Form | Photography

Formal Elements: Form

Definition and Theory:

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Form is a three dimensional shape, such as a cube, sphere or cone and officially the visible shape or configuration of something.
Sculpture and 3D design are about creating forms.
In 2D artworks, tone and perspective can be used to create an illusion of form.

My Image Bank:

My Mind Map on Form:

Photographer: Jonathan Knowles

Jonathan Knowles is a London based photographer specialising in graphic still life, liquid and people photography. His unique photographic style has earned him award winning, national and international advertising commissions working with agencies worldwide. I enjoy the aspect of his work that creates features of surrealism within such simple still life objects. Due to this photographer being an inspiration I will focus on producing my own photographs of still life and potentially making it graphic during my editing process.

There is an element of special effects and creative movement occurring within his style of photography. Almost as if the pictures have been paused during a play of the movement of special effected objects. Whereas other photographs like the bottom right image of a completely plain/blank plugs into a pure white wall.

Photographer: Irving Penn

Irving Penn was an American Photographer known for his fashion photography, portraits and still life. His career included work at Vogue magazine and independent advertising work for clients including Miyake and Clinique. My focus in this photographer mainly aims at his still life images. I believe Irving Penn's is very unique as he has manipulated the objects before photographing them, which will be one of my focuses when creating my own photos.

AO1: Develop ideas through sustained and focused investigations informed by contextual and other sources, demonstrating analytical and critical understanding.

My Contact Sheets:

Within my contact sheets I have highlighted my chosen best images in green to make them more visible. As well as highlighting my images needing improvements in red.

My Best Images (Non-Edits):

These photographs are the chosen ones that I believe showed my best work and appropriate representation of form found within the objects whilst following the inspiration of still life.

Images that need Improvements:

AO3: Record ideas, observations and insights relevant to intentions, reflecting critically on work and progress.

Once collecting my photographs I noticed a few images that were not up to an appropriate standard and did not present correct form within each objects. There are also elements like the light reflecting back off of the surface and my shadow appearing in the images.

My Editing Process:

AO2: Explore and select appropriate resources, media, materials, techniques and processes, reviewing and refining ideas as work develops.

My Edited Images:

During my editing process I adjusted the saturation causing some images to almost be discoloured, whereas others I created the colour saturation to be relatively high. Some images I turned into complete black and white as it highlights the form within the photograph.

AO4: Present a personal and meaningful response that realises intentions and, where appropriate, makes connections between visual and other elements.

At the end of this project of another one of the formal elements: form, I found that finding elements of form was quite difficult to capture. However, I found a majority of form within the objects I chose from the inspiration of still life following the photographers I researched before capturing any images. I believe the struggle for me in this project was trying to assure that my form and shape project were not overly similar. However, I didn't find that the two projects were similar which is shown clearly in my edited final images from both shape and form. This project was considered to be an overall success as there is a clear structure of form being presented in each final image.