This short project was to toy around with combining the abstract and the unsettling, the vibrant and the creepy. I was given the task only to photograph a colored object. To start this project, I grabbed a strange, lime-green colored object. Not entirely sure what it was, but the vibrant color drew me in. The other side was just black. I enjoyed this strong contrast. A dark, ominous color put against a bright and vibrant color in one unified object. I found that to be interesting, but when I started photographing it, I couldn’t push it much further. It already did all it needed to. But I so enjoyed the contrast of joyful versus creepy.  So I started to wonder what else I could do that could have a similar juxtaposition.

 

My two roommates at the time of making these images are animal biology students. For one of their classes, they were required to catch and preserve 40 specific insects and arachnids. With my growing interest in all wildlife, I took advantage of this situation and borrowed some of their “creepy crawlies” to test out my own direction in a vibrant vs creepy. I even helped catch a few of the spiders, including the Huntsman spider in the last image.

 

The title I chose for this short series is based of the childish term for bugs of all kinds, "creepy crawlies." I wanted to create images that had the child toy-like color blocking and basic shapes and off set it with something that many people have a fear of: spiders and other bugs with "too many legs" as a friend put it. I really enjoyed putting these two things in contrast with one another, and may even continue to make a larger series of this. This series is a clear combination in my strong interest in wildlife as well as my curiosity for the concept of fear.