More recently the work of René Riis has come to light, notably with his place in the Hasselblad masters, under the theme of food, with his clinical series depicting food undergoing surgical-type procedures.
I feel this idea, in terms of aesthetic approach could easily be manipulated into a style that would suit the themes Sam wishes to communicate in his work. This visual style has heavy links with still life and macro photography, which may not be the best style to adopt in terms of highlighting waste, as this is an idea more commonly and succesfully communicated though vastness, images that have a kind of endless repetition to them that the eye and mind struggle to comprehend.
Someone that links to this idea of mass and vastness would, of course, be Andres Gursky, with his images of landfills that boggle the eye. His images from this series all use a kind of visual seizure-style to overwhelm the viewer as to the immensity of the actuality his images are representing.
Chris Jordan is another artist I would look into for his body of work 'Midway: A Message from the Gyre', where he documented baby albatros's who have been killed from being fed plastics and other rubbish, collected by their unwitting parents from the Pacific Trash Gyre. The idea of this waste then being mistaken for food could be interesting to look into, as it could be a counter argument to the idea of food being mistaken as waste. His style delivers an idea of both vulgarity through content, whilst juxtaposing this with a soft aesthetic style, through the use of limited colour palettes and vast tonal ranges.
What visual tools would you use to represent the concept (what would the viewer encounter in your image)?
I would incorporate the use of repetition, whether the style is that of landscape or macro, to connote the sense of immenseness in terms of our problem with wasting food. If more landscape style images were to be used, then I would wholly encourage the use of a large format camera, as the larger film plane allows for far greater amounts of detail, tonal separation and hierarchy to be achieved.
What would the visual elements of your image be (composition, objects/subjects within the pictorial frame)?
I would look into carefully composing singular elements into the frame of an image, with the intention to print them larger than real life, if I were running with the macro idea. With the landscape idea I would be tempted to very sparingly include horizons in my image, opting to fill 90% of the frame with repetitive mass, rather than sky etc.
What would be your visual choices in the images (focus, distance, lighting, camera position etc)?
In either image styles I would opt to use a very great depth of field, with very small apertures allowing for maximum sharpness and clarity throughout the focal range of the image. This would be harder to achieve with the macro, due to the nature of close focusing, but entirely possible through the use of studio lighting and long exposures.
I have found that in still life images, especially more close up images, the use of acutely angled lighitng works well to accentuate the shape and form of the subject being photographed. Karl Blossfeldt is one of my leading inspirations in terms of this, creating perfect documents of natural forms that interested him, with clinical precision. This may be another good reference point for Sams visual choices, in terms of both lighting and depth of field.
What practical experimentation would you undertake to visually refine the concept?
I would decide on the style of objects or subjects to be photographed and begin shooting in either 35mm or medium format asap. I, personally, have always found it very fruitful to take a Mamiya 7 to my intended location and shoot off a roll, experimenting with angles and perspective, whilst simultaneously testing the light and scouting locations to shoot and/or avoid. With studio tests, even just setting up a single light and a Horseman can really help in the decision making process, allowing you to see the frame as it would appear in the final image and allowing you to use this to decide upon lighting (simply by moving the light with the modelling lamp on). The sooner one begins to experiment and test, the more likely you are of achieving a far stronger outcome (and it gains points in the time management section too!).
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