Exercise: Multiple points

For this exercise, I experimented with various food objects placed together in different ways with the idea of exploring the relationship between the points in the various configurations. I actually struggled to find interesting objects to use for this exercise. I tried different types of food, I used shoes, and even a bunch of cufflinks. Ultimately I used the food because it's the simplest.


In this photo, I have two points, mostly balanced left/right and top bottom. The pepper is pretty close in tone to the cutting board, so it looks rather flat.


In this photo, I swapped out the pepper and onion for some limes, a lemon and two plums. I arranged them fairly symmetrically, with the dark plums on the left a lime in the middle of all the points. The limes are also very close in tone to the cutting board, so they don't stand out very much and add little in terms of energy to the photo.

I rearranged the objects to put some of the lighter objects between the dark plums, and set it up so the dark plums and light lemon create a sort of triangle between the plums and the lemon. The two limes are secondary influences in the photo, but the placement of the one partially outside the line between the two plums does weaken the feeling of the triangle. Because it's in line with the other lime and the lemon, it creates a tension between the shape of the triangle and the line. I think the triangle is a bit stronger than the line.


In this photo I removed the limes and introduced some grapes. The two plums and the lemon, being much larger, are stronger than the grapes, which look sort of dominated, even though they are relatively far away.

In this photo I removed the plum and added more grapes, which are mostly clustered together in the upper right hand corner. If you cover up the grape near the lemon, the photo has a totally different feel to it. It makes more "sense," if you will. The grape near the lemon creates an ambiguity for me that makes it difficult to resolve. The relationship between the objects is not nearly as clear.



This photo of multiple points is completely different. The white floats are the points amidst this tangled mess of netting and rope. What's interesting about this is that the points actually are connected by the rope running between the floats, but the the ropes don't follow straight lines. So the points are literally connected by somewhat arbitrary, even curvy lines, but also by imaginary lines you can't see directly. I thought this photo would be an interesting way to observe actual lines and and how they relate to implied lines. The end result to me is a lot more energy. It makes for a very dynamic photo.