Monday, November 9, 2009

Still life


Hello, sorry I haven't posted anything lately have been very busy working on school assignments which brings me to todays post. This term I took a course in Still Life. I have a new respect for those who choose this path let me tell you it is much harder than it looks! I had to come up with 8 images for my final project and am glad to be done! I am glad I was forced to do this as I like a few of these images a lot but I am much more interested in photographing life-people, animals nature.
The above photo, the required 'shoe' shot was an effort to copy an image I found online. This is the only one of the photos I shot at school. The remainder were taken at my home with my new lights and light tent.

This one is obviously pretty unusual and is my 'anything' shot. This is a crystal paperweight in the shape of a diamond turned upside down so that it looks like a pyramid. I tried for a few hours at school to get decent standard photo and it proved to be too difficult. I decided to take a different approach and this photo was taken using only a small LED flashlight and a long exposure. My instructor, Win saw it at our next class and helped me with some of the photoshop effects.

My 'reflective' shot is a combination of 3 different exposures. The only way to get the legs to not reflect red was for me to put a piece of white paper in front of them. I really like this one.

This is 'mixed light' the tea pot is illuminated by a small tea light candle placed behind it. This flowering tea is delicious.

My 'drink shot'. I am pretty happy with this one. It was a reshoot. My original photo of hot chocolate in an espresso cup was just really boring. The glass was placed in my light tent with a strobe back lighting it from behind. I set the timer and poured water in from above. Had to do it several times get what I wanted but I am pleased with this result! I tilted the composition and zoomed in a bit.

This is not what it appears, the frame looks more like a painting due to photoshop effects but it is real, a little hand painted mirror that hangs in my room was placed across from this cute little Christmas ornament on red satin. Combined two exposures, one time I focused on the frame, one time on the little girl.

Saved my favorite two for last. The above is my 'food shot'. I used two 1 ft mirror tiles to capture 3 pieces of ribbon candy. they are laying on a tile and leaning up against the other. I cloned out the line where the two meet to achieve this effect. This is one of my favorite photos ever!

Finally my 'jewelry' shot. I have no idea how the idea of this shot came to me it just did and I like it not so much because of the pin but because of the shape of the reflection directly to the right of the dragonfly's eyes. If you click above for a larger version you may see it-a little pixie/fairy! Eyes, nose, mouth wings up behind her legs, so freaky it is all I see when i look at this I couldn't have created such a thing if i tried. The cool lighting effects on the glass were created using my trusty flashlight along with a strobe for 2.5 seconds.
Looking forward for the coming break and great weather so I can finally get out and shoot what I like to shoot! Hope you enjoy these!
Steph