David J Nightingale
Artist Focus
David Nightingale is a famous photoblogger. I chose to use him as apart of my research because even though his main focus of photography is architectural and portraits, he does also have a smaller collection of objects he has captured. Of these objects (below) he has successfully manipulated them and I do admire his beautiful, although peculiar choice of backgrounds (because the objects contrast in the beauty of the backgrounds). I noticed that the backgrounds affect how the object itself is received. Backgrounds can tell a story and when you have to take 50 snapshots of the same object, focusing on the object itself can only give you so much. So, for many of my photographs I focused on having a variety of backgrounds, which told stories of how I perceived alcohol and how I relate alcohol to deprived societies.
For my Fifty of fags on the other hand, I want to focus particularly on the lighting because I think that in order for a photograph to really tell a story the lighting also has to play a major role in photography.
For my Fifty of fags on the other hand, I want to focus particularly on the lighting because I think that in order for a photograph to really tell a story the lighting also has to play a major role in photography.
Experimentation...
One thing I noticed about Nightingale's choice of backgrounds is that as well as them tending to be at beaches and seasides, they also are of a dull shade. I on the other hand chose to focus on the brighter shades because of what I think of when I think of beer cans, which is summer drunkenness: celebration, relaxation, holidays (hot summers!)
In this photograph Nightingale, although it is on the duller side, the colours give a sense of sunshine coming through. My imitation of Nightingale's photograph similarly to his takes the rule of thirds even though mine has more of a zoom into the object, which gives a stronger focus to the detail of the froth. And rather than having the background of the sky to show what the weather was like, mainly because the sun would have been beaming in the background, but, for this reason, I wanted the objects to reflect this factor subtly.
In this photograph Nightingale, although it is on the duller side, the colours give a sense of sunshine coming through. My imitation of Nightingale's photograph similarly to his takes the rule of thirds even though mine has more of a zoom into the object, which gives a stronger focus to the detail of the froth. And rather than having the background of the sky to show what the weather was like, mainly because the sun would have been beaming in the background, but, for this reason, I wanted the objects to reflect this factor subtly.
In my experimentation of Nightingale's work, I focused on his use of backgrounds and particularly in this photograph even though we are aware of the object it is not what we are drawn to. The background is where we are to focus our attention. My photographing of beer cans is to do with my project and therefore I in contrast wanted the background to be plain like Nightingale's bottle and for my object to have the attention but unfortunately as the colours of the beer can are bright I could not take my experimentation further by attempting to achieve it being eye catching without the use of bold colours.
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Unlike Nightingale's use of nature for background I kept my nature (brown leaves) at the side in a rule of thirds to be almost like a background and foreground. I did this because I wanted the brown of the leaves to accentuate the brown colours of the cigarette buds. I did keep the low vantage point that Nightingale works with.
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Creating a background that consisted of the sky, shored and the ground was difficult for me to achieve while having my object in a close up focus. So for my 1st (-->) photograph I attempted the layered background to give the similar look or intention of what I wanted to achieve.
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In the photograph above photograph I wanted to give more focus to my object by having both the background and a foreground out of focus, even though unlike Nightingale the background colours were not really contrasting with the colours of my object, which is instead done for the foreground.
I have used the same windowsill as the beer can (to the left) however I put my background in focus and left the cigarette having a low depth of field. Also instead of having layers i tried to create an incomplete frame of the subject
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My manipulation of my object in the form of Nightingale's but only slightly because the only similarity they share is that our objects are put in water but in contrast I wanted to capture the forceful water in action rather than in a softer flowing motion as Nightingale.
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Because I did not use as many cigarettes I wasn't able to create the same kind of colouring in my photograph in comparison to Nightingale's, making this weak interpretation of his work.
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