This exercise is about Evidence of action. Unlike the previous exercise where a series of images told a story, for this exercise I had to take one image that portrayed something that had happened.
When I initially thought about what I could do for this, I had a bit of a mental block as what I would do, however after cooking dinner one night, I had the thought that I could do a scene that shows where something has been prepared/cooked. As with initial ideas, they don’t always work out, and although I felt the idea was good, the images I produced from this were not as far as I was concerned up to the standard of what I wanted to produce.
I felt that doing something kitchen related was still a good choice, as it is topical (I used to be a chef) and by playing around I felt that I would be able to get a strong image that when you looked at it, you immediately knew that something had happened.
After doing this initial shoot my PC died and while I waited for the issue to be sorted out, the blackberries on Wimbledon Common started to show and then this gave me the idea that I could take a photograph which would show the end result of a jam making session (this is something I make every year, so formulating what I wanted out of the photograph was quite easy).
Jam made, I spent a while playing around with the work area, adding some bits that were used, moving items about and then trying the photograph with both the light from the kitchen lights only and then using a flash to see the differences, and which I preferred. The utensils were strategically placed at set angles to create an eye line from the potato masher and the sieve towards the end product of the jam jars.
The above image, was taken with the camera set on a tripod about 1 foot higher than the items to give a sense of depth to the image. I found that the best images were produced by using the TTL flash. I then had to play around with the angle of the flash, the best image came when I bounced the flash off the ceiling, I was able to lighten the whole image, but not have the bright reflection of the flash in the jars or the pan (you can see a slight flash on the jars to the right, however compared to the different angles, I found this the most pleasing to the eye).