Pepper number 30. Plane number 3.

I have always enjoyed small 'still life' projects and like the idea of having total control over a subject, as a opposed to waiting for the light to change and fending off wild animals.
I also like making things and messing with a sense of scale.

 Paper Jet 2018

When trying to choose a paper plane to photograph, I was reminded of Edward Weston and his quest for the perfect Pepper.
I made 10 paper planes all different shapes and sizes. It wasn't about which plane flew the furthest (although this one did), or which was the hardest one to make (this one was easy). It was about which one made the best image. I just love the simplicity of a simple jet style pattern and the way the folds catch the light.
Yes its just a paper plane, or a Pepper, but there's always more to it than meets the eye..

Pepper #30

It was a bright idea, a perfect relief for the pepper and adding reflecting light to important contours. I still had the pepper which caused me a week’s work, I had decided I could go no further with it, yet something kept me from taking it to the kitchen, the end of all good peppers. I placed it in the funnel, focused with the Zeiss, and knowing just the viewpoint, recognizing a perfect light, made an exposure of six minutes, with but a few moments’ preliminary work, the real preliminary was on in hours passed. I have a great negative, ‒ by far the best!
It is a classic, completely satisfying, ‒ a pepper ‒ but more than a pepper; abstract, in that it is completely outside subject matter. It has no psychological attributes, no human emotions are aroused: this new pepper takes one beyond the world we know in the conscious mind. Edward Weston