A Complete Pair

Things That Hurt When You Tread on Them

At the start of the year, I tentatively declared my photography project, A Strange Pair, finished. There was still one more photo I wanted to take for it, but I'd been unable to get my hands on one of the objects I wanted for it, and had reached my goal of 21 photos.

So I called it finished and forgot about it.

Sometimes forgetting about things is all you need for serendipity to throw what you want into your path, because whilst volunteering the other day, I came across a little Lego kit.
It had one brick of the size I wanted.
And it was the colour I wanted, too.

So at long last, I was able to take the stupid photo: Things That Hurt When You Tread on Them.

This project is finally complete! 

There are now 22 photos altogether, each one featuring two objects paired for unconventional reasons. This is based on information I found in a book on psychology, relating to the way a group of schizophrenics categorised objects (see my post Stop! for more information).
I found this utterly fascinating, so explored the idea of unconventional categories through this project. Thinking outside of the box for pairs/categorisations was as challenging as finding that damn Lego block...

And now it's done!
This counts towards goal 12: Complete 3 photography projects, along with my still in-progress project, State of Mind.
One down, one and a half to go!

See all photos taken for A Strange Pair here.

A Strange Pair: Project Update

Things That People Look Through

I realised it's been some time since I last posted any photos from my project, A Strange Pair.

As a memory refresher, this project is based on information found in a psychology book, relating to the way some schizophrenics categorise objects (see my post, Stop!, for more details).

Things That Cut

Things That Hold Other Things Together

Things That Should Not Be Jammed Into An Electrical Socket

A summary of the project, as I wrote in my first post about it, is:

A Stange Pair is an exploration of the relationships between everyday objects.

Which sounds pretty fancy but is basically me popping various objects and a white background, and snapping pictures, having spent hours trying to come up with unconventional yet logical reasons for those objects to be paired together!

Stop!

Things That Stop The Flow

After a few weeks of brainlessness, I'm finally participating in the theme challenge at Delightful Aberrations!
This week, one of the prompts was stop.
I worked this into my project, A Strange Pair, which I originally started partly for the challenge and partly for goal #12 (Complete 3 photography projects).

I've been continuing the project, and had planned to post all the images together when I'd finished it, but today I got my hands on the items to take the image above, which is a pairing that comes directly from Daniel Nettle's book, Strong Imagination: Madness, Creativity and Human Nature:

"When asked to sort pictures of objects into classes, schizophrenics often depart from those categories most intuitively accessible to the rest of us, such as 'tools' or 'fruit'. One subject put together a bath plug, a padlock, and a circle of red paper 'because all three stop flows or processes'."

- Nettle, D. (2001). Strong Imagination: Madness, Creativity and Human Nature.
Oxford University Press, Oxford

Since 'stop' was one of the prompts for this week's challenge, it seemed the obvious choice! It works for the prompt, and works for my project, too!

I still have more ideas for A Strange Pair which I haven't photographed yet. It's a real exercise of the mind to figure out these pairings, without them being too obvious or typical!

A Strange Pair

Things That Grasp

One of the prompts for this week's photography & art challenge on Delightful Aberrations was pair.

A while ago, I read something in a book about how, when a number of people with schizophrenia were asked to group items together, their logic in categorisation differed to those the average non-schizophrenic would find most obvious. I don't remember many of the details but I think it was in Daniel Nettle's Strong Imagination, which I read two years ago (the book explored the connection between creativity and mental illness).

Things That Make Lines

Inspired by this, and remembering that the logic of those groupings actually did make sense, I sought out to make some unconventional 'pairs' of objects and photograph them for this week's challenge, the image titles being the object categories.

This was quite a challenge as I really had to stop and think about the purpose of an object, and consider what other objects serve the same purpose, but perhaps in a different way.

Things That Tell You Where You Are

My method of photography this time around was basically a piece of A3 white paper as a background, with a desk light slightly above (because it's winter, and the sun is nonexistent).
The light meant there was a bit of a colour cast on the images, but I fixed that with Photoshop, and then adjusted the levels and so on to make the photos more stark and contrasty.

Things That Add Colour

To summarise this week's mini-project (because that's what it was) into more arty-farty terms--

A Strange Pair is an exploration of the relationships between everyday objects.

Thinking up combinations for this was actually pretty fun, so I may continue this as a proper project at some point (and find a better way of photographing everything!) which will count towards another of my goals on The List.


You can see images from previous week's participation on my shiny new delightful aberrations tag!