How I Create Images for the Washing Line Project
What began as a light-hearted take on photographing food has turned into an on-going project, something I never contemplated doing.. Images posted to various Facebook Groups and Instagram have garnered many positive comments; to which I am amazed. I certainly didn’t think the images would be so popular. The comments are always positive, picking up on the humour and the whimsicality, which is both encouraging and surprising. One Facebook group I belong to, an RPS closed group, even picked one as their banner image. Which is quite an honour.
I’ve also received questions on how they are constructed.
Each image is a composite, combining the food hung on a washing line (or rather a piece of string) in my little studio. The food is always real and 90% of the time is later eaten, or is just the leftovers of that day’s dinner.
Despite appearances, the most difficult food, so far, was not the fried egg. That, just held in place on the mini frying pan like magic. Macarons was the most frustrating and difficult to shoot. The mess was unreal as the little blighters refused to hold together in the peg. I almost gave up and threw the whole lot in the bin…
They are photographed against an off white wall. In photoshop these are combined with images I have taken of clouds, sometimes one, sometimes two or three overlaying each other. A further l layer is added - one or more textures to give a painterly feel using the Adobe Texture Pro panel. I have accumulated a large library of textures some I’ve taken others from various free internet sources such as CoffeeShop.
(Talking of textures - I am tempted by the Infinite Texture Panel but it is priced outside my comfort zone at nearly £200. Also, the panel doesn’t allow you to add your own textures.)
Further work adds vignetting, colour changes via LUT profiles in Camera Raw, and little details perhaps not noticed (such as a drop shadow on the brick wall in Crisps shown below. Incidentally, the wall is taken from the image of my Three Word Gallery that I had running for a couple of weeks…. (a great idea that didn’t seem to get much traction, sadly, even from the originator).
The full line up of images can be seen in the gallery. Not all have been posted to Facebook or Instagram.
Washing Line Project - Crisps