Still-Life Photography: Documentary

Onto our third mini module on the still life assignment, Documentary.  There are literally thousands of ways in which you can put together a set of images tied together with a single narrative. I feel most of them would, however, be much stronger if it were over a longer period of time. So in saying that I feel this was the weakest in terms of output for me.

This time we were on our own and had to come up with a subject matter really quickly to get on with shooting with any substance. The subject I had chosen was to shoot each of my family members mobile phones against a while background in natural light. The screens would be illuminated with an app or part of the phone I saw as representing them. Whether that was Instagram, Facebook, Twitter or whatever.

Using a tripod to shot from above the phone resting on a sheet of glass I tried to keep the exact scale of each phone in sync with each other. Two large white bounce boards were used to surround the area situated next to a large window with tracing paper sheets used to diffuse the light and soften the shadows.

In the crit it was mentioned it wasn't personal enough to just have the app and it should have been actually logged in or shown some other user information or interaction.


I'm seriously thinking about carrying on this idea, looking at purchasing a small white pop up tent to create a similar look for a different subject. Possibly something along the lines of people who have been caught trying to sneak drugs into festivals..get them to empty all their pockets onto a glass sheet in my tent.