Still life photography
Hello all! Welcome to Still Life Photography. Still life photography begins with a thought or vision in your head. The photographer not only takes the photograph, but completely creates it from the ground up: the background, setting, lighting, composition of the inanimate object, the mood or overall tone of the image.
life photographers take pictures of objects that don't move, including inanimate objects and life forms, such as flowers and food. Students will receive hands-on experience with cameras and photography equipment
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What you will need for Still-Life Tabletop Photography.:
1. Medium Format Camera and a 'macro' lens (close focusing). Better still a 5x4inch. View camera, which has tilt and swing front and rear panels for ease of focusing.
Did you know that only one in fifteen NEW cameras sold to day, are film cameras, this means there are great bargains to be had in the use film camera market, take advantage of that right now.
2. Soft Box Attachment.
3. Tripod, a good solid one.
4. Lighting Stands, you will need two or three.
5. White Card as reflectors or as a background, size 1mtr.x70cm. from your art shop, get three.
6. Background. muslin or material, off white or neutral in color.
7. Low table about 2ftx2ft. 18 inches high.
8. Light Meter for flash exposures.
More restrictive, however, is the lighting. If the sun is at a particular angle and the image looks best from a particular position, you just have to shoot from there. You come back at another time when the sun has moved. But then the quality of the light would also have changed. It may become better, it may become worse!
Unless the object is really very special, I would not make another trip just to photograph it. So far, I have yet to find an object worth that return trip.
What I like about shooting candid still life pictures is that it trains the eye to see – and the mind to recognise potential.
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Another very ordinary object that caught my eye was this old, rusty hook, and the circular path it traced. It was only after I took the picture that I noticed there was nothing for the hook to hook on to. The hook was, literally, in the middle of nowhere!
While still life pictures such as this depict very ordinary objects, often it is the colors and textures of the background that make the pictures special. And, it is usually in back alleys that one usually finds such rich colors and textures. While on this subject, let me tell you about "the one that got away…”
I have a friend whose office faces a back alley (at Bali Lane, near Beach Road) and everytime I used his toilet, I would look out at this really beautiful old wall, green, black and shades of grey. And I kept telling myself that I must go back one day with a camera to take a picture of the wall.
Before I could do so, the wall was hacked off and a new coat of plaster and paint was applied over it. Oh well… The next time you see a nice scene, don't wait too long to take a picture of it.
Back to taking still life pictures of Little India... I had gone there one Sunday in October 2004. It took me a while to recall why I did it, apart from the fact that I was free that morning. Then I remembered it was because I had seen some of my friend's photographs during the week, and I felt inspired.
Because I had not done this in a very long time, I ended up trying too hard and wasted a lot of shots. I shot four rolls of film – that's nearly 150 pictures – out of which one entire roll did not produce a single picture worthy of showing.
Such photographs may be technically brilliant and impressive at first glance. They may be perfect for advertisements. But I find that they tend to lack life and soul; they have a certain aura of artificiality.
That picture, although not immediately striking, is interesting because it tells a story – of migrants from India coming to Singapore. To me, that is very much a picture of Little India.
I also took some abstract art photographs during that Little India walkabout.
So despite the waste of film, I was glad I did it. Walking around with an open mind – and open eyes – produced a few pictures of subjects that I would not have thought of.
I hope this inspires you to go wandering around some back alleys. Just do it in broad daylight
It's not that they aren't “artistic”. In fact, one has to be highly creative and skilled – a true master of the art of photography – to produce brilliant commercial photographs.
It is certainly not an easy task to make everyday objects look so attractive that people want to buy them.
These photographs represent my occasional personal work exploring everyday things. They follow my moods. Although all are carefully lit with studio lighting, the photographic techniques are varied. Some are shot simply with 35mm polaroid slide film while others are produced slowly using large format equipment.
The still life is a wonderful way to improve and tune your vision. You don't need to leave the house or travel to any distant place, it requires no interaction with people, and you can take your time with the subject. On the other hand, everyday objects, by their very nature, hide their beauty. Although we see them every day, we rarely look closely or examine them in any creative way.
Photography Secrets - in the Studio, with help shooting Fashion Models, Glamour, Portrait, Still-Life, Black-and-white and Digital PHOTOGRAPHY, Photography lighting, Family portrait, Celebrity photo, or maybe you just want to take grate pictures of the Kids, were here to help!
