Have you ever taken a still life photograph? What did you learn from it? I am not good at it yet, but it is my favourite genre of photography. I like the idea of trying to execute a concept, telling a story with visual grammar and narrative, but there are many factors that can ruin a still life photograph. Pic related needed better composition, angling, leading lines, better props, a better background (preferably with a backdrop because the white wall does not add much), and maybe a better table. It was fun nonetheless, and I think I learned something during the shoot because I tried so many arrangements under a time constraint and learned about workflow.
>>4496665Yeah. Spending almost a year at this point taking essentially only egg based still lifes has been an excellent way to practice photography on a deeper level than simply camera manipulation. All that stuff is relatively easy. Making an image entirely from scratch is not.After so long working egg photography I've finally come up with a formal idea for a series of printed still lifes that I think will be amazing. A simple idea conceptually, but one that has really good potential. My series will not really be classical still lifes, but close enough. The bricks one and the reeds one are my first two I've taken for the series.A fun side effect of working still lifes for hundreds of hours is that it has helped boost confidence, skill, and creativity in other posed or controlled forms of photography like portraiture.Something that was always a bit difficult for me at first was building height in my more formal still lifes. I think your picture feels a bit unbalanced vertically. The negative space it creates in the image doesn't do anything to enhance. I understand your constraints made this difficult at the time.A fun way to practice is creating a still life that uses implied triangles between objects to create composition. You can use other shapes, but triangles is a classic. Limiting the number of elements is also a good way to practice. Here's a phone picture test shot of the third image in my series. This is just to visualize form, see how different backgrounds look, and to play with cropping. I'll spend time over multiple days working on these before I actually take a picture on film. If I'm lucky it will be a one and done.
i gave it a shot last year. seems like a gnere suited for people who have interesting lives. or at least lives that put them in contact with interesting objects
Finished my egg and burnt wire shot. It is in fgt. Here is the next idea I'm working on. Still needs refinement, but I'm liking this idea a lot so far.
I try to make my gun photos more still life than "center picture of autistic interest" but I'm not sure how well I achieve that.
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is this the thread
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This is a prototype, because I'm still waiting on items to arrive, but it's going to be all about the American Dream.>>4499287Nice angle.>>4497502Love the leading lines and forms here.>>4497511Great colours and composition.>>4499255This is very well done. My only critique is that you could have gone deeper with the angle or made the egg sit a bit higher, but you have a fantastic idea and it's executed almost perfectly.>>4499479>>4499480>>4499481>>4499482>>4499483These are beautiful. What lighting do you use? The yellow light works really well.
>>4499553thanks Anon. you're too kind. as for the light - it's just a normal desk lamp with a philips 2700k lightbulb.I hardly play around with it. I generally place it left side, a bit above and tilted mostly downwards, not directly on the subject. sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. also different lenses and different film stocks. as an example >>4499481this was taken with the daguerrotype lens from lomography which tends to be very soft even stepped down. pic related is among the first pics of still life that I took. It's meh (the stem pops too much imo), but the film stock is great Adox HR 50.
>>4499553Thank you. Here is another test shot with a bit more refinement to lighting and composition that I took using photographic paper rather than film.My stupid film holder has a light leak, which you can see at the top. The shadow cast on the egg won't be there in the final image either.This test was to see how a shallower DoF would look compared to having everything in focus. I'm going to try and get everything in focus for the final image.
>>4499479>>4499480>>4499481>>4499482>>4499483I can't believe it, someone on /p/ who knows what they're doing.
>>4499611kek
>>4500745sorry to contradict you, Anon. It's more luck than skill, but I hope to improve.
Yes. Have to admit it has been of type "slap something on table so I have a still subject".(Old scan of whatever I was trying.)
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>>4497502>egg based still lifesIs this place real?
Still life is easy in that you can do it with anything, anywhere, any time, but doing it well is another story. The best at it have put a ton of time and effort in, but you don't have to go nuts to get something out of the practice. I'm a photographer, but also a former assistant to a number of product/still life shooters, and it's a great discipline. When I was starting out, I didn't appreciate still life, but it's great. And to >>4501930 yes, it's real.
>>4501931Wow another egg poster. Nice. Very cozy egg shot. Do you have any more?>>4501930Many famous photographers have photographed eggs to great effect. If you don't mind analyzing photographs they can carry some pretty strong symbolic meaning. Fragility, life, birth, safety, etc. The shape of an egg is also really excellent to illuminate and photograph. You can create some pretty interesting visual contrast because an egg is so perfectly round and smooth. Very good practice. Here's the 8x10 I ended up taking of that scene. :D
>>4501935Not really, I shot that like 20 years ago and I think I've done others since but have no idea where they are. But here's one of my favorites by still-life master Phil Marco
>>4501942Fire egg pic. I love the found object + egg combo. That glove tells a whole ass story.
