ALL OF ART IN ONE PHOTOGRAPH

I have been designing the poster and other marketing material for an exhibition which spans the whole art department of a college. Usually the poster is knocked together using a bad photo of a student’s work with text nestled around it.

However, this year, they asked (and paid) me to do it – so I thought I should produce an image specifically for it. The more I thought about it, the harder the problem became as I could not think of what to do in camera that could reference fine art, photography, 3D design, textiles, film and so on.

Then I had the idea of getting items from each of the disciplines in the department and photographing them on a copy stand. Unsure what to arrange the items on, a cutting board seemed apt. Here is the result:

ART IN A PICTURE mki (2012)

After this, I thought a bit more refinement and better lighting were in order, so I set up a light box in the studio.  This meant I could back light the objects to give them a sort of floating appearance and use the studio flashes to light the objects themselves in a more controlled manner.  At first I thought I would try it scruffy as that is arguably more representative of an art department. Here is the result:

ART IN A PICTURE mkii (2012)

However, my clean line loving brain could not handle the messy nature of this (plus it proved harder than I thought to make paint splurge out in an appealing manner), so I went back to arranging the items carefully.  This final effort is the one I like best and have used for the artwork.

So the answer to the question “How do you represent it in one picture” is this:

ART IN A PICTURE mkiii (2012)