Still Life Photography

Last year in my digital pictures class, we did a Still Life Photography unit. I did not to well in that unit. We had to do a bunch of still like pictures at school, and I had zero motivation so my pictures weren’t that interesting. My friend who was also in my digital pictures class did very well in this unit. She took her camera home and did all of her still life pictures at home. They turned out very nicely. So I decided that I would give still life photography another chance.

I find still life photography can be somewhat difficult and can also be somewhat frustrating at times. I made sure to do as much research as possible on this type of photography because I had difficulty with it last year. I am actually very happy with how my still life pictures turned out. I’m going to talk about 2 of my still life pictures and how I took them. But first, here are some main pointers that helped me.

Still Life Photography Tips

- Try setting your still life scene in front or by a window. I would suggest to set up near a window that you can control how much light is coming in. On one of my still life attempts I tried taking a picture of a red flower that I had set up on a purple sheet to use as my backdrop in my sunroom because there is a lot of natural light in that room. But it was actually too much light, so my  pictures that I took of the red flowers, had all these bad glares on them and I couldn’t figure out how to get rid of them. On another one of my still life attempts I took a picture of a snowman set up on a light blue pillow case as my backdrop. I set the snowman and the pillow case in front of one window in my living room. I was able to control how much light was coming in and I got a very nice picture from it. I made a comparison of the two pictures below. 

- Avoid reflective objects

- have good backdrops, nice and simple. I used pillowcases and bed sheets for some of my backdrops. They worked out really well.

-  Consider rule of thirds. I usually think of the rule of thirds when editing my pictures.

- Use a tripod to make sure your camera is stable.

- Try taking still life pictures in the dark using flash, you can get a lot of shots for doing that.

I googled searched 'still life tips for beginners' and found a lot of good advice, but the thing I found frustrating was they would have all these examples of back drops and lighting tools that you could use, but they were all very un practical and would cost a lot of money to buy or make. So I had to figure out a way to set up my camera, backdrops, and still life objects by myself. It turned out to be really easy, so i thought i would share how i took some of my pictures. 

Example 1:

For the snowman picture I was talking about earlier, I used a light blue pillowcase, a snowman figurine, magazines, and the timer on my camera. I laid the pillowcase on the ground and put the snowman on the pillowcase. I placed magazines in front of the pillowcase and placed my camera on the magazines. I did this because I needed my camera to be ground level, but not exactly on the ground. A tripod would have been up to high to get the particular angle I was looking for, so I just set up enough magazines so that my camera would be level with the snowman. I set my cameras timer for 10 seconds. Then made sure the picture was in focus and set off the timer. I then made sure my body was out of the way of the camera and lifted up the back part of the pillowcase so that there would be a backdrop for my snowman. It only took me 2 tries to get what I was aiming for! If you want to try something like this and don’t have a timer on your camera, just get someone to lift up the pillowcase for you while you take the picture.

Example 2: 

For the picturesof books I used a purple sheet, 2 chairs, 2 ropes and 4 books. I put the 2 chairs parallel to each other and hung the sheet in between them. I tied both of the sheet ends with the rope on the two chairs so that the sheet would hang down. I then placed the books on the purple sheet. I laid down on my stomach so that I would be eye level with the books. I took several shots of the books using different angles. That’s another thing that I learned about still life pictures. You should never take pictures in spot. You have to make sure that you move around to get different types of angles so that you don’t have several pictures of the same shot. I took this picture in my hall way because my hall way was dark which and allowed me to try to take still life picture in the dark using my flash. I was really happy with my results.

Websites I used: 

http://photography.tutsplus.com/tutorials/10-tips-to-get-started-with-still-life-photography--photo-8278
http://digital-photography-school.com/5-still-life-lighting-tips-for-beginners
http://oneslidephotography.com/snap/still-life-photography-tutorial/