My Still Life Images
“Growth”
This is one of my attempts at black and white Still Life
photography. I placed one softbox (as a
continuous light source) to the right of the camera at just above head height
& at a 45 degree angle, and another the other side of the camera at the
same angle. My camera settings
were: Manual exposure mode, 1/60 sec,
F/11, ISO100 and WB Auto. I should’ve experimented with the white balance set
to tungsten but quite liked the result so left it as is.
My intent was to show some depth of field. By placing some
stones in the background and focussing on the light reflections on the vase, I
was able to achieve this result. The
settings on the light to the right of the camera were lower, hence the shadows
to the right and bottom of the image.
This is simply some metallic butterfly confetti, placed on top of a light box – experimentation.
We found a foot in the studio so I took the opportunity to
photograph it. Admittedly, I didn’t put
a lot of thought into the lighting, or white balance, hence the blue tinged
background, but we just wanted to experiment at this stage. If I was to take a more professional image of
this foot, I would have directed a light source at the background or used a
wireless flash trigger and strobe/flash lights.
An attempt at
injecting some humour into our foot’s photo shoot J
This photo was taken in the college studio with one beauty
dish light placed to the front right of the set-up, at a 45 degree angle,
emitting a soft, gentle & continuous light.
Rather than focussing on the reflected light on the vase, I focussed on
the flower head which threw the background and some of the leaves slightly out
of focus, giving a little depth of field. It is a dark photo as my settings
weren’t quite correct. My shutter speed
was 1/125 sec, F/5.6 and ISO100. In
future, I would change the shutter speed to 1/60 sec, maybe F/8 or F/11 and
keep the ISO at 100.
This was the studio set up:
Finally, for this image, we kept the vase away from the
background, I used the black and white setting on the camera, and focussed on
the middle flower in order to show some depth of field. I thought the background would show more
contrast and look textured in black and white. I like the highlights in this
image but although it looks a little grainy due to increasing the ISO to 400, I
was also pleased with this effect.
