Today I decided not to hang around anymore to carry on thinking into my idea for Weird and Wonderful too much and to start shooting. I have an idea in my head of how I want the final images to look but it's going to take a lot of planning so today I decided to just set up a little tea party and shoot close ups of the food that would be at the Mad Hatter's tea party.
I started to search on Pinterest to see what type of cakes have been used in re-enactments of the tea party. I found a few images with jam tarts and French fancies and then some cupcakes so that's what I went out and bought.
I then needed to think about what I was going to present my food on. I knew I wanted a cake stand but the only ones I could think that we had was a three tiered one and a china white one both of which weren't what I was imagining. Luckily after a little bit of hunting around the house I found a nice detailed one that fitted with the image I had in my head. I then wanted to shoot some images of an old fashioned tea set which I knew we didn't have in the house and I didn't want to go out and buy one from the shops as it wouldn't match the aesthetic and the story behind the images. I had to think about where I could get hold of these. The only three places I could think of was a charity shop, my dad or my grandparents. I ended up getting my dad's mum's tea set that she was given and it was exactly what I was looking for. On Pinterest I had seen a tea cup with some flowers inside so when I went to the shops I bought some flowers to put in the tea cup. The final things I needed before shooting was a couple of parcel tags, some napkins and a nice table cloth.
I then started to set up my little set. I decided to set up in the dining room in the house as I thought it was the most appropriate place as this is where our dining room table is. It also had a lot of natural lighting shining through the windows which is another factor which made me shoot in there. I started off with a selection of all the cakes on the stand and then got my camera settings right and started shooting. I wanted to use a shallow depth of field to focus on the parcel tags that I had written on. I had two parcel tags that I was using, one that said EAT ME and one that said DRINK ME. I started off with the EAT ME tag. I tried close up and further away images to see which effect I liked the best. As I went on I preferred the images that I had taken closer up but I still carried on using different angles and distances.
Below are my contact sheets from the shoot, as I went through the shoot the lighting definitely got better. I definitely struggled with the angles and the layout of each image which I think is really clear as you scroll through my contact sheets because a few of the images look really out of place. I am happy with the shoot as it was really a shoot to try out how to lay out things and it's just got me starting off actively shooting. I don't think I'm going to shoot this shoot again I'm going to start on shoots that could possibly be my final images.
I shot images both with the EAT ME tag and without the tag to see which way I preferred and I definitely preferred the ones with the EAT ME tag because they told the story a lot better and got the concept across. The images that I like the most from the shoot since looking at them and editing them are the images with the French fancies and the jam tarts because of how much the frame is filled. I tried a single cupcake with the tag stuck into the cake but I didn't like the effect it gave off as it just looked too sparse in the image, I felt like it needed more in the frame. I then moved on to shoot the teacups with the flowers, I didn't really know what the reasoning behind putting the flowers in the teacups was but I tried it anyway. I thought the effect looked really nice but don't think it fits in with the aesthetic I'm aiming for.
I have edited a fair few images from my shoot. After looking at them on my contact sheets I have actually liked them a lot more but they still won't be part of my final piece as they don't fit with what I have in mind with the book. The images of the tea cups have come out really well and are exactly how I wanted them to look but obviously I won't be doing images as close up for my actual final shoots. The images of the cakes that are zoomed further out I don't like at all because there's too much going on in the image and they look too simplistic. Another image that I think is too simplistic is the image of the cupcake on its own as there's too much space around the image. My favourite images are the jam tarts, the tea cups, and the close ups of the French fancies and the cupcakes because the composition of the images is exactly what I was aiming for. If I was to show one of the images on their own without a story or concept behind the images to somebody they would know what my theme was.
I throughly enjoyed doing this shoot and not just because I got to eat all the cakes afterwards! This is just the start of the shoots for my final imagery but I know these style of photos won't be in the book but these type of cakes and tea cups will appear in the shoots to come. I am going to collect another couple of things to feature in my tea party because if my next shoots just contain these two things the table will look too sparse.
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