I've always loved pop art, for it's amazing ability to take everyday items we barely even notice, and breathe new life into them. It's often only then we see them as interesting or engaging. In taking this image, I was trying to recreate that essence of what I feel makes pop art so special, while staying true to the parameters of my assignment brief. The glass milk bottle is without doubt one of the most easily recognisable shapes in modern life, and as shapes are very much what drive me as a photographer, I wanted to incorporate it into this assignment, though I wasn't sure how to go about doing so. One day while musing this problem I (perhaps subconciously) bought myself a bag of Barratt's Milk Bottles as a snack. Apart from the nice taste, what struck me was the unusual round shape of these particular Milk Bottles. Then, it hit me, these if sweets could easily fit through the neck of a milk bottle, I could fill a bottle with these sweets, which could represent milk in an unusual abstract way. I rushed back to the shop, and bought sixteen more bags of Barratt's Milk Bottles, a pint of milk in a glass bottle, and a bottle of washing up liquid, much to the bemusment of the shopkeeper. At home, I decanted the contents of the bottle, and washed it thoroughly before filling it with the sweets I had bought, up to about the level the milk had reached. It looked nice, but I still needed a background to complementthe bottle, rather than just having it "floating in space" when I took the picture. I always thought pale blue was a very "milky" sort of colour, and yet neutral, so the next day, I bought a large piece of pale blue card from WHSmith, to form a background. I paced the bottle and the card inside my light tent (the shot you see has been replicated on college grounds) and lit equally from both sides with two flourescent lamps. I wanted to create a soft look which wouldn't appear harsh or gaudy to any sort of viewer, so I used my ancient Vivitar macro lens at it's widest aperture of f/2.5 for a soft painterly look, and kept the saturation low in camera, at about the level I would set it in a portaiture situation. Post-production consisted simply of burning in the milk bottle sweets to deepen their tones slightly, and rasing the highlight levels. Since I was so happy with the outcome of this image, and the unusual nature of the subject matter, I thought it may be a good idea to make a series of three images, or triptych, from this concept. Coming up with ideas for two other glass vessels, and matching sweets, which were as easily recognisable, was difficult. One obvious choice was the ubiquotous fluted glass 'Coca-Cola' bottle, but I also wanted an unconventional choice as well. One day I was out on a photo walk I passed by a dilapidated pub, and glass was strewn all over the ground around the entrance. It was the remains of what looked like a dozen traditional-style pint glasses, known as "nonic" glasses. There is a small sweet shop in Newcastle's Grainger Market specialising in unusual types of sweet, the type you certainly wouldn't find in your local corner shop. I knew this shop would almost certainly stock cola bottles, but beer bottles? That was a different matter entirely. Amazingly though, they DID stock beer bottles, which meant my shoot could actually go ahead as planned! As with my milk bottle, I washed the cola bottle and beer glass in the dishwasher (I discovered hand washing glass leaves watermarks) and placed them near a warm radiator in order to fully dry. Several hours later, both glasses were fully dry, and I filled them with their respective sweets. While the arrangement of the cola bottles wasn't particularly important, I wanted the beer bottles to look obviously like beer in the glass, so I placed the best looking beer sweets aside until the glass was about two thirds full, and them placed them upside-down, to form a pseudo beer 'head'. I lit these two shots by the same method I used in the first picture, by placing the bottle or glass in my light tent, against a piece of colour-coordinating card, and lighting from behind with two flourescent lamps. My aim was to give each subject a rim-light. I felt this was particularly useful to give a strong distinction between subject and background, as I was using the widest aperture of my Vivitar 90mm macro lens (f2.5). However, withis lighting setup, the wider beer glass, with it's higher density of darker sweets, was more opaque, leading the front of the glass facing the camera to become underexposed. To cambatthis, I brought in a third light, highly diffused it , and placed it about three feet from the front of the glass, which solved that problem adequately. As with the image of the milk bottle, I made minor adjustments to contrast and saturation, which I felt would best suit the individual characteristics of eacg image.

March 7 Emotions all over the place, try not to cry while driving. Matt, you would have laughed at the plumbers who snaked out the basement sewer line at one of our properties yesterday. One said to the other, "What smells? did you just fart?" That joke just stinks. Mawpaw, loaning us your car for the past 6 days while the van is being fixed is bigger than a drip of generosity, it's keeping money from going down the drain. - - - - - - - - - - - March 8 Toothfairy, don't you know when you fail at your job you have to pay extra for being late! Joel, you are rich from loosing teeth. Tonight you were so excited about the new Pokemon White it was like you were speaking a foreign language. Too bad you can't swap Pokemonese for Spanish in 6th grade. - - - - - - - - - - - March 9 Dear delicious scallop potatoes that I ate for breakfast, I don't get to work you off at bootcamp tonight because Joel has a fever and we are not going to gymnastics. For once I am disappointed that I am not driving to (lowercase) "canada". Laundry, I guess I will do sit-ups when I fold you tonight. Family of five with no matching socks, sometimes it is ok to claim "sock bankruptcy" and start over. - - - - - - - - - - - March 10 Guy who paid 6 months rent in cash, you made going to the bank very interesting today. People who like stress, you should buy an apartment building. Unofficial swimming pool on our flat roof building, next week you will be convex like a double skateboard ramp... and I will take pictures of you and frame them to show where all my money has gone. Hand sanitizer, Clorox wipes, Advil, laundry soap, tissues... I buy you in bulk. Call from Stephen confirms Joel has cooties-otherwise known as STREP. (3rd case in the house this year). OCD cleaning, I have suppressed you - but today after work you need come out of hibernation. Thinking about putting the legos in the dishwasher or washing machine... any hazmat parents ever done that before? got any tips? - - - - - - - - - - - March 11 Aidan, you are my favorite nephew. ok you are my only nephew, but I like you best because when you laugh it makes everyone giggle. Tonight we celebrate your 1st birthday. I heard pawpaw is going to lower your crib because you are getting so big! Flickr account, I have posted 6,956 pictures in 5 year, but lately I have been ignoring you. Tonight I hope to get a lot of great pictures of cake and giggles…and more cake!