Photo Project II

In my photographic collection, I chose to explore the idea of new objectivity. I have always been interested in how photography can give life and beauty to even the most ordinary objects, and this set of photos reflects that. I enjoy playing around with objects and photographing them from different angles, in different lighting, and using macro lenses. I was especially inspired by the work of Karl Blossfeldt and the way in which his photographs depict ordinary objects in such an interesting way that sometimes even renders them unrecognizable. He focuses particularly on plants and other objects in nature, which I also chose to focus on. Blossfeldt's photography, however, displays these objects out of their natural habitat, usually against a plain white or gray background. Some of my images portray the same concept, but others are of objects in nature that remain in their natural habitat. Blossfeldt also used the technology of his camera to magnify the images and give them a sharp appearance, which opposes pictorialist approaches to photography. I employed the macro lens feature of my camera in order to obtain detailed, close up images of the objects I chose. This allows for intense views of surface patterns and features, so that even simple, seemingly uninteresting objects appear vivid and wonderfully detailed. Although Blossfeldt did not put as much emphasis on the quality and features of nature itself, I enjoyed searching for ordinary objects and manipulating aspects of the capturing process in order to make them appear complex and interesting.  The first image simply shows a bare tree, which, to the naked eye, did not appear very special.  However, through looking at the photographed depiction, the many branches give it an incredibly intricate appearance.  The rest of the photographs show close-up views of simple objects in nature.  The combination of the macro lens with flash or natural light reveals details unable to be seen by the naked eye, like the droplets on the spider web and the fuz on the leaf.  The purple flower has a velvety appearance, which was my favorite effect of this approach.