Still Life with Vanessa

This is a photograph I took a few months ago, documenting a black & white film project I was working on (there are so many processes that can go wrong with film processing, I am always paranoid that all evidence will be lost so tend to shoot on multiple media!). Imitating the dramatic lighting aesthetic of Caravaggio's still lifes and tableaus, I used a single Dido light to create the dramatic shadows. However, when I finally printed the photograph in the dark room I found that although the composition, lighting and shadows evoked the desired period, the loss of colour - of the citrus fruits emerging from a black abyss - was a little bit of a shame. Although there are downsides to this digital image - such as the un-forgiving hyper-real detail of the lemon peel that I struggled to peel off with artistic accuracy - there are moments that I revel in, such as the pearl-like halo of the oyster shell on the far right, and the tiny pinpricks of light that glisten on the globe of each plastic grape...