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Still Life Photography

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Still Life Photography Still Life Photography Unit 23 Katie Palmer Still Life Photography • Still life photography is the depiction of inanimate subject matter, most typically a small grouping of objects. These objects can be natural or man-made. Natural objects can be flowers, fruits, water, shells, rocks, etc. Man-made objects can be things like keys, books, shoes, etc. Still life photography gives the photographer more leeway in the arrangement of design elements within a composition. History of Still Life Photography • Still life mostly seeks to illustrate the natural world and presents something more than a simple record of the scene. When a painter and a photographer works the final image will reflect what has been in the artist’s or photographer’s mind. For example, predilections, frustrations, enjoyments, etc. This makes their images unique. The subjects for still life pictures/photos are usually simple and commonplace. • A branch of Dutch paintings created an almost specialist form of still life and raised it to the state of high/fine art during the 17th century. Since the inception of the medium, photographers have sought to emulate the traditional forms of still life. Experiments have been made to extend the range of the genre and also the seek methods to involve the viewer. Photography Research Karl Blossfeldt • Karl Blossfeldt was a German photographer (June 13, 1865 – December, 1932), sculptor, teacher and an artist who worked in Berlin, Germany. Karl Blossfeldt is well known for his close-up photos of plants and living things, which was published in 1929 as Urformen der Kunst. Photographing on a Black Background • Photographing still life can have either a white background or black. Photographing objects, still life or products with a black background gives it that look like the objects are floating. Furthermore, it adds drama and impact to the photo because it isolates the subject/object. It is also known as the ‘drop out black style’. Photography Research Irving Penn • Irving Penn was an American photographer (June 16th, 1917 – October 7th, 2009), who is known for his fashion, portrait and still life photography. Furthermore, his career included working at Vogue magazine and independent advertising work for clients such as, Issey Miyake and Clinique. In October 1943, Penn’s first photographic cover for Vogue magazine appeared. He continued working at the magazine and was photographing covers, portraits, still life, fashion and photographic essays. • From 1934 to 1938, Irving Penn attended the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Art, which is known now as the University of the Arts. He studied drawing, painting, graphics and industrial arts under Alexey Brodovitch. Penn worked for two years as a freelance designer and making his first amateur photographs. Olivia Parker • In 1970, Olivia Parker became involved in photography, after graduating from Wellesley College with a degree in the History of Art and began her career as a painter. Parker, mostly self – taught, she makes ephemeral constructions to photographs and experiments with the endless possibilities of light. • Portfolios of her work have been published in a number of magazines in the United States, Europe and Japan. There as also been three monographs of Parker’s work: Signs of Life (Godine, 1978), Under the Looking Glass (New York Graphic Society, 1983) and Weighing The Planets (New York Graphic Society, 1987). Contact Sheet - Apple I don’t like these two images as the hand is covering the apple and there isn’t really any lighting. I don’t like these images as I don’t think that they are very good and they are a little random. I like these two images because of The reason why this the shadow on one side fades and isn’t a good photo is because the apple isn’t in the that it turned out too centre, it’s slightly to the right or bright. left. Edited Image • When editing our favourite images, we were told to make it look like a proper red shiny apple. Before After I don’t really like the final edit as it doesn’t look real and looks like it is floating. Furthermore, it looks too bright and red. I prefer the before image, even though it hasn’t been edited. The adjustments I made to the image is that: I changed the image to black and white and used the eraser tool to rub out the apple so it was in colour, decreased the hue and then increased the saturation. Evaluation The original purpose of this little project within Unit 23 was to learn about Still Life photography, learn about hard and soft lighting and produce a final edited image of an apple. I think I managed my time quite well, as I was able to do all the research about still life photography, history and photographers research before doing the practical work and editing images. Research helped me throughout this little project as was able to learn more about why some photographers prefer to use black background for still life photography. Furthermore, learnt about hard and soft lighting when doing still life photography. Analysing and evaluation my worked helped me in this little project as when I created the contact sheets of the apple I was able to say why I liked or disliked any of the photographs and I could say why. Furthermore, I was able to say what I would change if I did it again and what I learnt throughout the project. The things that were successful were that I took quite a lot of photographs of the apple in different locations, angles and lighting so that I had a different selection of photographs instead of the same thing. The things I could improve on or change next time is that I could of thought about the background a bit more when I went outside and photographed the apple. Also, I could of taken photographs of different fruit. Furthermore, with the editing, I shouldn’t of used heavy Photoshop on the image. .
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