Photo Essay - Tristan Black (42736102) and Kevin Quach (42879868)

 Photo Essay  

Tristan Black (42736102) and 

Kevin Quach (42879868)

Theme: Bottles

Sub-theme: Textures

Rationale

The most popular images on Flickr are often those of the mundane (Murray, 2008). Bottles are a commonplace, everyday object that we wouldn’t ordinarily think to photograph. We were particularly intrigued by the variety of textures worked into the design of the glass and plastic of various bottles, as well as the array shapes and colours. This subtheme has assisted in our engagement with the everyday image; “the types of images that we can create or engage with on a regular basis that evoke or reference the more ordinary or frequent moments of our lives.” (Murray, 2008, p.151). By exploring the textures in bottles and engaging with the fine detail of the ordinary, we were able to create aesthetic beauty in the mundane.

We took photos of unexciting bottles that weren’t necessarily pristine to enhance the idea of the mundane. For example, dust is visible on the image of the Coca-Cola bottle, and scratches in the plastic are visible in the shot of the base of a plastic bottle lit from behind.

Popular images “either hint at or blatantly refer to their creator’s work and home life” (Murray, 2008 p. 155). For this reason, we took photos in the setting of our homes or familiar spaces. An example of this is the image where leaves are the bottle's texture. This image (which is actually of a vinegar bottle) has the backdrop of a view of blue sky and greenery out of a window, hinting at the composer’s view out of a window in their personal dwelling.

We experimented with different lighting states. The photos of plastic bottles, especially those of the base of the Mount Franklin bottle and the side of the Schweppes bottle, were taken at different stages of the sun’s descent in the sky. The different natural lighting states, assisted by the sky's hues brought out these finer details in the textures of bottles beautifully. We were also able to create darkness and definition in the patterns of plastic bottles through photography in dark places with a limited scope of artificial light. This was a technique that helped us to bring out the details in the everyday image.

Different angles were also used to highlight texture. For example, if you are ever confused as to what the photo is, it is probably the case that we have photographed straight down the neck of a bottle.

‘Transparent Grooves’ was composed to represent the twists, grooves, and other patterns in glass and plastic of bottles through multiple layers of acoustic piano and the blues scale. Upper octaves were accentuated to represent the high ringing of glass.

Sources

Murray, S (2008) Digital Images, Photo-Sharing and Our Shifting Notions of Everyday Aesthetics, Journal of Visual Culture, Vol. 7 No. 2, pp 147-163.