Still life, as an art form, offers rich and diverse photographic possibilities.  As a still life photographer I seek to make pictures rather than take them; creating the scene, choosing a surface, using the shapes, textures, tones and colours presented in the objects themselves to build up from an empty space takes time and selecting and arranging the lighting helps to produce the desired effect and complete the picture.

 

The 'Tools of the Trade' project takes a tradesman's essential set of tools and, whilst acknowledging the functionality of each tool designed with a specific task in mind and seeking to accurately and clearly portray each device, the primary aim in this series is to explore the aesthetic qualities of workmanlike objects.

 

Some subjects lend themselves to deconstruction into their separate and smallest components and 'Tools of the Trade' seeks to balance the appeal of an ordered composition, perhaps emulating an organised workspace, with the beauty of repetition and regularity in a 'collection' style of composition.  

3. Calligrapher

4.Cupcake Baker

5. Decorator

6. Dress Maker

7. Electrician

8. Gardener

9. Locksmith

10. Mechanic

11. Pattern Maker

12. Police Officer

 

Based on feedback from colleagues, and my own personal view, it was decided that the compositions would have to be reshot. Initially, it was decided 10 shoots was too many and the compositions were at times in danger of becoming repetitive (for example, in background colour and design), however these compositions contain strength in numbers as they are less likely to stand on their own.

In addition, I was not completely satisfied with the compositions; the shape of them varied from job to job, for example, ‘Gardener’ is square, while ‘Cupcake Baker’ is a thin rectangle, which resulted in unused space in the rectangular frame.

Suprematist art such as ‘Black Square’ by Malevich inspired the decision to compose the reshoots as a square, for example, because a square is the ‘ultimate’  geometric shape for my focus on form because it has it has four equal sides; no side longer than the other. In addition, it is a less common frame proportion for photographs and so this draws the viewer to the shape of the subjects because of the unfamiliarity (the classic rectangular 3:2 ratio of 3mm film is so familiar that it looks ‘common’, as it is also used for ‘holiday snaps’ etc.)

Police Officer was replaced by Vet because I felt that the former did not contain enough suitable objects nor ones that could form the repetition of similarly shaped objects that the other compositions include. Vet was chosen because of positive feedback concerning the subject matter of the early shoots containing Vet.

While every effort was made to align each object absolutely parallel, my perfectionism took over and tweaks were made in Photoshop to meet my high standards.