Still Life Photography

Reading Assignment - Scoring Rubric

(Submit links to at least 4 of your photos along with 1 eBay or product photograph.)

Still life photography can be fun and profitable. In this assignment you'll create several still life images of single items and sets of items. Think of a still life photograph as a portrait of a thing as opposed to that of a person.

In this assignment you should be putting to use what you have learned about lighting and composition. Consider the image of the peaches. Sarah M. took this photo and used the rule of thirds to place the base of the peaches along the bottom 1/3 of the image.

Sarah composed this photograph by covering a glass table with water and lighting the scene with a single bright lamp.

One practical use for still life photography is product photos for use on eBay. Consider this photograph of my watch. Notice how the background is all white with the exception of a small shadow. We'll learn how to use the Gimp to do this.

If you spend some time planning and experimenting you will be able to use light and composition to make even simple objects beautiful when photographed. Stephanie H. used directional light and a background with simple lines to frame this photograph of an onion. It's one of my favorites.

Be sure to visit the still life links: