One of the basic skills of still-life photography, Michael Freeman writes, "is to be able to group objects together in such a way that they are linked attractively, in a relationship that is active rather than obvious and static. This is essentially a problem of placing several points."
This exercise calls for taking a series of images documenting the creation of a still life. "The idea," Freeman says, "is to control the composition by rearrangement, not by changing the framing with the camera."
I assembled a number of pieces linked thematically to Buddhism, including a mala (or rosaray), a leaf from a bodhi tree (from Bodhgaya, actually), a stone from a cave in Japan said to be where a great monk once meditated, a Buddha amulet featuring two mantra packets, a vajra (or thunderbolt) and a seashell.
I did not follow Freeman's directions to the letter and used a plain background. I did this for two reasons: one, I didn't want to hunt up another background, nor make one; and two, it seems to me a plain background, like shooting in b&w, accentuates the points. From the previous lesson we learned that the ideal background for demonstrating points is a plain and even background.
My camera was fixed to a tripod, as shown, and the elements moved around within the frame. Images were shot in color and converted to monochrome in Lightroom. First the initial set-up:
By the time I got to the end, there wasn't much space in which to fit the mala, and so it rolls off the edge, giving the final image a bit of asymmetry.
I next went into a paint program and outlined what appears to me that predominate shape of the final image. This shape was not intentional, simply what came out of the sequence.
Is this visual appealing?
After looking at it repeatedly, it's hard to say. At least it doesn't appear flat and static.
I'll leave to my colleagues and tutor to offer some additional opinions.
Finally, there are a couple of alternative set-ups:
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