Having taken the latest lot of images in for critique with the class, I found that the consensus was to go with abstract images and strong colour. It was pointed out to me that the layout in which I had displayed my printed drafts on the table were obviously (not to me…) showing the red green blue colour model.
In this next shoot, I set about photographing the bottles with a double layer of red, green or blue gels underneath to create the strong colour, ensuring that the background was as dark as possible, and focusing on the bottle shapes rather than advertising. This is a big veer away from my original project proposal, which was to photograph glass and manipulate the images in Photoshop to create advertising pictures which were a step away from the usual packshot type (see Joshua Caudwell research post). The project is now heading in a fine art direction.
You can see from the contact sheet below that the colours are much more vivid, and I spent a long time working my way around the bottles looking for interesting abstracts. I also spent some time working on photographing the whole bottle, but quickly ditched that idea as a waste of time, given my new direction.
Contact sheet
The ripples in this bottle of Hill’s create some fantastic swirls and patterns. I photographed this several times, trying different depths of fields, and this shallower depth proved the winner. The shoulder of the bottle is well defined against the black background, and the deep blue colour is rich and vibrant.
The Hill’s bottle from a different angle. More interesting patterns and colour.
Another angle of the Hill’s bottle.
The shoulder and neck of the Hill’s bottle. The black space complements the rich blue and black pattern.
Experimenting with red gels and the Snowdonia Distillery bottle here. This bottle has map contour lines and Welsh words printed all over it, which create some interesting patterns when photographed up close. Again, the colour is rich and intense.
As mentioned above, this image is of the map contour lines through a macro lens. I shot this image several times using different depths of field. With a longer depth, you can see the lines on the other side of the bottle. While this created some interesting patterns, the shallow depth of field proved to create the better image.
At this point, I started to seriously think about the output from this project. I had always wanted to create a book from it, but the images I was producing would not have been the right type for that format, so I had settled on producing a series of prints. With a couple more shoots to get more vivid colored images, I can now see this collection in a glossy presentation book.
Phoblography with Debra Allen 