Unit 2 - Relationships - Food Advertisements

I have been researching into how food is advertised, the majrority of photographs advertising food use either one of two things,  they use a shallow depth of field so the food in the image is sharp and clear, or they use a black or white background which empathises the colours of the food. 

Marks and Spencer's Tv Commericals 2014 & 2015.

In 2014 Marks and Spencer's released a new series of TV Commericals, which also carried on through to 2015 and is still being used today, the adverts consist of a black background, with cut up bits of brightly coloured foods such as peppers and cream, against the dark background the food stands out and draws the viewers attention. Many of Marks and Spencer's adverts follow this theme of having a black background. In my second shoot I will be looking into using a black background.

Unit 2 - Relationships - Initial Shoots - Inspired by Sarah Graham

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Unit 2 - Relationships - Artist Research

MFor my first artist I wanted to look at someone who used bright vivid colours in their work, which shows the food we are attracted to, and I found British painter Sarah Graham, born in 1977, in Hitchin. The majority of Sarah Graham's work is produced on canvas. Below shows some of her paintings, I thought she would be a really good first influence as she captures the bold bright colours of sweet packaging, which really draws the consumer in, she also shows the best brands through her paintings, which makes the viewer want to reach out and grab the item, I thought a really good thing I could take from her work is the depth of field, if you look closely at her work, you will realise that in most of her work she uses a soft blur as the background, this is something I could experiment with in my work. 

Mon Cheri Pop
Sarah Graham
Oil on canvas
As you can see in this painting Labeled 'Mon Cheri Pop' by Sarah Graham. I want to take Sarah Graham's use of a soft blur as the background, I want to use this shallow depth of field using my DSLR and a 50mm lens. This short depth of field really makes the foreground sharp and vivid, where as the the background is blurred and soft. If you look towards the stick of the lolly pop you will see that it is completely blurred 

Seventy Sweethearts
Sarah Graham
Oil on canvas
Sarah Graham mainly looks at sweets and ice creams, these tend to be foods with bright colours and that are visually advertising, For my initial shoot I have taken photographs of Harribos, I do not believe these were successful as they are not particularly interesting, but they do relate to Sarah Graham's work as there is a shallow depth of field.  

Sundae Bliss
Sarah Graham
Oil on canvas

Unit 2 - Relationships - Initial Ideas

The theme of our exam unit is 'Relationships', I started this unit by creating one spider diagrams around all of the possible links to the word 'Relationships', then from this diagram I decided on four ideas which i thought would work well for this unit, avoiding ideas which could be seen as cliché such as love and friendship. My overall spider diagram for the theme of relationships can be seen below...  

My ideas taken from my overall spider diagram...

• Relationships between Animals and their Environment
• Relationships between Humans and their Environment 
• Relationships between Humans and their Food
• Relationships between different types of Food

After deciding that these ideas are the ones I most favour, I will have to decide on which one  I believe that my skills are best suited to and the one that I think I will most enjoy doing in this unit. 

The idea in which I am going with for Unit 2 is...

Relationships between different types of Food...

I will be exploring different types of food, and how they relate to each other.