in lightroom because I felt they didn’t look too good when I did that.
I was very pleased with the results of the project, the photos came out great and it was also fun because I had never shot still life before so there was a learning curve which was fun to figure out. Printing was a lot less intimidating than I thought it would be which was great. I also feel I was able to get the results I wanted both in the photos and in the prints. All in all, I feel like the project was a success because I got to learn and better my skills.
Final Select
