Photography Articles

This article is published in "Canadian Camera", Official Publication of "The Canadian Association for Photographic Art", Spring 2007, Canada.

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Marvelous Shapes and Familiar Forms

Farzad Emami

Tehran, Iran, 2005

When I glimpse at a mother's breast - feeding her baby, I do warn myself " leave them to be relaxed". But some frames have settled in my mind , during very very few seconds I faced them. The frame contains a few curved lines merging into one, sliding slope fondling my eyes and gliding angles grasp me as melody. Blossom shape of baby lips, sticks the mother's breast willingly.... ethical contrast occurs...

Therefore, I refer to my reference, great Mom, mother of everything, nature, so as to find same shapes and forms. After a year or say whole my life searching, I have found marvelous shapes, hidden silently from most of eyes and familiar forms memorizing those nice and calm moments.
Great Mom again feed me and let me to see more and more forever with merci.

I began photographing fruits in my suit; and it is better to say in my room, for its 30 Sq. m area. It was a small space, but it was not bad for macro photography. The advantages of suit were its good natural daylight coming through the windows.


With simplest white papers as reflectors, 30 years old non-professional camera, Canon AV-1, and a very good lens, Vivitar series one, 70-210 mm Macro Tele zoom, and heavy tripod, which was rigid to change its direction of head, I started to take photographs. Most of aperture was selected 11 or 16 for more depth of field, but never 22, because camera does not work properly at its smallest aperture for macro photography. Shutter speed has been usually between 1/4 and 1/15 seconds. The films I had chosen at ISO-100 were Fuji, Agfa, Konica and this might be my fault. Choosing films regarding to my available light and the kind of photography should have been more important for me.

Most of the photos were taken by the same setting up. A white thick paper as a background, which coming down vertically beside the wall and bending smoothly so as to lie horizontally as a floor. This preparation makes us no angle. This paper is fixed by clips ordinary. A long pin like a grille sinks from the back of the thick paper to the front of it. The grille itself comes from the middle of the books that were piled on each other’s not only as a wall but also as a grip. Therefore we can push an apple for example to this grille, so as to hang on the air. The fruits itself mask the grille. This small and easy to make studio can be arranged in every location by simplest things.

Some photos had very good sharpness and I had managed to enlarge them up to 100x100 cm. This was incredible for not only my friends, but also for myself. It was difficult to accept that we can enlarge 135 mm negative film up to this print size. After enlarging some of them, I obtained enough time to see more carefully the details, forms, shapes, lines and the color of the fruits. 'It is really nice to see all colors and shapes, ignoring whole our life by just biting and cutting them’, says people.' We can find out more than that', I reply; lime lines, shapes and forms combined in colors.


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