Frui's Photography Holidays, Cooking Holidays, Painting Holidays

March Photo Project – ‘Still Life’

Theme: ‘Still Life’
What to enter: 1 photograph
Dead Line: 5th April 2009
Prize: A beautiful fine art print of your still life image!
Open to: All those on the Frui email list
How to enter: email your image to henry@frui.co.uk (max file size of 2mgb please)

Things to think about:

Composition – Still life is all about the arrangements of objects in relation to each other. When you set up your still life you need to carefully consider how the object or objects are positioned and from which angle you photograph them from. Really look hard at what you are photographing. For instance, if you were photographing a mug, don’t see it as a mug, try to look at it as an abstract sculptural object. Notice how light falls on its surfaces, look at it as a 3 dimensional ‘thing’ in space or on a surface.

Lighting – Lighting is so, so, so important when it comes to still life, as it directly effects the mood and atmosphere of the image; do you want to use a soft light that accentuates curves and creates a range of tones in the image or do you want to use a harsh light that can abstract familiar objects and create striking shadows…? Natural light or artificial and what direction should the light be coming from…? All these things fundamentally change the image. For this project, it would be a good idea to turn off your on camera flash, as this is never flattering for still life.

Subject matter – This is where you should try to get really conceptual and make your image your own. Still life does not only have to be images of bowls of fruit or flowers, although there’s nothing wrong with that! You can arrange objects to create meaning or striking juxtapositions. Be controversial if you want to be!

Watch your shutter speed – you might find that if shooting inside, your shutter speed will get quite slow resulting in camera shake. Rather than increasing your ISO, which will degrade the image, use a tripod or something to steady your camera.

Depth of field (DoP) – do you want your image to have a shallow DoP or deep DoP. Again, this will fundamentally alter the mood and reading of the image. If you are using a shallow DoP, which part of the image do you want to focus on…?

Here are some still life examples to research further, which might give you some inspiration: