Personal Background
Arky studied photography at the Art center College of design and later the Rochester Institute of Technology. Arky has been teaching from 2201 to this day at the International Center for Photography. The small window where Akry isn't composing photos for companies he is finding other inspiration in Brooklyn with his wife and two kids. Arky is NYC based and a award winning photographer. Some of is clients include American Express, AT&T, Forbes Magazine and the New York Times.
Style
Although Arky does say photography is a calling to him, it is a serious job that companies hire him for. "Not jusy an artist for art's sake." Arky is widely known for how striking his still lifes, but hired by businesses for his thorough understanding of how images will be used in the marketing world. Arky likes to use plain white backgrounds so the focus of the photo is entirely on the subject of the photo. This technique is specifically great for marketing.
Philosophy
Being that Arkys business revolves around businesses he doesn't have much idea behind his compositions. Because he does advertisements and stuff around that area, Arky creates roughly what the people want him to create. When taking personal photos he claims to see photography as a kind of visual language. He loves to create clean, crisp photos so people can get straight to the point of his work. He takes much pride in teaching at his schools because how much he loves photography and wants to teach younger people.
Influences
Arky has proven to inspire me in a very weird and different way. Arky doesn't actually inspire me by his artistic values, I like him because he doesn't have to use much creativity which I don't have. I also like how there's a business side to Arky instead of all art. To be featured in magazines such as Forbes and NYT would get you out to the world way more then just doing what interests you. Food photography is also something that interest me because you can eat it after!
In this untitled photo by Arky, I tried to recreate the overall look. I incorporated the spoon, plate and the green background. The one thing that is noticabley different is the fruits and foods are not the same. Because I didn't have the exact same material as Arky, I improvised to some similar foods so the picture still rolls nice.
On this set of photos, I focused less on trying to create the exact same thing, and directed by attention to the marketing side of Arky. In some photos Arky will include other things that go with the product to take some focus off it and give people a more broad idea of why they should buy it. I could have done a straight shot of a bottle, but decided to give in a twist with some of Arky's techniques in mind.
Here with Arky's photos he is advertising Sprite by using two bottles while you can still red the label right across. I tried to recreate this same idea with the Perrier where you could read it straight across although it proved to be very difficult because I did not have a large enough background to do it. I decided to just zoom in and capture the photo.
Sources
https://www.arky.com/food-drink
https://www.icp.org/users/david-arky]
https://www.asmp.org/portfolio/david-arky/
https://www.icp.org/users/david-arky]
https://www.asmp.org/portfolio/david-arky/