I had a few ideas for this one.
I liked that the #pin image said something. And I wanted this image to say something as well.
I immediately landed on using Scrabble pieces out of context.
I considered making a statement about malignant individualism: I would have two stack of letters with the letters “M” and “E” at the top. Then, on the surface of the table top, I would spell out “you”. Wish a wide angle (or maybe even the fish-eye) I would shoot straight down on the letters and use the perspective to emphasize the size of “ME” above “YOU”. I would have titled it “John Galt” (the lead character in the book by Ayn Rand titled Atlas Shrugged).
I also had the idea of removing an S, E, L, and F from the bag of letters and then dumping them into a pile/mound until I came upon an arrangement of letter with 4 prominent letters that I could replace and title the image, “Out of Chaos”.
Then I came up with the idea of putting the pieces on the board of the wrong game. I thought of Life, I considered checkers , but chess seemed to be the best. The idea of placing LOVE in the game of war immediately struck me as a nice idea, but seemed a little on-the-nose. I tried ADORE. I tried ROMANCE too, but the more letters that were on the table, the less it became about chess, so I committed to LOVE.
I considered shooting from above with LOVE as pawns, but it was less interesting photographically, so I brought the camera down. By turning the table 45 degrees, it have me some lines of tonality that moved from front to back. It still lacked story and context, though. I addressed that by bringing a finger into the frame and acting on one of the pieces. The left hand and the wedding band adds a little extra context if someone cares enough to pay attention.
As these are exercises are (to me anyway) more about executing an idea with my camera, this image was not given any additional treatment and is posted as it was captured in-camera with Olympus’ “Pinhole” JPEG rendering.
