Still life photography.
With a long weekend, and feeling the need for inspiration, I embarked on a mission to try my hand at still life photography.
The photographing of inanimate objects has a long tradition, and while it perhaps borrows a lot from still life art in general, with the arrangement of the objects being a key ingredient, in photography the lighting is of equal, sometimes greater, importance.
Not having the benefit of a studio resplendent with thousands of dollars in lights and flashes, I was forced to make do with ambient light, provided either by props in the photo (i.e. candles) or the torch light on my phone. We do try to maintain our low tech, low cost approach to the art of photography. :-)
Using long exposures, the torch allowed me to burn in light in the shadows. In some cases it required a lot of experimenting, and I started to realise taking even 8 photos over a long weekend of reasonable quality was a little ambitious. Which is why it took two long weekends.
Using the broader sense of 'Still life', I also found some pre-prepared props at a regular haunt of mine, Just Plane Interesting. Check them out some time.
One of the hardest things for me was deciding what to photograph. In this case I thought it would be fun to take the objects out of a favourite song, and turn it into a photo series.
Have a go. And please try not to burn the house down...
Capture away.
