Personal Work: Saturday Mornings Photo Series
Inspiration can come from anywhere, and for this particular photo series it came from an image I saw while scrolling on Pinterest. The photo was of a bowl of Lucky Charms (my favorite cereal) on a pink backdrop with a charm bracelet dangling over the side of the bowl. This image immediately sparked an idea for me and I knew I needed to make my vision come to life!
I was born in '95 and have 4 older brothers. I have a lot of memories of waking up on Saturday morning, eating a bowl of my favorite cereal, and playing with the endless amount of toys that spanned across the five of us. We were a cereal household through and through, and we even had a tradition of eating a bowl of Life cereal on the first day of school. Walking down the cereal aisle of the grocery store genuinely brings me joy, and a bowl of Frosted Flakes or Fruity Pebbles puts my right back in my parents kitchen. Cereal and my childhood go hand in hand.
My vision for this series was to shoot 4 different sugary cereals that I enjoyed as a kid, all surrounded by different toys that me and my brothers played with. I wanted to use hard light on solid color backdrops to really show the texture of the cereals, and used a strobe with no diffusion to create the shadows. I ordered cereal bowls to match the backdrops and focused on styling each shot with toys of similar colors to give a monochromatic look.
Although my childhood was spent half in the 90s and half in the early 2000s, the toys I played with were from the 80s all the way through the 2000s. And while I had A LOT of dolls, I also played with Legos, Playmobils, toy cars, and many other "boy" toys. When you have older siblings you're exposed to a lot of the things they enjoyed as kids! All of the toys seen in the photos were taken from my parents house where they still have many of the things we played with as kids. This shoot made me slightly emotional as I thought about how the toys I played with at 6, 7, 8 years old are now serving as props in an image I'm taking at 28. It's hard to explain, but I loved my childhood and creating this series was a nostalgic trip down memory lane. I hope you enjoy the images as much as I do!
