Following on from exercise 4.4 Ex Niliho and with the view to a potential full-blown project for assignment 4. I have Google searched Oranges.
Except for the logo for Orange Mobile, the shots are quite dull and resemble typical product photography, likely taken in a light tent. There’s very little creativity in these images; they’re simply designed to showcase the orange in a marketing-friendly way.
There are various ways to photograph an orange beyond the standard product shot. We could take a more abstract approach, perhaps focusing on extreme close-ups of the skin to highlight the texture of the peel, forcing the viewer to question what they’re looking at.
The quotation from Haas in the course notes about seeing an apple as the “first ever apple” resonates with me. It suggests that when we look at something familiar, we can’t help but be influenced by previous perceptions of it. Picasso once said, “Good artists borrow, great artists steal,” which reminds me of the need to approach the familiar from a fresh perspective.
Looking at Haas’ work, I was particularly drawn to his bullfighting images and his sports photographs, like those of swimmers at the 1984 Olympics. He uses extreme motion blur to depict familiar scenes in an unfamiliar way. While we often try to capture motion or power in sports photography, we rarely do so to this extent. However, as inspiring as these images are, they don’t seem appropriate for photographing an orange.
Bill Brandt once said he allowed the camera to capture what it saw, without interference, rather than shooting what he saw. This concept, influenced by his surrealist mentors like Man Ray, was something I struggled to understand for a long time. It wasn’t until I studied Brandt’s nudes that I began to grasp his approach. His images of the human form, illuminated by light, reminded me of sculpture, particularly works by Henry Moore.
I grew up in Leeds, where Henry Moore’s sculptures were on display at the local art gallery for many years. The more I looked at them, the more I noticed how the light interacted with their shapes, much like how I see light playing on Brandt’s nudes.
For this series, I used a single light source—just a simple pocket torch—to create images that emphasize the shape and form of the orange, without immediately revealing it as an orange. In a way, this approach mirrors how a nude might be lit. I find that the texture of orange peel often reminds me of skin, which inspired this concept.
These images were shot as an extension of my work for Exercise 4.4, serving as a foundation for the full assignment. While I like the shots, I recognize they need further refinement if they are to be developed into a final set. My concept was to treat the orange as a celestial body, using it to explore how light interacts with a subject rather than focusing solely on its aesthetic appearance. This approach aims to emphasize the play of light on form, rather than simply presenting the object itself.
