I did an experiment recently using motion blur in a still life! I intentionally chose items with some type of reflective material on it to get the light trails. This type of shoot is usually done on a black background because the light trails are easier to capture but I wanted to see if I could do it on colour, so this is the result!
Finished my first semester of my fourth year of photography! It was so busy but I had a lot of fun with all my assignments. One of them was creating an ad for a commercial that has a strong narrative. I chose the Budweiser Super Bowl commercial called “Puppy Love“.
The challenge with this assignment was telling the story in just one image so we had to analyze the story and figure out what the most important parts were to include in our final shot. Check it out below!
Tip: To get nice water droplets on a beer bottle first use a clear acrylic spray to create a waterproof coating on the bottle. Then create a mixture of water and glycerine in a spray bottle to spritz on top and you should get perfect little droplets!
For one of my classes we have a semester-long project working on creating a new visual language. What I’m trying to do is create energy in still life/product photography by using colours and unusual compositions. The purpose of the class is to experiment with different ideas to see what works and what doesn’t work. By the end we should have a good idea of what we want to do and then next semester we focus in on that idea and create a solid body of work. The class is almost over now but I’ve had so much fun and I think I’ve created some great images from it! Take a look!
This is probably one of my favourite portraiture assignments that I’ve done so far! We had to do a series of at least two images so I decided to go with a more conceptual series rather than advertising or fashion. I wanted to incorporate a self-portrait into my series because it is not something that I do very often and I am usually more comfortable behind the camera than in front of it. Because it had to be two images, I had to think about who my other model should be. I didn’t want to use some random model because there wouldn’t have been any connection so I decided to use my sister. She is a great model and is always happy to help me out with assignments! So the left image is my sister and the right is my self-portrait. I flipped one image so that we are facing each other to show that there is a connection between the subjects.
Here is my recent fashion shoot inspired by Irving Penn!
Last week I did my next studio assignment which was a summer drink shot! I decided to do a red sangria with oranges, peaches, and strawberries. Below is a behind the scenes shot of my set and the final image.
This is one of my favourite studio assignments that I did last year where we had to do a festive wine shot. I chose a white wine because I loved the gold tones it produced when the light shined through it. Looking back at it now, I wish I had fixed the highlight on the label because it’s slightly blown out. Other than that I was really happy with how it turned out!
I love doing still life/product shots in the studio so I really enjoyed doing this chocolate truffle assignment for school! We could basically do whatever we wanted, whether it was in a more traditional style or a graphic one. As you can see below I went for a graphic look with solid colours and minimal props.
Tip: I learned that you can use a hairdryer on the chocolate to melt it a bit which makes them look shiny and much more appetizing!
Melissa J. Fletcher 
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