Hi, I'm Chelsea and today I'm going to be teaching you about still life
photography
You might be wondering "why, Chelsea, that's super boring."
Well, you're wrong. It's a great exercise for composition because you're
organizing all the objects that you're photographing it's a good way to
practice your lighting
and it's also a good introduction to conceptual art.
It's really blending art and science of photography, you're taking objects
You're rearranging them, you're
lighting them, and you're finding a concept and introducing some symbolism.
So let's get started. I was first inspired to try still life photography
when I learned about still life
in my art history class. At first
I thought it was just boring pictures of fruit and various objects, but I shortly
thereafter learned that
it's pretty cool. There's a lot of metaphor, each thing in the picture
symbolizes something
and you can really make a creative picture. So let me tell you how I got started
making my still life photo. The first thing I did was conceptualized it
I actually wasn't anywhere near my camera, I
took my notepad here and I drew a picture.
I thought of a concept and some props . Now,
my theme is going to be my family, Tony and Madelyn. Yours could be anything.
It could be politics, it could be
some view you have on the world, religion. Whatever you want to do.
When I chose the props I happened to choose things that I had my house
but I was also aware of the fact that they have to be meaningful.
If you're not good at the symbolic stuff you can actually look up what
certain objects mean in still life art. They all have different meanings.
Candles can represent eternity in life,
books can represent knowledge, triangles represents the divine Trinity;
you know, God, Jesus, the Holy Ghost, and the upside down triangle
represents femininity. A lot of things have a lot of different meanings.
When you're choosing your props you want to consider using props that
interact well with light. So if you look at the ones that I chose here,
I have a metallic camera that I knew would reflect the light
nicely, I have this feather vest
that I knew the light will shine through, and
I have candles which I knew would let off a nice warm glowing light
and a silver candelabra. You want to choose things that are aesthetically pleasing.
So, for example I did have a black
camera, but I knew that it would kind of lose its detail if I didn't have enough
light on it.
So just choose your props wisely. Then next, you wanna think about arranging
them, the composition.
So when you're thinking about the composition, you want to use the rule of
thirds and the rule of space
In this example I use the rule space. If I put this flower on the side,
it would kinda be going off the frame. When I put it on this side I knew it would be
kind of leaning towards the candles and making a leading line,
drawing attention to them. Another example of the composition
is the way I stacked the books, I kind of staggered them and put the camera on them
I knew that if I put the camera here it would make too many places for the eyes
to focus
and maybe feel a little bit unbalanced. It also was getting lost in the feathers.
So you just want to play with arranging things, look into
compositional rules and things that look good on camera
and have fun with it. So aside from choosing props that look good on camera, they also
mean something to me.
Let's take a look at why I chose them and what the meaning was.
So as I said my theme is family, so I chose this metronome to symbolize Tony.
He's constant, he's stable and he's always reliable
and also it's a really good looking prop. This fuzzy
feather vest that I chose, aside from looking good, it reminded me of my
daughter.
Feathers in still life art represent hope
and my daughter is just a little ray of light and she's always sunny and bright
and has this ethereal little personality about her, so I thought that
those would represent her well.
I chose the camera to represent me because I'm always
looking and observing and appreciating my family and capturing all of the moments.
There are some books here that mean something to the family personally,
and this candelabra has three arms for
me, Tony and our daughter. If you look at this candle, it actually has my wedding ring
on it, just a little detail.
And I also chose this fern because they grow in darkness and I thought that was
nice symbolism.
A lot of things grow, relationships especially, when you're facing adversity
and I thought that was a nice little touch.
And the last prop that I wanted to use is this fur coat.
It's not a coat I actually use, but it was my grandmother's and she instilled a lot of
family values in me.
So, it was important and I wanted it to be a part of the shot. The last
element of your picture that you want to consider is the light.
I have a studio so I happen to use studio lighting, but if you don't that's okay.
My lighting is a two light set up. I have this light here that's
illuminating the background and another light that,
using side lighting is illuminating my subjects.
You can use natural light and put everything in front of a window and
have some side lighting.
I didn't want to use a lot of lights and a lot of front lighting
because I knew that it would kind of wash out the picture and also take the
dimension out of it.
So in a portrait side light might not be flattering but in this case it's going to
add a lot of dimension and shadows
and that's kinda what I was going for. You're not getting the full effect
of the lightning here because I have lights on for this video,
but as you can see from the picture, I only used the background lighting
and the side lighting to illuminate the scene and it really is moody and beautiful.
So that's pretty much it! I conceptualize my picture
I found props and their meaning and I arranged them
and then I lit them and took a picture. It's really easy, it's fun, you can be as
creative as you want
and it's a really good practice for a lot of different theories in photography.
Thank you. This video is a supplement to our book Stunning Digital Photography. If
you want to learn more, check this out. If you're like "hey,
reading is for dummies," we have videos! You have zero excuses
We have a blu ray because we're from the future and we have a four-DVD
set cause we're also practically rooted in the past!
You can do whatever you want and you can learn so much from us.
Trust me, I'm a professional. Thank you!