Connecting Essay - Sam Kaplan

Here is one my images from my third shoot. I focused my camera on the fork in the shot, and due to the narrow depth of field used, this meant the rest of the image was out of focus. The spoon displays a smooth and shiny texture, with there being some small interruptions to this in the form of scratches on the metal. In the background, there is remainders of tomato based pasta sauce in the bowl, which presents the shade of muted red that makes up most of the composition. This shade of red could represent the person who is eating losing their love of food, and a result, there is an amount of sauce that was left in the bowl to be wasted. The use of the smooth texture with scratches interrupting the smoothness could act as a representation of the spoon's current state of usefulness; though it is old, which is clearly shown through the scratches, yet the shine left on it shows that it is still a useful object.



This is an image by still life photographer Sam Kaplan. It has been taken from a low angle, facing down upon the subjects of the photo. The image depicts several wooden plates with platters of various foods neatly organised on them and decorated. Kaplan has made strong use of colour throughout his image, with there being prominent saturated shades of yellow present in the corn in the foreground. The lighting appears to have been natural and is very bright, as it casts a hard shadow on the table coming from the plates and glasses; this creates a clear tonal contrast between the light tones shown on the plates and these shadows, presenting the fact that while the food looks appealing, it is of a large quantity and therefore will likely not be good for you. There is a large amount of salad on the plates, which could represent the presence of natural ingredients in cooking, and the yellow tones throughout the image create a sense of hope for natural and healthy food.

These two images have some clear links. The both follow the same topics of food, and therefore everyday objects, and both present a sense of excess in foods, with mine showing food waste from excess and Kaplan's image showing excess from having large amounts of food in the frame at once. They also both make use of texture, with mine showing some scratched textures on cutlery, indicating that while it's old and has been used, it still functions. Kaplan uses texture to present a sense of the outdoors; there are lots of bumpy, natural looking textures throughout the image, shown both on the plates and the table they were photographed on.