Vincent Van Gogh « Carissa Snedeker Photography

The National Gallery of Art (link) has two buildings and the Sculpture Garden. I only visited the West Building and barely scratched the surface. An hour-and-a-half one afternoon (after the Air and Space Museum) and two hours on our last day in town – – three-and-a-half hours total – – just wasn’t enough. (This does not include the National Portrait Gallery, which I have yet to set foot in.)

Just a few shots . . .

Yes, I am fascinated by this lady.

So many pieces just took my breath away, and yes, I’ll admit to getting choked up when seeing a “real-life” Monet for the first time.

And this self-portrait of Vincent Van Gogh? I stood in front of it for the longest time and just stared. And yes, I cried. Beautiful.

As mentioned in my previous post, our next lighting assignment is to recreate an Old Master’s still life. I picked Vincent Van Gogh’s “Still Life with Earthenware and Bottles.” Why, you ask? No fruit and no greenery (difficult to get at this time of year); not to mention that Van Gogh’s painting had items that bore some resemblance to items I actually had around the house.

The bottles were reasonably easy as we are a wine drinking household. I had a bowl similar to the one on the right, a clay vase like the one in the background and a small dutch oven similar to the one in the center. And who doesn’t have a wooden spoon? My only difficulty prop-wise was the two small white cups at the left, so I had to improvise. Challenges: my wine bottles are taller than those above, and my dutch oven is a bit smaller and a different color. No handles on my vase. (Yes, our names on it – as well as our wedding date – it was a gift from a friend when we got married).

My set up was a bit more squished than the one above as I shot it on two wooden t.v. trays.

Mostly I was looking to repeat the set up and the lighting. And the lighting was definitely a challenge. I shot many, many photos. Here’s the one that comes as close as I could get at this point.

I’m posting the photograph, followed by the photograph with a dry brush filter.