Project 1 The distance between us

The brief

Use your camera as a measuring device. This doesn’t refer to the distance scale on the focus ring. Rather, find a subject that you have an empathy with and take a sequence of shots to ‘explore the distance between you’. Add the sequence to your learning log, indicating which is your ‘select’ – your best shot.

When you review the set to decide upon a ‘select’, don’t evaluate the shots just according to the idea you had when you took the photographs; instead evaluate it by what you discover within the frame (you’ve already done this in Exercise 1.4). In other words, be open to the unexpected. In conversation with the author, the photographer Alexia Clorinda expressed this idea in the following way:

Look critically at the work you did by including what you didn’t mean to do. Include the mistake, or your unconscious, or whatever you want to call it, and analyse it not from the point of view of

your intention, but because it is there.

A study in Pants.

Meet Houdini Pantaloony, our cat. In this series of 6 shots taken a varying distances, I look to review the shots in order to discover what I didn’t mean to do. What I did not intend whilst creating these photographs, the accidents.

My select shot is 5, this provides the best expression of the thing I didn’t mean but in review is most apparent. The gaze of the predator.

The most striking thing I note about these shots is that Pants is fully focussed and concentrated on something in all shots. In shot 5 Pants happens to be fully focussed on me rather than something else. She is a very affectionate cat, getting on a bit now well into old lady territory but in shot 5 where I am the subject of her attention I can see the gaze of the predator. It is mildly disturbing! Pants and her sister Smudge ( sadly no longer with us ) have had a full and very active life where they have been able to satisfy their fundamental nature at the top of their food chain. They have successfully hunted mice, birds and rabbits all their life, sometimes working as a tag team – fascinating to watch if you can live with the gore and the violence. Pants has slowed down a bit now so the ‘little presents’ are not delivered with the same regularity. Make no mistake though, she is a hunter. I think this comes across in all the shots and was not part of what I intended. When she looks straight at me in 5 I see the calculation of a superior intelligence with zero compassion (why would there be); size? too big to bring down + I get fed by this potential victim every day + I am not very hungry right now. A different calculation and I could become victim number 1045 very easily.

In the wider shots; 1, 2, & 3 the suggested focus of attention could be just out of frame, almost there to be known but not quite. This gives these shots a narrative feel to them which is not so apparent in the tighter shots; 4, 5 & 6 these are more a personal introduction to Pants and her character.

1

2

3

4

5

6

Prejudice and photography

I was cycling on Sunday, on the way to pay a visit to my mum. A regular visit for me on most Sundays. I have recently just started cycling again after a 6 year moratorium which followed 20 odd years of commuting on my bike. So something can happen every now and then when you exercise, you can have the right combination of adrenalin & state of mind & general condition of your body and perhaps a few other elements as well. These elements come together in a positive harmony which leads to a sudden upsurge of euphoria. It is wonderful and I experienced this feeling as I flew down the hill on my beautiful new Bianchi. I called out to the world ‘f*ck this is fantastic’!

My state of mind was as good as it gets for me ( that’s pretty good, but I don’t have anything to compare with ). On my left I saw a family; black, young mum & two kids dressed to kill. My mind immediately concluded isn’t that wonderful. My state of mind leapt from euphoria to what! in an instant. Why should I think this is wonderful, is this some kind of weird positive response to some latent prejudice I have. We all have right? No it was actual, full on, up front prejudice. This young family were on their way to church, it was obvious and I have never been religious in any way. Cut me open and i read Athiest all the way through. In fact I have a bit of a negative response to church and the people who go there, have done all my life, the whole idea depresses me. Then it struck me, it wasn’t religion it was age. This was 3 young people, looking great and headed somewhere they wanted to go. Church for me is not like that, it is old and dusty and depressing. So I am ageist, that’s the route of this prejudice.

Prejudice is nothing to be proud of for sure, to recognise it in yourself though is something and perhaps is some way towards personal growth and rising above. This is a strange one though. I was on my way to see my lovely mum and she is certainly getting old so this is not an all consuming prejudice, but there is something. In the recent Scottish independence referendum I was a Yes supporter and voter. I am not a nationalist, far from it, I am a one world, lets all work together, egalitarian socialist, child of Thatcher. I wanted Scotland to be free to take it’s place in the world as a new forward thinking, modern democracy alongside and as an equal partner with the rest of these isles and firmly at the heart of Europe. Most Yes voting Scots are the same. It’s like we saw it coming, the state our bag of nations is now in is the saddest I have seen it, torn apart by actual English nationalism, superiority and prejudice. At least that’s what it looks like; Farage, Johnson and Trump have a lot to answer for in the way they have seized upon a mood and exploded the zeitgeist to overtake the collective minds of the good folks of England ( one of my favourite countries. I lived in Somerset in the early years of bringing my kids up, a truly wonderful part of the world ). I have voted SNP since 99 but I am a natural labour supporter, where is the soul of the labour movement? Now more than ever we need a hero from the left who can challenge this madness.

I remember commenting during the campaign for Scottish independence that I thought people over 65 shouldn’t vote, I meant it. They won’t be around long enough to really feel the impact, the referendum was for our children and their children, not for our parents and grandparents. Ageist! This Tory party leadership contest is going to be decided by a bunch of aged rich folks who may well have at some point been less well off, many will have been rich all their days, but will have been more than comfortable for many decades now. How in touch are they with what this country needs now and in the decades to come. None, they haven’t a clue. Ageist! ( OK classist too!). Prejudiced!

ageism

So I think about prejudice and photography and look into Gordon Parks.

Coming from a large family and growing up in Kansas in the early years of the 20th century Parks was formed in poverty and hardship. In a career of over 6 decades Parks created documentary addressing poverty and racism and became the first African American to work for life magazine. Park’s career delivered portraits of Muhammad Ali Dr Martin Luther King Jnr and Malcolm X. Parks went on to direct the 70s classic movie Shaft.

The era is described perfectly here in this quote from the guardian. [2014]

“Gordon Parks’s images of everyday American life under segregation were first published in 1956, one year after Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat in Montgomery, Alabama. By then, the bus boycott she had triggered was transforming the fight for civil rights into a national movement, and thrusting a young minister called Martin Luther King into the spotlight.”

An example of Parks work below taken from AnOther. [2019]

parks

Department Store Mobile, Alabama, 1956© Photography by Gordon Parks. Courtesy and copyright the Gordon Parks Foundation

The decisive moment charged with the gravity of real world human condition, to provide an historical document of power and importance.

This prejudice I have always despised above all others, perhaps this is because I grew up through the years when we ( our society ) was coming to terms with it’s racism. To look back on 70s media now is a shocking and troubling experience. Where then is ageism and how should this be tackled. I fear for now my hope is that the young take control of our world and fix it before it is too late.

Bibliography

the guardian. 2014. A segregation that was never black and white: Gordon Parks’s photographs of 50s Alabama. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/nov/12/-sp-segregation-american-south-gordon-parks. [Accessed 25 June 2019].

AnOther. 2019. The Man Who Fought Prejudice with Photography Daisy Woodward. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.anothermag.com/art-photography/9931/the-man-who-fought-prejudice-with-photography. [Accessed 25 June 2019].

Assignment 1 : Revisit The Square Mile

In this post I revisit the square mile from part 1. I mentioned i would revisit this assignment in the write up for the actual submission Assignment 1: Square Mile. For the assignment I had 2 ideas one of which i complete in this post. This idea was to revisit the square mile of the first home I have memory of. I lived there from the age of 3 to 13 years old and have many fond memories of my childhood there. A time when i was genuinely a child and before any of that troublesome adolescence had attached itself to me. By then I had moved to a different house in another part of the same town, Livingston in central Scotland. I have far fewer memories from that period, perhaps strangely as many consider the teenage years to be the formative years. I don’t recall this time with anything like the same clarity as my earlier years. Perhaps this is something to do with how much I enjoyed my earlier childhood? Maybe. Not that i had a particularly difficult adolescence, it too was largely an enjoyable time for me.

So my chosen age is 6 for this square mile. An age i remember as simply the most enjoyable time, I still saw wonder in everything around and I was free! Free to run around and to explore and do all the things we, as adults now see that our children don’t get to do. Climbing trees and getting lost and the coming home when I was hungry. The thought of being connected to home through a telephone was, well, unthinkable. So I look back with much fondness and I feel lucky to have had such a time and I also feel sad for the generations that have come after me and how much they have not had this time.

For my own children who are now grown up I tried hard to let them be free, to encourage them to adventure, to find and assess for themselves what risk is and learn from that. Still it never quite felt like they had as much freedom as I had, shame. I await the grandchildren if I am fortunate enough to have some and hope I can bring something of the ‘adventure for the sake of it’ to their world.

This is why i wanted to go back to my square mile, to revisit this world that was mine when i was 6 and to capture some essence of the freedom and adventure I had in the series. The old place is still there, a few changes but largely still remains as it was 47 years ago. Two things were immediately apparent; It’s all much smaller than I remember and except for the trees, they are all now 47 years bigger. The town was a new town, just built in the late 60’s and 70s during this era and the trees/saplings had just been planted. Now they are full grown trees. This changes the atmosphere quite a lot is some of the shots which have a claustrophobic feel, back then the world was much more open and there was much more sky.

All shots were taken from the hip, or the height of me when i was 6. In most i use focal length of 28mm to enhance the feeling of the world being bigger.

Home

Hampden roar

There be dragons

Yes ball games

Enemy territory

Beano and a roller skate

Road to nowhere

Wander

Assignment 4: Languages of light

The Brief

Revisit one of the exercises on daylight, artificial light or controlled light from Part Four (Ex 4.1, Ex 4.2 or Ex 4.3) and develop it into a formal assignment submission. The submission requirement for this assignment is a set of between six and ten high-quality photographic prints.There are many ways to edit and the most valuable one is probably to show your work to friends, family and your OCA peers for feedback – you are guaranteed to discover something new in your work. Another tip is to pin the work up on the wall and live with a for a few days. ‘A Quick Guide to Editing Your Photo Series using Stickies’ on the IPO (Invisible Photographer Asia) website, but bear in mind that this is not a narrative assignment – you’re not required to produce a story.

EDITING 101 – A Quick Guide to Editing Your Photo Series using Stickies

Assessment of photography in any context is an assessment of images and accompanying words so please Include a written analysis of your work outlining:

how you have developed the assignment from the original exercise in Part 4
which practitioners you’ve looked at for inspiration and how their work has influenced you
your technical approach and any particular techniques you incorporated
the strengths and weaknesses of particular photographs and your project as a whole (self-
assessment)

Conclude your notes with a personal reflection on how you’ve developed the exercise in order to meet the descriptors of the Creativity criteria. Write 500–1,000 words.

Background

Layered, complex and mysterious…

From the opening statement in the first project in part 4, the seed of inspiration for my submission germinated. I wanted to address and investigate the complexity and mystery in light and the myriad ways it can influence photography. The different levels and dimensions of impact are what I hope to express in some small way in the photographs I submit here for assignment 4.

To achieve this I have not concentrated on any particular aspect of light as was progressed through the projects and exercises in part 4 but instead have attempted to investigate a number of aspects in a sort of journey through the dimensions and levels of influence and impact. This journey progresses through ;

Light with incidental or subliminal influence on an image
Light brings forth and aids a narrative
Light as a means to express a mood or feeling
Light bringing strength and depth to the subject
Light taking centre stage as colour and form in abstract images
Light dominates as colour

The journey is an arc taking the viewer from light having minimal impact to light being all powerful, with a variety of aspects along the way as the images first building in subjectivity and then move progressively towards abstract as the use of light attains more power and influence on the images

Although not apparent in many of the photographs in this submission, the work of Brassai and his shots of Paris had a big influence throughout. In particular I picked up on Brassai’s use of light to help bring forth a narrative – see entry Brassai’s use of light to strengthen composition from my learning log

I took inspiration from a visit to Helsinki art gallery and the work of Lars Gunner Lordstrom & Yves Klein, their use of bold colours and strong lines in their abstract images. This can be seen in the transition to the more abstract images in the later photographs in this series. Finally, inspiration from Lisa Barnard, The Canary and the hammer (Stein, 2019). This helped support the idea that a set of apparently disconnected images can come together successfully under a clear rationale.

Submission

I submit 9 photographs for this assignment covering what I see as an infinitesimally thin and broken slice through the huge multi-faceted spectrum of light and it’s relationship to photography. I found this part of EYV and this assignment in particular fascinating and found myself looking at the world and my work in many different ways as I searched for and discovered new ways to view light and how this affects my vision and the photographs I take.

Light with incidental or subliminal influence on an image

The journey begins with how light can be almost incidental or subliminal in its effect on a photograph. Of course this can’t be true as without light we have no photograph at all, but, other than to bring the picture into being light can have a minimal impact on the image produced. This I see in shot 1 – Incidental Nudity. In this shot I did actually use a small flash which has helped to produce the minimal shadow that is apparent, otherwise the room is lit with natural light.

Light brings forth and aids a narrative

Through the use of light to help suggest or add strength to a narrative. Shot 2 – Time to play & shot 3 – Speed of the light of loneliness. In both cases natural daylight and shadow are used to aid the narrative in each photograph. Inspiration here comes from Brassai and his shots of Paris in the 1930s, although Brassai typically took shots under artificial light, what I took as inspiration is his ability to very subtly use light to bring his stories to life, highlighting what is important to the narrative.

Light as a means to express a mood or feeling

The journey continues with the use of light to visualise a mood or feeling as this overtakes any narrative at play. Shot 4 – Let us play together & shot 5 Let there be death and roses. In these images I switch to night shots and artificial light. The streets in a city at night are a mood of expectation and anticipation, of some excitement, danger perhaps. Even the daytime norm under darkness becomes intriguing. In this case the city is Helsinki on a midsummer night.

Light bringing strength and depth to the subject

From here my journey through light, removes all notion of narrative and attempts to see how light can be used on still life to bring depth and strength to the image. Shot 6 And the roses are strong. Artificial light from a hand held flash is placed directly in front in an otherwise completely dark environment. This produces a clarity and strength for the image.

Light taking centre stage as colour and form in abstract images

Continuing the journey, the use of light becomes ever stronger, taking more and more a dominant position in the photographs. The shots start to become abstract as light and colour in their own right take centre stage. Shot 7 – Wall Lights & shot 8 – False dawn. Both shots taken in natural daylight.

Light dominates as colour

The journey ends with light ( colour ) being completely dominant and the one and only subject of the final photograph. Shot 9 – All about the light.

Technical

All shots were taken in manual mode. I am finding this much more intuitive and satisfying that aperture priority which is my normal mode of choice or shutter priority which i used extensively in part 3 of EYV. I typically use the histogram along with electronic viewfinder in the camera ( Sony a7 II ) to decide on the correct exposure. Given the nature of photographs in this series, many of the shots have an unbalanced histogram.

Two of the abstract shots benefitted from a manipulation of S-Curve in post processing, other than that and some cropping all photographs are unchanged from the RAW image captured by the camera.

I used an off camera hand held flash for two of the shots where artificial light was required to enhance the image. The night shots were taken with slow shutter speed so a small tripod was used to ensure a sharp image.

For shot 6 the vase of roses were placed in a totally dark room with the only light from the off camera flash. I set focus using auto-focus with lights on and then moved to manual focus to retain this setting and experimented on exposure with the lights off until i achieved the image here.

All other settings were selected individually appropriate for each shot, therefore there is no consistency in aperture or focal length.

Strengths and weaknesses

1 strength – good use of depth of field and colour palette

1 weakness – composition, I would be happier if the top of the pile of books was in the frame

2 strength – good composition and exposure

2 weakness – not convinced the point of this shot would be clear without the write up

3 strength – strong narrative content

3 weakness – I would have preferred a tighter frame to the subject

4 strength – good composition and exposure, interesting

4 weakness – as with 2, not convinced the point of this shot would be clear without the write up

5 strength – interesting and engaging image

5 weakness – composition is a little flat and square

6 strength – strong image with lovely colours, exactly what i wanted to get

7 strength – clear and strong abstract image

8 strength – creative light flare, good resolution so would work well as a large image

8 weakness – as with 2, not convinced the point of this shot would be clear without the write up

9 strength – strong abstract image

9 weakness – I would have preferred a wider frame so more pattern could be included. This was not possible. That said I could create the effect I wanted in photoshop.

Creativity

Creativity was not foremost in my mind whilst creating this assignment, that said I think the abstract images created from everyday scenes shows a reasonable level of creativity. And the roses are strong is technically creative I think and successful in my opinion. The other shots I think are more serendipity and opportunism that creative. Overall I think the series and it’s narrative arc through aspects of light is itself creative.

The Sequence

The sequence of photographs is presented in photo-book format :-

1 – Incidental Nudity

ƒ/4.0 33.0 mm SS 1/15 ISO200
Off camera flash

2 – Time to play

ƒƒ/7.1 46.0 mm SS 1/200 ISO 100

3 – Speed of the light of loneliness

ƒ/5.6 70.0 mm SS 1/500 ISO 100

4 – Let us play together

ƒ/4.5 50.0 mm SS 1/40 ISO 400

Tripod

5 – Let there be death and roses

ƒ/4.5 50.0 mm SS 1/5 ISO 400

Tripod

6 – And the roses are strong

ƒ/16.0 45.0 mm SS 1.6 ISO 50
Off camera flash, tripod

7 – Wall lights

ƒ/7.1 70.0 mm SS 1/250 ISO 200

8 – False dawn

ƒ/16.0 70.0 mm SS 1/6400 ISO 100

9 – All about the light

ƒ/5.6 70.0 mm SS 1/8 ISO 100

Tripod

Bibliography

1000 words. 2019. Lisa Barnard The Canary & The Hammer Essay by Lisa Stein. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.1000wordsmag.com/lisa-barnard/. [Accessed 17 June 2019].

Exercise 4.4: Personal Voice

The brief

Exercise 4.4: Personal Voice

Make a Google Images search for ‘landscape’, ‘portrait’, or any ordinary subject such as ‘apple’ or ‘sunset’. Add a screengrab of a representative page to your learning log and note down the similarities you find between the images.

Now take a number of your own photographs of the same subject, paying special attention to the ‘Creativity’ criteria at the end of Part One. You might like to make the subject appear ‘incidental’, for instance by using focus or framing. Or you might begin with the observation of Ernst Haas, or the ‘camera vision’ of Bill Brandt. Or if you’re feeling bold you might forget about your camera completely and think about the tricky question of originality in a different way – http://penelopeumbrico.net/index.php/project/suns/

Add a final image to your learning log, together with a selection of preparatory shots. In your notes describe how your photograph or representation differs from your Google Images source images of the same subject.

Google image search on ‘pear trees’

In the results of the search for Pear Trees, there are two clear styles of presentation;

Close up of fully ripe pears hanging on the trees, generally in full daylight providing a documentary style representation of ripe pears.
Landscape shot showing the full pear tree or trees, again typically in full daylight and generally in full blossom.

As a new way to consider the idea of pear tree, I shot in low ambient light with artificial light from directly and a short distance in front. The image is shot with open aperture to bring the central leaves and fruit into view and fade the rest of the tree into the background. The tree is neither in bloom nor the fruit ripe placing the leaves as the main attraction and subject. With the artificial light ( serendipitous raindrops ) on the leaves there is an ultra-real feel, colour and detail are very strong.

Google search on ‘cherry trees’

In the results of the search for Cherry Trees, there are two clear styles of presentation;

Close up of fully ripe cherries hanging on the trees, generally in full daylight providing a documentary of the cherries.
Landscape shot showing the full cherry tree or trees, again typically in full daylight and generally in full blossom.

The google search for both pear and cherry tree provide almost exactly the same results in terms of style of representation.

As a new way to consider the idea of cherry tree, again the shot is at night and this time with the light from below. Again the tree is neither in bloom nor the fruit ripe and so the leaves again take centre stage. In this case I think the ultra-real feel to the image is less so but replaced with a kind of other worldly look ( light from below is perhaps not so common )

Brassai’s use of light to strengthen composition

Extract from the interview in American Suburb X. [2011]

T.R-J: What for you is the relationship between composition and subject matter?

B: There are two things: I think that there are photographers who compose very well but who have no understanding of life or human things. There are others who have much human understanding but no feeling for form. I feel that it is important to have both because one must convey a living thing with strong composition. Form can be many things in photography. Photography has nothing to do with painting, but even so there is a frame in which the photograph must be composed. Photography has one leg in painting and one leg in life but the two things must be combined. I like well composed pictures: I don’t like disorder in a photograph. Photography in the beginning began by imitating painting and then there was a revolution in different countries. Stieglitz in the United States and Emerson in England, and Atget in France. They all tried to do something different, they didn’t want photography to be taken for painting but wanted something especially for photography.

Brassai likes ‘well composed pictures’. With respect to part 4, I consider how Brassai uses light to create good composition. Generally speaking Brassai compositions appear simple and strong, there is not much complexity to distract the observer.

In Prostitute in the Quartier Italie, Paris, 1932, Brassai further uses light and shadow to to emphasise what is important in the image to bring forward the message he has. The subject is well lit, but only partially. The street where she operates and lampost where she may linger between encounters are also lit well, everything else is allowed to fall into shadow to some degree.Perhaps Brassai is commenting on the subjects shady occupation; Prostitution is right here in front of us, always has been and everywhere, but we prefer to keep this out of the limelight, shaded from our sensibilities.

Bibliography

American Suburb X. 2011. Tony Ray-Jones Interviews Brassai” Pt. I (1970). [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.americansuburbx.com/2011/08/interview-brassai-with-tony-ray-jones.html. [Accessed 2 June 2019].

Exercise 4.3: Egg or stone (continued)

A further set of photographs for exercise 4.3, this time taken outside in low light conditions and using a single light source. My aim here is to use similar techniques for this exercise but to try to find some aesthetic qualities from the subject in the light source. This i am finding interesting and a possible avenue for assignment 4.

In these shots there is a definite attention quality from the light source. As all surrounding areas are dark, where the light falls is brought into the viewers attention immediately and unmistakably. Where the green from the leaves is brought to life by the light, the green appears to be very green.

The raindrops are an added bonus.

Leaves and fruit in the rain

Light source from below

Light source front right

Light source front below

Light source above

Street photography or not street photography

“Time and patience are essential in street photography. One has to walk a lot, and, sometimes, one has to wait for the photograph to happen. In some cases, the photographer will wait until a subject enters a chosen stage–the foreseen composition.”

Magnum photos [2019]

Reading through this article, I found this statement to sum up aspects of my experience in taking the shots for assignment 3. In most of the shots that made the final set I visualised the photo i wanted first, set it up and waited for it to happen. Some more successful than others of course but as a strategy to take the shots it was enjoyable.

From this article I discovered Susan Meiselas and her photographs from Nicaragua in the 1970’s interesting and powerful. https://www.magnumphotos.com/photographer/susan-meiselas/

Images of conflict situations are often very powerful, transport the viewer right there to the scene even decades later. “A car of a Samoza informer burning in Managua” is particularly moving.

Susan Meiselas is not considered a street phitographer by Magnum yet is considered to have produced street photographs of the highest order. “Hence, some Magnum photographers who might not be considered “street photographers” happen to have made street photographs of the highest order.”

What makes street photography is ubiquitous and in this way many artists can create without dedication to the style, perhaps.

Bibliography

Magnum photos. 2019. The joy of seeing magnum street photography. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.magnumphotos.com/theory-and-practice/the-joy-of-seeing-magnum-street-photography/. [Accessed 28 May 2019].

Reworking assignment 3

A couple of pieces of feedback from my tutor on assignment 3 has led me to look at some rework on the assignment. I have not resubmitted assignment 3 however I may consider for final submission to OCA.

The series wrks better as photobook and in monochrome. I was very close to submitting in monochrome as I do believe there is greater consistency and in some cases more powerful images.
Images 3 & 4 are the weakest and would improve from a wider framing. I think I agree with this and fortunately I had some leeway on the original photographs allowing the creation of a wider frame.

The reworked series in photobook form:-

The reworked images :-

Exercise 4.3: Egg or stone

The Brief

Use a combination of quality, contrast, direction and colour to light an object in order to
reveal its form. For this exercise, we recommend that you choose a natural or organic object
such as an egg or stone rather than a man-made object. Man-made or cultural artefacts
can be fascinating to light but they’re already authored to some degree, which requires
interpretation by the photographer; this exercise is just about controlling the light to reveal
form.
You don’t need a studio light for this exercise; a desk lamp or even window light will be fine,
although a camera flash that you can use remotely is a useful tool. The only proviso is that
you can control the way the light falls on the subject.
Take some time to set up the shot. If you’re shooting an egg, you should think about
emptying it first so that it will stand up. This is really a topic for advanced students at Level
3 but you may get some help from Google. The background for your subject will be crucial.
For a smallish object, you can tape a large sheet of paper or card to the wall as an ‘infinity
curve’ which you can mask off from the main light source by pieces of card. You don’t need
to use a curve if you can manage the ‘horizon line’ effectively – the line where the surface
meets background. Taking a high viewpoint will make the surface the background, in which
case the surface you choose will be important to the shot.
Exposure times will be much longer than you’re used to (unless you’re using flash) and
metering and focusing will be challenging. The key to success is to keep it simple. The
important thing is to aim for four or five unique shots – either change the viewpoint, the
subject or the lighting for each shot.
Add the sequence to your learning log. Draw a simple lighting diagram for each of your
shots showing the position of the camera, the subject and the direction of the key light and
fill. Don’t labour the diagrams; quick sketches with notes will be just as useful as perfect
graphics.

The subject

Neither an egg nor a stone, I chose to photograph a pineapple. My aim being to have an organic object with a lot of inherent form and complexity which I hoped to bring out with various artificial light, direction, colour etc

The set up

Ambient light low, so at this time of year shots were taken between 10pm.. 11pm

The pineapple was placed within a light tent with either a white background sheet or black, to introduce change in contrast within the environment.

I used two light sources:-

Ring flash ( used in light mode ), sometimes attached to the camera, other times hand held at various angles to the subject.
1. 1. No mask, producing a pure white light
  2. white mask, produces a cooler white light
Spot light, placed at angles around the subject or again at times hand held to introduce height to the angle. Warm white light

Technical

I used tripod to ensure a constant composition and started by creating the composition aiming to set the subject in the centre of the image with some room to see any shadows which will be formed by the lights, using zoom to set the focal length for the composition.
With camera set in fully manual mode and room lights on I used the camera’s auto focus function to focus on the subject and once set moved to manual focus mode and left alone. This ensured I had good focus for all shots and did not need to use auto-focus in low light conditions ( the sony A7R2 is known to be quite poor in this respect )
Given i was using a tripod, slow shutter speed was not an issue and i could choose aperture, shutter speed and ISO freely for a good exposure.
I found that i did not need to change this once it was set as the artificial lights used provided a fairly constant level across all the shots.

f11, ISO 50, Focal length 36mm, SS 0.4s (typical)

White balance 5500 (typical)

1: Masked Ring light, above slightly right.

2: Spotlight, Left (in light tent).

3: Masked Ring light, on camera.

4: Unmasked Ring light, above subject.

5: Spotlight, above slightly behind.

6: Masked Ring light, above right.

Spotlight, above left.

7: Unmasked Ring light, directly above.

Spotlight in front

8: Spotlight, in front.

9: Spotlight, left ( outside of light tent ).

10: Unmasked Ring light, above slightly in front.

11: Spotlight, above right.

Conclusions

It can be seen across all images above the variety of detail available in the pineapple which is either enhanced and brought out by certain lights sources and at certain angles. For instance:-

In 11 with warm light from the spotlight the full orange colour across all of the segments in the pineapple become evident, in contrast to 1 with cooler light and white background there is far less orange colour from the pineapple.

The perceived size of the pineapple can be influenced by the light source, compare 8 and 9. 8 appears larger given all of the front of the pineapple is in full light, whereass with 9 the right hand side of the pineapple is in shadow.

Depth and clarity of detail between 5 and 7. In 5 with the light above but slightly behind the detail in the segments on the front of the pineapple are flat and lacking in depth or contrast and detail. With the addition of full light in front the full detail of the pineapple becomes clear.