Artist research ~ Richard Maxted ~ Everyday Geometry

RICHARD MAXTED

Richard Maxted is an advertisement photographer, working with still life. He mainly works within the studio using controlled studio lighting on his subjects.

This photographer started off with objects that he found, such as a can that he found in a car park.

“I’m not sure why it appealed to me or why I picked it up. Perhaps it was because Pepsi is such an iconic brand, known by everyone, and here it was, crushed, flattened and pretty much at the bottom of the pile.” ~ Richard Maxted.

One thing that I found fascinating about Richard Maxted’s work was the way he uses lighting to create the texture and the sharp water drops. His work is extremely contrasted, bringing out the colours and lines that could be on the subject he is working on. He works with a lot of different objects or subjects, such as can lids, cars, wrapping, brands etc. He has even worked on subjects like dead flies, which is interesting due to the amount of detail he has put into it.

When it came to looking into my own work, I wanted to work in controlled lighting, so I used my own lighting for these images (a torch) and worked with objects I found that is used everyday in the house, due to this being an “Everyday Geometry” project and the fact that this photographer simply uses everyday objects a lot of the time.

I used foil for the idea of the texture and lines being formed. I created the lines on the foil and found that this image was already very contrasted. I alerted the contrast a slight bit to experiment with what might happen and I was happy with the results, however, I don’t think that this works extremely well with the project, but I wanted to experiment~

For the train tickets, I believe that this worked better than the foil, the lines forming together and the vignette that was found within the corners which was created by the torch I was using as lighting. I added slight contrast to these images as well to experiment and I was happy with the result. I enjoy working with line and texture and I believe that this photographer is a very good influencer. ~