Our group was focusing on the scope of Science and Technology in the Renaissance period. With the abundance of creations and major developments we got in this timeframe, it was certainly an interesting topic to recreate. Nevertheless, it was no doubt a challenge to choose a specific topic and recreate the “artifact” with the limited resources.

Initially, I thought about capturing a setup of an animal or human dissection lab. Of course, I completely changed my mind when I was reminded of the props I need for the photograph (raw meats and more.. yikes!). At the end, I decided to create a setup of a botany (plant science) lab instead.

The end result was a two-page spread with the plant study setup as well as a short writeup of ”the Study of Biology in Renaissance”. The idea was inspired by Renaissance biologist, Marcello Malpighi, in his plant organ studies.

This project was surely an great exercise to sharpen mainly my photography skills. I had a fun time sketching out the plants and selecting my props! However, it was definitely harder than I anticipated. I had a hard time arranging the scene and selecting what to include for my images to match the historical context. It took me quite a few hours select the right tools and angles in creating a strong narrative. I am pretty satisfied with the outcome and I’d rate myself 8 out of 10. I am especially with the desaturated tone I used to frame the scene. The reason for photograph’s tone adjustment is because I want to highlight the focal elements, the plant and the sketches. By eliminating all the other backdrop elements (the books, glasses and other props), the effect on the two-page spread really helped me in conveying a cohesive message across.