One of the most challenging aspects of photography for me is the
creation of still life images in the studio. Most of my
photographs are opportunistic in nature in that they rarely
require any planning and the most I have to worry about is
framming and exposure (oh and seeing the potential of course).
Still life requires planning and more importantly ideas. My
earlier attempts revolved around finding a prop and then trying
to make it look more interesting. I now prefer the technique of
previsualisation where I start of with an idea for an image and
then build a set accordingly. This has a much higher success rate
and I find it easier to be creative.
The other technique which I learnt from my mentor is to build the set in the viewfinder of the camera. What I mean by this is quite simple. The normal plan of attack would be to la everything out in a pleasing arrangement and then try and photograph it. The trouble with this approach is that the field of view of a camera is different to that of our eyes and so the set has to be readjusted to make an interesting picture. With one apple, this is simple but with complicated arrangements you are asking for frustration! By using the camera viewfinder, I can place each object accurately within the frame and compose the picture. This simplifies the whole task and wastes less time.
My last two tips are quite simply a) keep it simple and b) either make it realistic (i,e, something that is likely to happen) or make it outragous (i.e. something that is not every likely to happen) but not in between.
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