The Gray Portfolio

A couple of blogs ago, I mentioned that a series of both black and white, and color still life portfolios would be going up in the coming months. Initially, we envisioned the Dark Objects portfolio going up first, then the Color Portfolio, and then the two other black and white portfolios. Over the summer a number of issues came up concerning this sequencing structure, especially concerns about tonal value and saturation in the color portfolio. Accordingly, I have opted for putting up the Gray Portfolio now.

As is immediately apparent above, the gray portfolio addresses a number of both textural and tonal issues, that are of not addressed in either the Dark Objects, or the upcoming, Light Objects portfolios. In both of these portfolios, the backgrounds are based upon the absence of any visual information beyond the selected extreme gray scale value. On the other hand, the Gray Portfolio attempts to address the other 98% of gray scale tonal value. This has led me in two parallel, but differing pathways, through the problem of gray. I suspect this comes from both a personal aesthetic bias, and the realities of having to sometimes shoot objects in the location where they may initially be found. Firstly, I just do not like the look of continuous tonal blocks of middle or pale gray in general, unless they are played off a highly textured and tonally varied object like my mom's stippled glove above. The other strategy is to use variation of grays in the background to emphasize my subjects, or imply the environment where they might be found. We can see these two approaches simultaneously below in the photos of the shredded truck tire and the seaweed.

To a large degree the split strategies here mostly have to do with having texture carry the visual weight in what is commonly a somewhat contrast reduced environment.

Please note on the way out of here, yes all the objects on location could be cut out in post, and placed on a continuous toned backgrounds with more dramatic contrast, but in many cases, the objects would lose some of their power when "cleaned up". We can immediately see that when the petrified fish from the gray portfolio is also placed against both black and white backgrounds above. In some cases, such a move can be visually affective, but specific to this subject, the loss of the actual background of a beach of dried fish scales and bones, lessens the visual impact and understanding of what has actually taken place on this beach for over 85 years.