Connecting Essay One

This is my image that I did for everyday objects, it is from my fourth shoot, I wanted to try and do a shoot similar to Irving Penn, which I think I have achieved as the images do look quite similar. There are a few differences between each photograph as my image has a bit more shadowing, it has also got more of a plain black and white filter, whereas the photograph by Irving Penn has a bit more of a yellowy tone. My photograph has focused on the entire cigarette as we can see because it has the entire cigarette in the image. 

This image is by Irving Penn, I like this series of photographs as they are very focused on the disgustingness of cigarettes, rather than the cigarettes as a whole like mine, all of the cigarettes are dirty and disgusting, they have stains all over them. I like how in his images, you can see the ash in the cigarette, whereas in mine you can't really see this. 

I think that this photographer has a better image than mine because he probably used a macro camera that meant that he can focus on a smaller part of the cigarette like the end where the ash is, whilst my photo is more focused on the entire cigarette. 

The photograph looks much older than mine, the image was presented in 1975 in New York, this means that it is quite a recent image, it was put in black and white for a reason, I think that he did that because it makes it look extremely old and decaying.

He may have done this to mock the effects that smoking has on you, as it makes you age quicker and it can make you feel dirty.

In comparison, I think they are both good photographs technically, however the connotation and denotation in the cigarette shoot by Irving Penn is much more detail, whilst he wanted to show what people felt like and looked like when they smoked, I just wanted to take a good image. So therefore, his photo has a lot more thought behind it than my images. 

In addition, I think that my image isn't as good as his technically, although I am still happy with how they turned out. Because my camera can't get as close as his obviously could, my images show the whole cigarette, further, they are in less detail than his images.