Still Life

 

Still life ia a painting or a photography of an inanimate object. With still life photography, the photographer can do more with the composition therefore creating very interesting and potentially 'weird' photographs. Still life photography has been popular since the early 19th century and it still is popular in todays society. Early photographers were inspired by artists such as Vincent Van Gogh, Francisco Goya and Paul Cezanne who were painting still life paintings at the time.

Still Life Moodboard

Dennis Pedersen

Dennis Pedersen started photography in 1985. Dennis was first offered the opportunity to work for fashion and beauty photographer Jean Claude Volpeliere. It was then that Dennis started travelling all over the world shooting for fashion magazines and beauty clients.

In the 1990's Dennis's work went in a completely new direction. Dennis chose to work with a theme of liquids and water photography. Dennis became increasingly interested by movement in still life photography. He then combined his technical and creative skills and experimented with a variety of liquids, powders and special effects photography.


Dennis Pedersen displays his unique, quirky and  creative personality through his work.

His work is mainly done in a studio. He likes to explore different patterns within evevryday objects such as rubber gloves and a plastic bag. His work is all very sharp and clear with no depth of field. For some of his work where he is experimenting with powders and liquids he uses a fast shutter speed to capture the movement. He uses a lot of bold colours in his work to make it stand out against the black backdrop he uses.

"I love my work as a still life photographer and am hugely grateful for the inspiration and advice that I have been given throughout my career"

Dennis Pederson often uses different shutter speeds to create different effects with his work. He uses harsh lighting to create more of a contrast in the objects and the background. Your eye is immediately drawn to the object in the image as it is the only thing with colour against a black background.  

Kimberley Witham

Kimberly Witham was born and raised in Wakefield.

While her photographs are strongly influenced by her studies in Art History, she is also interested in exploring the natural world. Her series featured above, Domestic Arrangements, combine those interests in fanciful tableaus of color, pattern, texture, and wildlife. The result is a series of still lifes that allow Kimberly to create her own sense of the world. Kimberly teaches photography and art history at Bucks County Community College in Newtown, PA.

Kimberley’s work is strongly influenced by natural history dioramas, cabinets or curiosity, still life painting and other manifestations of man’s attempt to categorize, comprehend and control the natural world.

Some of the portfolios she has done:

· WunderKammer

· Domestic Arrangements

· Transcendence

· Deer Town

· Aunt Dots House

· Untitled

· Out Island

Domestic Arrangements

The objects in these pictures are all found close to Kimberley's home. They are all very simplistic but interesting at the same time. Your eye is immediately drawn to the animals in the picture and the positions they are in. Your eye then focuses on the rest of the arrangment. There is a lot of texture in Kimerbleys work as she uses things such as fruit and plants as well as roadkill and domestic objects. She uses a soft lighting to bring out the various colours.

Still Life Shoot

 

For this shoot I was given the task of bringing in some objects and then doing a still life shoot with them. As my title is Weird And Wonderful I wanted to bring in some objects that i could create more of a quirky and weird scene with. I played around with the compositions and then I picked the best three to put on my blog. I used the studio as well as the balcony to do the shoot.

For this image I wanted to create a scene using the car, bus and mini Eiffel Tower. So I positioned them on the moss outside to give the effect that the objects were on grass. I then used some euros to give it more of a feel of being in France.

For this scene I wanted something more quirky so i just played around with the composition. The objects are on some lime green wallpaper and the back drop is a plain black one. I shot this image in the studio with the lights and the camera.

For this scene I wanted the mini Eiffel Tower to be in focus with the car in the background. I placed the objects on the lime green wallpaper to give the effect of grass. This was shot in the studio along with the lights and the flash.

 

Still Life Response Work

 For these images I was responding to Kimberley Witham's work. As I was particularly interested in her domestic arrangments portfolio i wanted to respond to that. However it wasn't practical for my to get dead animals so I responded to her work without the dead animals.

 

For this image my ISO was 100, my aperture was f/14 and my shutter speed was 1/125.  

 For this image my ISO was 100, my aperture f/10 and my shutter speed 1/125. I had crop and straighten this image out on photoshop.


 For this image my ISO was 100, my aperture f/14 and my shutter speed 1/125. I had to crop and straighten this image out on photoshop.



After experimenting with still life I have decided that it could be something that I explpore further for my project however it isn't a definite as at the moment even though I really enjoyed the technique, itr doesn't really fit in with the idea I have had for my project.