Every photographer has a specific genre or a few which they stay away from. The idea of a still-life and especially the cliche of photographing beautiful flowers were as tasty as drinking burnt caramel on a very hot day; bitter and dehydrating. I guess my blood sugar must have been very low for me to challenge this viewpoint.
Alexander James, a very talented photographer, uses classic nature morte objects and photographs them underwater in a black velvet-lined glass tank. I was inspired by his subversion of the classic genre by shooting objects differently. He gave a painting-like appearance to them through his technique of obtaining the image rather than through post processing.
I was also inspired by Impressionistic paintings, especially Monet and his works from his garden in Giverny. I wanted to breakdown some of their elements such as allowing pure colour to form a structure rather than black shadows and white highlights.
I transformed my bathroom into a tiny studio where a desk lamp became my only light source and my bathtub was where my subjects stood, or more accurately floated against the oscillations of waves created by a plastic lid and cascades of water from a pot. To challenge my photographic practice, I too stood away from post processing. The colours of the flowers on the camera were as vivid as they appear on the screen and only minute adjustments were made.
I hope you will enjoy my off-tangent series of work. This caramel was not burnt and accompanied my vanilla ice cream very well, and it was not overbearingly hot.