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Photography, Text and Video by Fangyi “Frank” Fan, Copyright 2018
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Colors of Bottles
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In college, alcohol has a big presence in many students’ life. Just as the variety of alcohol, liquor bottles usually are made available in different colors, shapes and styles, which do not get equal recognition compared to the liquid inside. For me, they seem like the perfect still objects for this series of still lifes.
I found these bottles in my friend’s apartment. They were put on the top of a shelf , covered by dust. My friend told me that they have been there for quite a long time and if I wanted I could just take them with me. He apparently felt that those bottles became useless once the drinking is done. However, after I stared at the bottles, the different forms of liquor bottles fascinated me. The transparent nature of the colorful glass as well as the creative labels all make these bottles like art pieces. All eight pictures could be broken down into two categories: full bottles and details on a bottle. For the category of full bottles, I tried different lighting techniques to display the full beauty of the objects. In four of them, I put an Iphone underneath the bottle and used the flashlight app to light up the bottle from underneath. This extra addition of light source, though inducing some noise at some parts, added some flavor to the picture. In the second category of the shooting, I focused on the labels of the liquor bottles. By adjusting f stops, I achieved the desired depth of field in shooting those micro details with excellent clarity.
The more I worked with those empty bottles, the more I pondered what alcohol brought to students at Penn. A way to alleviate stress? A tool to escape reality? Or is it just a social norm that most people tend to conform to? The answer lies in the emptiness of those bottles.
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About The Author: Fangyi “Frank” Fan is a Senior enrolled in the School of Engineering, University of Pennsylvania, Class of 2018. To access additional articles by Fangyi “Frank” Fan, click here: https://tonywardstudio.com/blog/fangyi-frank-fan-meaning-of-makeup/