Post Focus: Wing Sung 601 Demonstrator
Introduction
Welcome to the first in hopefully a series of entries where I post a photo and do my best to give some insight into its creation. I’m cleverly calling the series Post Focus because who doesn’t love cheesy puns. My goal this year is to do this before I post them onto social media. It gives me a great excuse to slow down and critique my own work. This year I would really like to push myself creatively. My hope is that by making this process public I can invite you to be part of the discussion. So please feel free to leave comments and messages about this photo as I will be posting this particular image on Instagram and Reddit.
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The Pen
First up in this experiment is a photo of my Wing Sung 601 Demonstrator inked with Sailor Jentle Blue.
It's an inexpensive pen that doesn’t want to be cuddled its built to be used. The cap is quick to slide off and feels at home when posted. Once uncapped the pen transforms into a sleek streamlined form of glossy ergonomic beauty. The small steel nib is a smooth writer with good flow and reliability thanks to the hooded tapered housing. At the other end a long and sturdy button is visible through the rounded off dome of the removable end cap. This tactilely tempting “button under glass” belongs to the plunger filler and adds a mechanical aesthetic to the pen. The middle section is 37mm of uninterrupted dye candy glory. The jet like shape of the body showcases its sloshing colorful payload by making it prominent and immediate. Feeder fins, threadings and rubber seals round out the visuals by creating natural patterns of striation at the front and back. Overall the design of the Wing Sung demonstrator perfectly integrates form and functionality.
The Photo
In most cases when I am photographing a pen my composition is built around trying to get a good look at the nib. I will sacrifice showing the body and will include just enough to show how the pen transitions from body to grip section and finally the nib. But with the Wing Sung 601 I felt including the capped view of the piston filler button was as important as it was to show the tiny hooded nib. It’s a pen that has be appreciated as a whole.
The next priority was to capture how the smooth glass like plastic perfectly encapsulated and integrated into the mechanical components. This meant playing with the lights and tweaking a polarized circular filter to capture the glare without obscuring what was below. The play between glossy glares and sharp details below is both literally and figuratively mirrored by the surface of the desk. A clear piece of acrylic sheet sits above the walnut colored wood adding highlights, reflections and light noise to the wood grain.
Lastly I wanted the image to be colorful. The addition of water droplets with watercolor pigments is a call back to the immediacy that I felt with the ink in the pen. They look like little pockets of color and I like all cool effects they produced like the smashed reflected colors below the nib. The droplets also had the added benefit of helping filling in the 5:4 Instagram ratio.
It was a fun image to construct and hopefully I was able to balance out the elements. But please let me know what you think. Find it on Instagram or Reddit and share your comments.
