repeated items

Set the way-back machine on this one, circa late 90’s. This image was captured on a shoot for my old client and friend Mike MacCaskey, then a garden writer at Sunset Magazine. This was a community garden tomato taste-off where different varieties of tomatoes were tasted to see which one had the best flavor.

While this type photograph – and in my opinion more interesting image style – was not what Sunset wanted, I never the less let my wandering eye delight itself in my own private captures. I love the objectified nature of the image and objects, the repetition and of course the pop color against the teal patinated surface.

The numbers were a means of tagging the individual varieties so that they might be valued and voted upon.

This image is a study in composition and color. Shooting to the frame, or viewfinder, is one of the tools the photographer has in their compositional tool box. The subject, a cement truck, proved to be a fascinating investigation of shape and color. The flat light renders these shapes and color in a bold and graphic manner.

From distressed manufactured wood to the real thing. This and the preceding image for the Game struck me as uncanny in their similarities of color and pattern. I like the shift in subject between the images and yet they share so much in common visually speaking. While we as photographers tend to embrace “quality” light, typically directional soft light at either end of the day, this image breaks those rules by shooting with the sun directly over my shoulder. This type of light – combined with a long lens – has a flattening effect, stripping away conventional dimension and in its place, relying on color and pattern for contrast. I always shoot with concept in mind, however, this concept was not so much what I shot, but what I chose, these two different states of wood.