I decided to produce two sets of five images. One set to represent my mum’s year;  going from her being unaware of her future diagnosis, the moment immediately after diagnosis, the period where she was coming to terms with it, living with it and then the time just before her death. The other set to represent my own version of  the same year going from living my own life with a mum who lived 2 hours away, was independent and who I saw fairly regularly but who’s life was very different to mine. I wanted the images to represent the way our respective lives changed as the year progressed and the way in which we became closer.

I could visualise the images on a wall and I could see them coming very subtly closer together as time went on. (Fig. 1) (Exaggerated offsetting to remind me.)

Visualising the images helped me to inform the style and the composition. I could see my mums set getting gradually getting darker from the first to the last with objects changing their position to reflect their relative importance in her life. And some objects moving from her set to mine to express the increasing closeness and closure.

The objects and their symbology

Set One – My Mum’s

1. Watch – Time – limited time.
2. Small bunch of 2 keys – symbolising independence.
3. Glasses – active, independent.
4. Whiskey glass – A glass seems to symbolise different things but there is a reference to them. symbolising  “the overthrow of worldly achievements by death” Slowly emptying
5. Flower – Symbolising life.
6. Petals (leaves) falling – Her health declining as she moved towards death.
7. Tea Pot and cup/saucer – The move away from precious possessions.
8. Diary-  Only in the first 4 images – then it moves to my set, (final image).
9. Books – Knowledge – still a need to learn
10. Christmas tea light  (moves to my set in chapter 5) the passing on of traditions after death.

Set Two – Mine

1. Books: – Work and study – there are less books in the later images due to less time being available.
2. Grater and Lemon:  domesticity – caring for my son
3. Large bunch of keys: Busy and independent
4. Flower: symbol of life
5. Watch and Clock: Busy
6. Mums Diary in image 5: Keeper of her possessions
7. Christmas Tea Light: Creating own tradition
8. Additional Tea Light in final image: Continuing tradition and joining of traditions.
9. Phone – communication
10. Cup and saucer – moves from Set 1 to Set 2 final image – her possessions now move to me.

Reviewing the images that I looked at for inspiration, I picked out three to focus on whilst creating my sets;

 

I initially used a glass table with a slightly scrunched up crochet tablecloth and a light underneath, to give a bright, almost ethereal look, with the background wall kept dark with a shadow pattern being thrown on it through the tablecloth from the light. But I found the  pattern too distracting . I used a smaller light coming from the left to reduce the shadows on the objects. At this point I hadn’t come to a decision about composition, preferring to allow this to evolve with the test shots.

I wanted all the objects to be in sharp focus, and took 4 test shots (Fig. 6 – 9) with different areas in focus. This allowed me to keep the aperture wide. I used photoshop to stack and blend all the shots into one (Fig. 10). This worked well and was another Photoshop first for me.

After some deliberation I changed the tablecloth as I was finding it too distracting and I felt it really wasn’t adding anything to the images.
I took a whole series of test shots, playing with different objects and positions, and a different table covering. As this was very much experimental, I chose to do this without a memory card, reviewing the images quality on screen. I only started to capture the images once I felt things were worth deeper review.

The next set of test shots worked quite well, but I needed to fix a “falling forward’  issue that was noticeable on the coffee pot glass and cup, by rotating and cropping the images. The result wasn’t ideal as the flower was then too close to the top and caused tension.  (Fig. 11,12). I was basically happy with the composition and the objects themselves, but the changing light needed to be more subtle. The main light source was still natural light and so I decided to try taking the shots at 15 minute intervals, starting at 16:00, to capture the fading winter light. In the end i found adjusting the exposures in Photoshop gave me more effective control.

Final test Set

In a previous exercise we were asked to take colour and black and white shots and then review them. Looking at my test shots, I asked myself what the colour was doing for the images in relation to what I was trying to represent. The orange of the flower certainly caught the eye but this didn’t  add to the meaning. Turning them black and white gave the images texture and depth and although I can’t pin down exactly why, seemed to express more of what I’m trying to say.