So, I had this assignment for entrance examinance for a photographic school of art which was very loosely ttitled as: "Food - make a setting and photograph it, 1 image". I immeadiately started getting tvisions of old Dutch masters still life paintings I have seen both live and in art history books. I wanted to make  a grand setting and photograph it. Then, however, soon after I started having second thoughts and one day, while driving my car, I started dissecting the assignment in my head. I came up with an idea of a simple collage with strong graphical elements and colours.

 

I started by photographing the elements against a dark velvet background.

I then proceeded to photoshop the hell out of the fork and the knife. I wanted to draw attention to them and make them as menacing as possible.

In the original idea I wanted to have all the static elements as printed images, but I didin't like how the plate looked. Also, I couldn't reuse the printed image of the plate after I moved the herring and the blood around. So I would have to print a new version every time.

So, I decided to use a plain white plate which I had in abundance in my cupboard.

I also used the glass filled with red tomato juice in the beginning but, as my instructor pointed out, it was too dominant an element making the eye wander between the herrings and the tomato juice glass.

I also liked the clean, minimalistic and understated look of the totally black and white setting with the blood giving the colour to the image underlining the message i tried to convey

This image came about by accident. My goal was to dry the blood, so after removing the herring there would be an outline of the fish only. However I didn't have time for that, so I took the picture. Later I noticed that there, on the plate, the image of lush lips with herring in between. The white "highlites" are actually bloodless spots.