Still Life Photography

Earlier this winter, my friend Bob Bear decided to further sharpen his photography skills. He acquired a good book, and began working his way through it. Each section concludes with a photo assignment. Bob enlisted some friends in his endeavour and we joined him in completing the assignments. It has proven to be a great success, causing us to undertake new challenges, break our normal routines, leave our comfort zones and test our creativity. Oh yes, we’re having a lot of fun with it as well.

Following each assignment we exchange the finished pictures, discuss and critique them and learn from one another’s experiences.

Today, I’m sharing some photographs from one of our assignments, Still Life Photography.

In a nutshell, a still life is a work of art that focuses on inanimate subjects. That can include both manmade objects (such as vases, items of clothing, and consumer products) and natural objects (like plants, food, rocks, and shells).

The major advantage offered by still life is the freedom to arrange the objects any way you want. A lot of emphasis is put on the arrangement of the items, the lighting, and the framing.

Here is my first photograph for today. This is a second attempt at a picture I did last spring, passing time during our 14 days of “Self Isolation”. To refract the light to best effect, I tried different window locations to find the best sunlight. Alas, the sunlight coming through our windows in December is not as good as what we had in March. Consequently the colours of the apple are a little muted in this photograph, entitled “La Pomme Prismatique”. The Christmas gift was not so much an artistic element of the picture, it’s main purpose was to elevate the glass apple to where it was better exposed to the sunlight.

Passing through our mudroom en route to the garage, I realized that much of our winter outerwear had been displaced by a colourful collection of PPE. I added a little Christmas cheer to the composition and aptly titled it “Pandemic Christmas”. 

This is a re-make of one I did several years ago for the cover of a photo book. It’s a simulated locker room scene. It honours the tired, sweaty, impatient golfer en route to the shower. It shows the golf shirt tossed onto the floor, followed by the contents of his/her pockets strewn haphazardly on top of it. The simulation was conducted on a hallway floor, shot in colour then converted to a dark and gritty black and white to symbolize the post-golf, pre-beer mood of the golfer.

This photograph is “Tin Soldier”  who emerges every year at this time to spur our Christmas spirit. I positioned the fellow close to the lens and further from the tree to get the depth-of-field needed to create the orbs of light in the background.

The last one is entitled “All Nighter”. Had I come up with the title before taking the picture, I would have set the clock to a more convincing hour, say 3:00 am. I shut down all the lights in the area and illuminated the subject from the right with a single, low wattage bulb and a warm coloured shade. This gave me the shadows and warm tones I was seeking.

This was a very good experience. What I particularly enjoyed was the staging of articles in the scenes to create a interesting picture. I not only had to take the picture, I had to create the scene to be photographed and the lighting to show it to best advantage. There is room for experimentation and I did take several shots of each before achieving a favourite. It was surprising how much the picture changed by rearranging the composite articles and adjusting the light. I learned a lot.