Still Life Tutorial-Fine Art Photography Video Lecture | Capture like a Pro: Digital Photography Tutorial - Professional Skills

Hi, I'm Chelsea and today I'm going to be
teaching you about still life
photography
You might be wondering "why, Chelsea, that's
super boring."
Well, you're wrong. It's a great exercise
for composition because you're
organizing all the objects that you're
photographing it's a good way to
practice your lighting
and it's also a good introduction to
conceptual art.
It's really blending art and science of
photography, you're taking objects
You're rearranging them, you're
lighting them, and you're finding a
concept and introducing some symbolism.
So let's get started. I was first
inspired to try still life photography
when I learned about still life
in my art history class. At first
I thought it was just boring pictures of
fruit and various objects, but I shortly
thereafter learned that
it's pretty cool. There's a lot of
metaphor, each thing in the picture
symbolizes something
and you can really make a creative picture.
So let me tell you how I got started
making my still life photo. The first
thing I did was conceptualized it
I actually wasn't anywhere near my
camera, I
took my notepad here and I drew a
picture.
I thought of a concept and some props . Now,
my theme is going to be my family, Tony and Madelyn. Yours could be anything.
It could be politics, it could be
some view you have on the world, religion.
Whatever you want to do.
When I chose the props I happened to
choose things that I had my house
but I was also aware of the fact that they
have to be meaningful.
If you're not good at the symbolic stuff
you can actually look up what
certain objects mean in still life art.
They all have different meanings.
Candles can represent eternity in life,
books can represent knowledge, triangles
represents the divine Trinity;
you know, God, Jesus, the Holy Ghost, and
the upside down triangle
represents femininity. A lot of things
have a lot of different meanings.
When you're choosing your props you want
to consider using props that
interact well with light. So if you look
at the ones that I chose here,
I have a metallic camera that I knew would
reflect the light
nicely, I have this feather vest
that I knew the light will shine through,
and
I have candles which I knew would let off a
nice warm glowing light
and a silver candelabra. You want to choose
things that are aesthetically pleasing.
So, for example I did have a black
camera, but I knew that it would kind of lose its detail if I didn't have enough
light on it.
So just choose your props wisely.
Then next, you wanna think about arranging
them, the composition.
So when you're thinking about the
composition, you want to use the rule of
thirds and the rule of space
In this example I use the rule space. If
I put this flower on the side,
it would kinda be going off the frame. When I
put it on this side I knew it would be
kind of leaning towards the candles and
making a leading line,
drawing attention to them. Another
example of the composition
is the way I stacked the books, I kind of staggered
them and put the camera on them
I knew that if I put the camera here it
would make too many places for the eyes
to focus
and maybe feel a little bit unbalanced.
It also was getting lost in the feathers.
So you just want to play with arranging
things, look into
compositional rules and things that look
good on camera
and have fun with it. So aside from choosing
props that look good on camera, they also
mean something to me.
Let's take a look at why I chose them
and what the meaning was.
So as I said my theme is family, so I
chose this metronome to symbolize Tony.
He's constant, he's stable and he's
always reliable
and also it's a really good looking prop.
This fuzzy
feather vest that I chose, aside from
looking good, it reminded me of my
daughter.
Feathers in still life art represent
hope
and my daughter is just a little ray of
light and she's always sunny and bright
and has this ethereal little
personality about her, so I thought that
those would represent her well.
I chose the camera to represent me
because I'm always
looking and observing and appreciating my
family and capturing all of the moments.
There are some books here that mean
something to the family personally,
and this candelabra has three arms for
me, Tony and our daughter. If you look at
this candle, it actually has my wedding ring
on it, just a little detail.
And I also chose this fern because they
grow in darkness and I thought that was
nice symbolism.
A lot of things grow, relationships
especially, when you're facing adversity
and I thought that was a nice little
touch.
And the last prop that I wanted to use is this fur coat.
It's not a coat I actually use, but it was my
grandmother's and she instilled a lot of
family values in me.
So, it was important and I wanted it to be a
part of the shot. The last
element of your picture that you want to
consider is the light.
I have a studio so I happen to use studio
lighting, but if you don't that's okay.
My lighting is a two light set up. I
have this light here that's
illuminating the background and another
light that,
using side lighting is illuminating my
subjects.
You can use natural light and put
everything in front of a window and
have some side lighting.
I didn't want to use a lot of lights and a lot of front lighting
because I knew that it would kind of wash
out the picture and also take the
dimension out of it.
So in a portrait side light might not
be flattering but in this case it's going to
add a lot of dimension and shadows
and that's kinda what I was going for.
You're not getting the full effect
of the lightning here because I have
lights on for this video,
but as you can see from the picture, I
only used the background lighting
and the side lighting to illuminate the
scene and it really is moody and beautiful.
So that's pretty much it! I conceptualize
my picture
I found props and their meaning and I
arranged them
and then I lit them and took a picture.
It's really easy, it's fun, you can be as
creative as you want
and it's a really good practice for a
lot of different theories in photography.
Thank you. This video is a supplement to
our book Stunning Digital Photography. If
you want to learn more, check this out. If you're like "hey,
reading is for dummies," we have videos! You have zero
excuses
We have a blu ray because we're
from the future and we have a four-DVD
set cause we're also practically rooted in the past!
You can do whatever you want and you can
learn so much from us.
Trust me, I'm a professional. Thank you!