Fleur Olby's photography began with her love for nature and desire to catch detail in its simplest form. Olby was established as a still life photographer in 1993. Her work shows different types of plants and flowers on a black background. Some of them are shown to be quite bright and interesting but others are shown to be quite dull and dark. This is quite a modern technique of taking photographs of plants/flowers. Olby also takes images of ‘green on white’ which also has a nice effect and also has a happier mood to the photograph as it is more bright and colourful. I personally prefer her green on white images as they have a better feeling to them. Olby has taken this image by placing the leaf on a light box and this causes the bright light background. This is a good way of taking this image because you can see the object bright and clear which gives the photograph a happy mood. There is a strong contrast between the leaf and the background because the background is a bright white colour and the leaf is green and there is a clear line where they both meet. Olby has cropped the image so not all of the leaf is visible and that the leaf is mainly taking up the image. There is a nice balance between the leaf and the background because you can clearly see both. When I look at this image it makes me feel happy and interested in why the photographer chose this set up. From this photographer I can learn how to make new ways of taking photographs such as she used a light box so I could come up with an idea similar to that like a lamp with a clear bit of glass on top which would give a different type of lighting underneath the object. Some of Olby’s work is very similar to Irvin Penn’s work as she does take some images of natural objects with a low key set up just like Penn does
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