Photo Potpourri: CHAPTER 15Forking out over a class assignment

In this chapter, I'm presenting results of what I hope you'll embrace as a light, even humorous series of shoots, although I must say that at the time I took the photos, I was trying pretty darn hard to make these perfecto. At the very least, for me.

In summer 2007, the instructor for an advanced photography class I was taking through the adult learning program at Indiana University-Purdue University-Indianapolis (IUPUI) had assigned students to take and bring to class a picture incorporating the appearance of a fork. A fork as in the common dining utensil/instrument.

I admit that the first thing I thought of was somehow composing a scene in which the fork appeared at the vertex of a two-pronged “fork in the road.” The difficulty (not to mention danger) in pulling this off while shooting prone on the road itself — without getting run over by motor vehicles zooming past — persuaded me to go elsewhere.

And where I next went was ... to four months earlier when, on a lark, I had put together a still-life set up in my home dining room (you’ll read more about this in the next chapter) and tinkered with a parody of the American Gothic painting by Grant Woods, the classic depiction of an elderly farm couple standing side by side while the man holds a vertical pitchfork.

For my parody, I decided to use a fork to take the place of a pitchfork, And I used a can of soup and a sprig of fake lettuce to “dress up” the fork “holder.” See the photo below.

Too much time has passed, and I can’t be sure of this, but I believe that I submitted this photo for the class assignment four months later. The instructor must have been underwhelmed with the submissions — by all class members, not just mine — and sent us out to give it another try. I was crushed; he apparently didn’t get or appreciate the American Gothic parody. (sigh)

What followed to get me to the photo I submitted for the fork assignment reboot, in the years since the assignment, struck me today as a frolic of comedic proportions, as I perused my sundry stabs at creativity. I spent several days trying different ideas. I present to you below my various stabs at compositions over a three-day period.

I'll display the images in chronological order. I started outdoors in my backyard, then returned to the still-life “studio” in the dining room before finishing in nearby Garfield Park.

Day 1, June 29, 2007

the backyard of my home

As you can see below, I started out with a shot of the fork handle pushed pretty deep into the lawn and composed in a shallow depth of field with the neighbors’ cool (at least I thought so) — and long — gray fence as a background. In retrospect, especially after the benefit of reviewing the sundry stabs I took on these three days, this photo might have been THE one I should have submitted.

I can understand if viewers think my “creativity” went downhill after that, what with the blade of grass entwinement and the integration of the fork with flower petals, even after bringing the project indoors to the still-life studio setup in my dining room and plopping the fork into a white coffee mug and/or slapping a colored frame around it.

Day 2, June 30, 2007

During the recent review of the images from Day 2, it struck me that I must have thought that the raspberry or red color of the petunia was an “issue” from the shots I took the previous day.

Because on Day 2, I returned to the backyard and switched to a yellow flower (not sure what type it was) and then tried an orange lily, repeating most of the compositional concepts from the previous day — right down to applying a frame to it. So I'll streamline the Day 2 shots here and limit inclusions to three of the yellow flower and one of the orange lily.

Interestingly, I started processing the lily shots with a framed version first, so that’s the one I’ll present here. Of all the flower shots, the orange lily was my favorite. I just couldn’t figure out a way to avoid that dark shadow in the bottom left corner. Perhaps I should have placed a reflector on the left side, something that didn’t occur to me at the time.

Day 3, July 1, 2007

The third time (day), as the cliche goes, indeed proved to be a charm for me. At least ... I thought so at the time.

I decided to try a variation of “the fork in the road” concept and left the house and walked a short distance to railroad tracks along the western fringe of Garfield Park, where I planned to integrate a fork into the iron track infrastructure.

Exactly how I’d do that, I figured, would hit me like a lightning bolt when I’d get there. Instead, fortuity graced me. When I got there, lying on the tracks was a discarded McDonald’s restaurant plastic beverage container emblazoned with the phrase “hang onto your fork.” I swear to God it was there ... and unknown to me until I arrived at the tracks.

I figured this was a sign to integrate the container into my fork photo composition. So I tried a dozen or more composition, varying the f/stop to blur more and more (or less and less) of the background in the process and trying different angles and perspectives.

What follows below is the chronological progression of shots I took there, ending (i.e., the last photo at the bottom) with the one I turned in to the instructor.

The first eight shots were taken with the cup exactly in the position it was in when I came up it. I turned it ever so slightly for the final four compositions. Again I tinkered with the aperture on many of the shots to vary the depth of field and bokeh intensity.