Old medicine bottles
old medicine by richard seah
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These old medicine bottles belong to a doctor friend of mine, Ian Lee.
Dr Lee had asked me to build a website for him, inclusive of photography, and he more or less gave me a free hand to design the website as I please.
I really enjoyed the entire process and his website remains one of my favourite in terms of design. It shows how even a medical doctor's website can be artistic.
To view Dr Lee's website, click here.
I was especially delighted when, during the photography session, Dr Lee took out his collection of antique medicine bottles. I looked around his office and knew exactly where to shoot them, by the window sill.
I thought the slightly stained (dirty) glass window pane – Dr Lee's office is on a high floor and it's not his job to clean the windows – would provide a nice backdrop to the even more stained old medicine bottles. The antique glass bottles and the window pane were similar, yet had sufficient contrast.
Outside, the sky was overcast, which suited the situation just fine, because the view of houses in the distances would be muted and subdued.
This is a simple, stright forward picture. The bottles were arranged simply, in a straight row. Yet the final result was rather pleasing.
It again reinforces my stand that it is the eye and the imagination of the photographer that is more important than photographic techniques, such as the use of sophisticated studio lighting equipment.
I do not have experience with studio lighting equipment, but can imagine that, if I had shot these old medicine bottles in a studio with special lighting, the resulting picture of old bottles would be more technically brilliant, but would lack the mood conveyed by this photograph above.
I have had minor successes with this photograph. I submitted it for the qualifying round of a photography contest last year by the perfume company, Issey Miyake. The organiser wanted examples of contestants' still life shots, so I sent this together with another still life of vitamin pills in a carrot-shaped dish. You can view the other photograph at the bottom of my Picture of Carrots / Picture of Vegetables page.
Well, that got me through the qualifying rounds but I did not make it to the finals. I guess my concepts were a bit way out. I shot the perfume bottle against children playing by a fountain (to convey the theme of joy) and set against a bra and panty (to convey the idea of bare essentials).
If this can be considered another measure of success, I noticed recently that my picture of old medicine bottles has also been lifted by a blogger who is keen on photography.
Wendcat wrote: Since i started blogging my camera has been used more and more but unfortunatly my photographic skills are slow in developing (no pun intended).
A bit further down the screen, she showed my picture of old medicine bottles and added: This is what i want to acheive....Found on a great website.
While I don't encourage fellow internet users to lift my pictures, I must thank Wendcat for the compliment and for even channelling traffic to this website. So thanks, Wendcat.
This picture of old medicine bottles is available for sale. Larger prints come in very limited editions, but smaller 5R and 8R prints are made very affordable to encourage the collection of fine art photographs by those with limited budgets.
All prints, including the affordable 5R and 8R prints, are signed by me, Richard Seah.
Click here to view other fine art photographs for sale.
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