Clamshell Canvas Print

The journey to get this photo was a whole lot of steps, but it ended up as one of my favorite prints I’ve ever made. To begin with, I found this cool silver clamshell dish at a thrift shop. When I got an assignment to photograph any object for my independent study photography class, I knew I wanted to use this shell. Taking inspiration from the item, I painted a background inspired by the ocean and then photographed it so I could bring it into Photoshop, increase the dimensions and print it on a large format printer. I used this as a backdrop for the photo shoot.

Once everything was set up, I spent a lot of time in the photography studio playing around with different lighting and color gels. This photo was taken with a background light with a blue gel, and a primary light with a magenta gel and a snoot to concentrate the color inside the shell. After a long shoot, I sorted through the many photos to narrow down the best ones to edit. I settled on this one as my favorite and printed it, trimmed it, and mounted it on a canvas.