After analysing my initial image for the Christine Shank assignment I decided to explore the shapes and patterns created by nature and how these can look like body parts or the internal body such as veins, muscle and bone. I began by looking for details in trees and plants and how these had a likeness to the human body. In order to focus on this aspect of the natural object I used a macro lens and got close to the subject rather than showing all of the subject in the frame. By doing this I aimed for the image to become ambiguous and not reveal its true identity whether this be a tree or a flower. The subjects of the image therefore become abstract and focuses the viewer on depicting the shapes and patterns within the image yet also giving the image connotations of the human anatomy.
I chose to change the images to black and white to make the shadows and highlights stand out more and to create an image that looked more scientific, as if you were viewing it in a textbook about the human body. This also means that details can be picked out more easily and the viewer focuses more on the form and shapes within the images. In addition to this, by removing the colour it heightens the ambiguous and abstract nature of the image by masking its true form. This assignment has given me a new way of generating ideas and developing concepts for images just by depicting certain elements from them. I find that it often takes me a while to generate ideas and narrow it down to one main idea. However by stepping back and completing a simple task such as having one hour to create an image with an object it gave me lots of ideas I would not normally think of and I would not usually shoot macro images I usually take images of landscapes as a whole rather than focusing on the details.
Charlotte Pattinson Photography 