Amber Morahan
Advertising Lighting Research
Amber Morahan's work has been shown to me a number of times and each time I look at it, I get a sense of colourful, advertising, commercial work and lighting. Each image I have selected here looks as though they are trying to sell the subjects within them, using creative lighting and compositions to entice people into buying/using the product within the image. The images here are from a selection of projects but all use the same skills with lighting and advertising. This is what I'm inspired by with her work, how she can advertise and even persuade me to buy and use the objects within these images, even though the objects are simple, everyday items that don't usually interest me enough to spend decent money on. I want to try to use this lighting style, composition style and colouring to ironically sell the hair I have collected over the course of this project, and make this hair beautiful. People always freak out when hair comes off of the body, thinking its dirty, its dead and its gross. I want to ironically use this advertising lighting to create beautiful still life images that make people want to buy this hair, even though they usually would find it gross, similar to how Morahan's images are making me want to spend decent money on toothpaste when usually it is not something I would fork out large money for.
Her lighting style looks very complicated but after playing around in the studio I think I can cope enough to try out some different product shots. I feel as though she has used a light from above to create each strong shadow, which I really want to create in my work because I think it adds depth to these images, and makes them feel way more real than they would do if the images were more flat. There may also be a light form the front so the objects are in focus and the main part of the image, and so I will play around with these lights on my next shoot in the studio. In terms of colours and backgrounds, the bottom two images I selected of Morahan's really intrigue me, they have a slight 80s feel to them with the bold colours and I want to try this out in the studio, creating very stylistic images to sell very basic things like hair cutting scissors, hair brushes and shampoo (different objects of hair construction). The way she has lit the teapot on the bottom left is a real interest to me as I would like to create that kind of painterly but block colours effect, making the object almost look fake. Again I will play around with the studio, creating these kinds of images, using coloured backgrounds that coincide with the objects within the images. From her work, I have also been inspired by her colour selection, using bold colours against others to make everything bold and enticing. I will use this to create more images for my project, not just connecting the objects to the colours but the backgrounds to coordinating colours on the colour spectrum so each colour suits the other in an aesthetically pleasing way, as these images have made me realise how important colours within images help to sell the objects to the general public.
Her lighting style looks very complicated but after playing around in the studio I think I can cope enough to try out some different product shots. I feel as though she has used a light from above to create each strong shadow, which I really want to create in my work because I think it adds depth to these images, and makes them feel way more real than they would do if the images were more flat. There may also be a light form the front so the objects are in focus and the main part of the image, and so I will play around with these lights on my next shoot in the studio. In terms of colours and backgrounds, the bottom two images I selected of Morahan's really intrigue me, they have a slight 80s feel to them with the bold colours and I want to try this out in the studio, creating very stylistic images to sell very basic things like hair cutting scissors, hair brushes and shampoo (different objects of hair construction). The way she has lit the teapot on the bottom left is a real interest to me as I would like to create that kind of painterly but block colours effect, making the object almost look fake. Again I will play around with the studio, creating these kinds of images, using coloured backgrounds that coincide with the objects within the images. From her work, I have also been inspired by her colour selection, using bold colours against others to make everything bold and enticing. I will use this to create more images for my project, not just connecting the objects to the colours but the backgrounds to coordinating colours on the colour spectrum so each colour suits the other in an aesthetically pleasing way, as these images have made me realise how important colours within images help to sell the objects to the general public.