A Comfortable Chair

The circular seat, the elliptical opening, the chrome stem, and the disc base all offered clean geometry to work with. Seen from slightly above and centred, the chair becomes less an object of utility and more a composition of curves and reflections.

This was shot on film, and that decision affects the final result. The tones fall into a gentle mid-range; the blacks aren’t aggressively deep, and the highlights aren’t forced. There is some visible grain and a bit of dust from the scan, which I chose not to remove. These imperfections remind me that photographs are physical objects before they are digital images.

The chair’s glossy surface reflects its surroundings in faint distortions. On the base, the reflections are even more pronounced, almost like a small, warped landscape. That was part of what kept me engaged while composing—the object looks simple, but it contains visual echoes of the room around it. These reflections add texture and prevent the image from becoming sterile.

Compositionally, the shot relies on symmetry, but not perfect symmetry. The chair is centred, yet the reflections shift the balance. The floorboards in the background introduce horizontal lines that contrast with the circular forms. The camera height was chosen carefully: lower would have emphasised the chair as furniture; higher would have flattened the form too much. At this angle, the curves still read as three-dimensional.

The exposure is straightforward. Soft, diffuse ambient light kept the highlights from blowing out and allowed the polish of the surface to register without harsh specular flare. Nothing dramatic—just an accurate rendering of the scene as it looked.