9 Lines

This project examines patterns, textures & structure in nature, & our emotional response to them.  

Here I show  9 objects from the Natural World,  chosen to reflect different & specific meanings such as disgust, fear, awe etc. 

Not the most brilliant photo in the world, but I hope it gives a sense of the variety of my chosen objects, not least in their scale.

Day 1
Modified Objects

The next part of the project is to take each of these objects out of context, & place them in a wholly new environment.   Context is such an important part of our understanding & perception of the object, so playing around with this was fun.  A further development was to modify  selected images, using our smart phones.... (Smart phones are sooo amazing; how to do this without them?)  cropping, inverting, changing to black & white, altering the background etc.  

The objects photographed in new contexts:

the fly, now on some richly coloured & textured moss

Tiny shell, on a bit of plastic on the ground.  Incongrouous 

I reckon.  I enjoyed the shadow and  lines, different textures.

Garlic.  Here plaaced on some cracked mud.  Stark contrast; the smooth, almost glacial quality of the shell

with the very rough and organic, very dark soil.  Nothing like the beach environment from which it came originally.  Once again, I liked the textures.

Crabshell.  

Now placed on a smooth piece of shelving, jutting out from a disused building.

 The textures seemed to me to work well together.

The teasel

Photographed suspended from an unused hook.  Its prickly surface stands out well against the smooth background; the light shows off the incredible structure of its many spines & the details of the stem.

Feather

Its delicacy contrasts well with the slightly rusty metal and textured decaying plants in the background.

A pleasing juxtaposition to me.

Garlic

The strong pattern of the background is interesting; I like its colour too; the almost blue colouring with highlights of brown red, echoeing the tones found in the garlic itself.  The very smooth surface of the garlic and the papery quality of the outer leaves work well against the almost rough background. Finally I find the background grid pattern  provides a pleasing contrast to  the very curvaceous organic  Garlic .

The artichoke.

An unrelentingly hard background choice, with an almost architectural shadow line, provide quite a contrast to the organic artichoke.

The Images, now modified 

A fly, placed on moss, enlarged, cropped & recoloured.

Teasel.  Suspended from a rusty hook in a little cabinet with a broken door. Blue tones, notice the slight eeriness of it & its rundown new home.

An unusual stone, placed under some twigs so that it is partially hidden.  The shadow play is lovely across its surface.

Artichoke.  Again, partially hidden, the shadows & colours appeal to me.  I also like the architectural straight line contrasting with its organic form.

My tiny shell, colours altered, its scale magnified, its shadow a big part of the picture now.  Its quite a stark background, but I think it provides space for  the shell  to speak for itself

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Another shell; a rather flat mother of pearl one, with a very smooth slightly undulating surface in reality.  Here, the image is modified so that it has a texture.. Its also cropped so that the background becomes an important part of the scene too. Its shape is now quite dramatic, with the circular opening a focal point.

A Crabshell, rotated so that it's now upside down.  I love the texture & colours of the background concrete, which I think complement the crabshell surface.

I photographed my feather on a metal surface I spotted on the ground, with a grid pattern on it.  Playing with the image later provided this rather snazzy colourful backdrop; love the mad colours & shapes which I don't think detract from the feather at all, in fact the contrary.

Garlic, photographed on a bit of metal with a gridded surface.  The straight lines create an interesting background for this essentially organic object.  I enjoy the different textures here.