A Second Look from Garreth Broesche
I’ve gotten pretty used to my shooting process over the past couple of years. I love the process, I love the results, and it’s something I plan to keep doing for many years. The biggest challenge in continuing to produce still life pieces is coming up with the compositions. (Hey, if anyone reading this wants to become a “set designer” for me, I’m interested!)
So I decided to start a new series that, in some ways, cuts this Gordian knot. Instead of arranging several objects just so, why not take one interesting object and present it lovingly?
I love the idea of taking something that was never meant to be an object of art and putting it in the best light possible—literally and figuratively—with as little as possible to distract from it. So… a wrench, just hanging out in space.
It took some devising to figure out how to suspend an object long enough to make the several captures needed for the final image. My friend Kyle helped me adapt a standard mic stand and boom for the purpose, and it works beautifully. A little Photoshop magic to make the support disappear, and I’m in business.
The set up
This is just a boring old wrench I found at an estate sale. But look at it a little longer. I love its earthy colors, the rusted areas, the worn metal, and those little remnants of red paint that come alive under the light. None of those things were put there to make the wrench beautiful. Maybe the red was meant to help it be noticed while hanging in a hardward store, but otherwise everything you see is simply the accumulated traces of its life as a tool.
Old, out-of-use objects aren’t necessarily trash. Sometimes they just need someone to look at them a little longer.
-Garreth Broesche