Work Diary - Shoot 6

Evaluation and Technique

During today's 6th shoot which I done at home, I have captured a variety of food and products to advertise. I wanted to explore more of my creative side through the technique surrealism, where I employed this into the photo of my Popcorn Momiji Doll. I also wanted to experiment more with perfume bottles as this was successful in my second shoot. I found that in this shoot I was extremely inspired by a mixture of different things, such as coming up with extra ideas for upcoming shoots through relating products to food e.g. my Momiji Doll and popcorn. I now want to link products/food related to my Momiji Dolls in more shoots such as my music Momiji Dolls. On Photoshop, in order to create the below photograph on the left, I had to experiment with different layers, effects and the quick selection tool. This refreshed my memory on some Photoshop tools which I will now be progressing onto my next shoot. 

I was extremely pleased with these two photographs from today's shoot. Momiji Dolls are a brand of collectable, hand-painted dolls inspired by Asian style and contemporary illustration. They each have a small space in their base to hide a secret message on a blank piece of folded card, making a fun and special gift for anybody. They are a unique collectable item which I wanted to capture, by employing what they represent into the picture; this one being popcorn. On the left, I took a photograph of the doll with it's tub, and then a few separate photographs of popcorn on its own. In Photoshop, I used the quick selection tool to outline the shape of each piece, and then dragged it onto the picture of the Momiji Doll. I repeated this process until I was happy with the amount of popcorn in the frame. I wanted to create the illusion of the popcorn exploding over the composition, and although it doesn't look like much of a powerful explosion, I was still pleased with the outcome. After creating my first surreal piece in this unit, I will most certainly be experiment more with this technique. On the right, I wanted to compose a complete picture from a different angle, which makes the doll appear around the same size as the tub she came from. I situated the popcorn around her figure to complete the appearance of the picture.

Drifting more away from the food topic, advertising is simply also about visually portraying products to an audience in order to increase the likeliness of them being sold to customers. In this picture, I have two emoji pillows in which I have presented on a chair, grouped together on the right side of the frame. This picture allows a customer to make out the size of the pillows by having them sat on a chair in the frame. I like the white background acting as a contrast to the pillows because this allows them to stand out and keeps the feel of the picture fresh. Emoji pillows are a humorous present to give to a friend or even to buy for yourself, and they are also of good value. I left the left side of the frame with space because I was intending to add text here to make the piece look more like an advertisement in a magazine or online as a web pop-up perhaps. I would inform the customers on where to buy these pillows and how much they cost. 

Progression

As part of my progression from this shoot, I will be exploring the technique surrealism even further in order to create appealing and imaginative pieces. I will perhaps experiment with different colour backgrounds instead of just a white one as I want to shoot Innocent smoothies next week and feel that a pink background would match a berry smoothie more effectively than a white background, same with an orange background matching an orange smoothie. I will do more with the surreal technique when I shoot some sweets and confectionery products.