Connecting Essay - Andre kertesz

Here is an image from my third shoot, which took place in my kitchen and involved capturing plates with food waste left on them after a meal. The image was taken from a high angle and depicts two spoons and a fork that have been left in a bowl. It was taken from an incredibly close up perspective with a narrow aperture, meaning the cutlery appears to be larger than life. This could be portraying cutlery as a tool with a lot of power; it is the tool which is used to feed yourself, and it's therefore, in a sense part of keeping you alive. I took care in capturing texture in this image, selecting cutlery that has had some wear from extensive use and therefore presented some scratched and rusted textures. This helps portray cutlery as an object that is used very frequently, as well as having a long lifespan, as it is still in use despite these textures being present.

This is an image by famous still life photographer Andre Kertesz, who often captured everyday objects in everyday settings such as restaurants. This has been taken from a very high angle, being close to a bird's eye view shot, and depicts a clean bowl with a spoon in it and what looks like three sugar cubes. The image has been taken using a very greyscale black and white film, meaning a monotone effect is created, however, there is some tonal contrast created by the low-key lighting used in the shoot, which casts a hard shadow both inside the bowl as well as on the table, which is cast by the bowl. This could be linked to the presence of sugar cubes, creating connotations of the good side and bad side of eating one. On the plus side, a sugar cube tastes nice, whereas it has a bad side in that it's poor for your health, as it's excessive amounts of sugar.

My image drew inspiration from Kertesz' image, mostly in composition. I liked kertesz' use of high angle shots to create a sort of architectural type plan shot, in which you can see the whole scene, therefore I shot from a high angle to try and recreate this atmosphere. I also took note of kertesz use of texture; he used mostly smooth textures apart from some contrasting rough textures shown on the table, and this texture contrast is something I tried to replicate through displaying rough textures in the cutlery and contrasting them with the smooth textures of the bowl they are in.