If someone had told me that a refrigerator could be seen as Darth Vader, I never would have believed them. But that’s exactly what happened after I captured this seemingly ordinary appliance shot.
It wasn’t until I moved the light to the other side (coming from the dining room instead of inside the kitchen) that the light got moody.
I liked what I saw and it immediately transformed the refrigerator into something that was now… interesting. It felt dark and mysterious… and even a bit sinister.
In trying to find a unique crop (one you don’t see everyday), I zoomed in really tight.
I stared at it for while… because there was something holding my attention but I couldn’t figure out what.
After a minute or two I realized something.
The image was no longer about the refrigerator. Instead, it was about the handles, and more specifically, the handles on the refrigerator in comparison to the doorknob on the pantry door.
There seemed to be a relationship there.
I stared at it some more and noticed…
The dark shadowed line down the middle. It looked to me like a line of demarcation… one that separated two worlds.
This was getting interesting. I studied it more and saw…
- Dark vs. light
- Metal vs. wood
- High tech vs. low tech
- The modern world vs. the natural world
- Oppression vs. the oppressed
- The Empire vs. the Rebel Alliance
- Darth Vader vs. Luke Skywalker
I realized this image was telling a story and a rather dramatic one at that with the long sleek handles looming over the singular doorknob.
This was a revelation for me because I always believed one had to use props or people in an image to convey a story.
This story, however, was the result of a simple crop.
I never would have discovered this had I stuck with the conventional way of doing things. You’re not supposed to zoom in this close when shooting a refrigerator and then only show half of it, sharing the other half with a plain wooden pantry door.
But yet… this led to something quite unexpected.
I probably wouldn’t turn this image in to an interior designer or appliance manufacturer. I’d send them the wider shot. I’m sure they would appreciate that more than my off-road experiment with cropping.
And that’s okay, I understand.
This other shot was for me, a result of experimenting, playing, and approaching things in a more unconventional manner… and it taught me something.
Doing things the “wrong way” can sometimes lead to something completely unexpected.
This was a break-through shoot for me as far as the creative process goes and venturing off the path of a known outcome.
Every so often a photographer will have one of these shoots that nudges their creativity a bit beyond what they didn’t know even existed.
Darth Vader as a refrigerator… who knew?