Laura Letinksy
Laura letinsky is a contemporary photographer from Chicago. She is best known for her intimate portraits and still life images. She looks at the idea of leftover. Letinsky has a series of images where she has arranged everyday objects such as food, flowers and drink onto table tops and photographs them in her studio.
The way that the objects appear to have been used really creates a human presence but without any actual figures. I find this concept fascinating because an atmosphere is still shown by what has been 'left over'. The images above are from the series 'Say it isn't so' from 2006. They are clearly influenced by the classic Dutch and Flemish still life genre.
The most obvious similarity between these images is that they are both still life and and present ordinary objects linked to food and dining. This however is relevant to many still life images. The Influence of the lighting on both images is the most interesting.They both show minimal if any shadows. With photography this is achieved by diffused lighting. I like the idea of using this technique in my own pictures as it is quite surreal to see and object without a shadow and it gives it a more simplistic look. Letinky's work can be very simplistic and she often uses pure white surfaces and backgrounds but the has small bursts of bright colour from the objects. This is also an aspect of her work I fell could inspire my own.
Lighting workshop
After looking at Letinsky's work I looked at how the an object appears differently when different shadows are created. For the first shot my and my partner set the lighting up to the left hand side of the object. This was done to create a large shadow. We also experimented with how changing the distance between the lighting and the object effected the shadowing.
In the second shot we set the lighting up infront of the image to create minimal shadow.
Here is a scan of the negative. This is the photo taken of the mask with the lighting set at to side. This came out the better of the two as the other ended up coming out too dark. For this object this lighting is perfect. This is because the item is very theatrical and the light it represents this with dramatic shadows. The shadows also emphasise the curves in the ribbon making then more aesthetically pleasing.
I wanted to create very diffused lighting in the style of Laura letinsky. I did this by using a large soft box. I chose different types of cups to photography so that I could start looking at composition for my objects. I decided to stack them and scatter some of the broken pieces.
We did the same as we did in our first lighting test by changing the position of the light.
My partner printed this image from the shoot. This is the Photograph that was taken with the lighting positioned at the front. There are no defined shadows which was the intention however there is still a soft shadow. I like the composition but would like to include more similar objects when creating my final image.
My partner printed this image from the shoot. This is the Photograph that was taken with the lighting positioned at the front. There are no defined shadows which was the intention however there is still a soft shadow. I like the composition but would like to include more similar objects when creating my final image.
