Pen
When I heard about the Still Life experiment, I immediately thought of deconstructing an object and photographing the composite parts. I tried first with a lamp, but lampshades...do not photograph terribly well. I've deconstructed a lot of pens, and so my mind left to that. I tried with a few different layouts: the ink-on-the-side from the first three, and the all-in-a-line were the only two to make it in.
Dice
I remember the layouts pictured in the Still Life examples- they often had flat lays with variations on a concept- look, skittles that variate in color. Dice seemed a good fit for that, as they: have a fun cube shape and six side, and mine were multicolor. None of the flat lays I made I liked, though- they just didn't really work. My sister suggested just laying them out randomly, so I did, but it was missing something. I made a few towers, and that worked well. I edited out everything in the background, creating only the white paper, the black background, and leaving the focus on the dice.
Clips
I really liked the effect created by the black background and white paper in Dice, so I tried to replicate the effect with bread clips. A few of the layouts are a bit iffier- bread clips are a moderately strange thing to photograph- but I think it still gets some of the feeling. A few angles were tried: the yellow is off to the side, the white is leaning off, but the angle of the photo is altered.
Cereal
My very first concept was a deconstructed item. Rather than literally do this (as in Pen), I decided to deconstruct a bowl of cereal. I started taking it dead on, as in Overview of Breakfast, and took a few side angles because why not. To my surprise, I preferred the side shots, and did the same thing I'd done to Clips and Dice- black background, white paper. Combined with differing angles (Edge of the Universe vs. A Glass..), it created an interesting effect.
Colored Stones
I was running out of ideas for things to photograph, so I just grabbed some rocks and used the Dice style. The filters used here were more haphazard- I could no longer pick and choose which filters to use. For many of the previous filters, I hadn't really leaned into them- sure, I used dry brush, but is it really noticeable? Here, though, I really used the filters- each is clearly distinguishable.