Exercise 5-2 Homage

Exercise 5.2 – Homage

Brief

“Select an image by any photographer of your choice and take a photograph in response to it…

Add the original photograph together with your response to your learning log.”

The notes refer to an essay by Barrett, (Barrett, 1997) originally published in (Goldblatt and Brown, 1997). In this essay Barrett suggests that we interpret pictures according to three different types of information: information in the picture, information surrounding the picture and information about the way the picture was made. He calls these the internal context, the external context and the original context.

“Internal context includes the picture, its title, if it has one, date, and maker. External context refers to the picture’s pre­sentational environment. Original context refers to the picture’s causal en­vironment, namely, that which was physically and psychologically present to the maker at the time the picture was taken.” (Barrett, 1997)

Method

I chose to photograph a series of peppers in response to the Image, “Pepper No. 30” by Edward Weston.

I used a set I had made for Exercise 4.3, and had the same camera settings and equipment as I used in that exercise.

I wanted to emulate the lighting of the pepper which Weston had achieved by photographing it inside a shiny metal funnel. In Weston’s image the pepper appears illuminated on all sides and has reflections from its surface on all the visible surfaces.

To attempt to replicate this I used a set with a large softbox almost directly over the pepper, and another, smaller, to the side. I made reflectors of aluminium foil on either side of the pepper which were angled slightly upwards, and another reflector in front of the camera. This set is shown in this image.

Contacts for this exercise are at

Ex 5-2 Contacts

I converted the images to monochrome to replicate the image of Weston, and enhanced the contrast, otherwise there were no other post-processing manipulations.

I chose these final images.

I am most pleased with this one, and think that it has captured the lighting effect Weston achieved.

My images however all are readily seen as peppers and lack the abstraction achieved by Weston. I think that this may be because of the form of my peppers; they are classic pepper shaped and therefore acceptable to the supermarkets!

I have previously included in my learning log images in homage to Willy Ronis, Man Ray, Fay Godwin and Don McCullin. I have commented on these at the time of the post regarding my context for them.

References

References to the works cited in this post are found in my separate post “References”