stilllife

When I work on a blueprint for a potential documentary project most of my attention goes to unpacking whatever it was that drew my initial interest – usually a collection of themes, locations, and characters that I will visit in order to discover what direction the story will end up going in.

Photographers, from beginners to the most experienced, search for ways to improve their compositions. To be successful in your search, you have to compose an image based on two things above all else: light, and the relationships of forms.

Photographer Karl Taylor and artist Ethan Davis both created the same still-life scene of an Apple Watch. Taylor used traditional photography techniques while Davis created one using only computer graphics. Which is which?

Photographer Aldo Chacon has recently completed a personal project that showcases different Nike shoes in various environments with the goal of linking cultural iconography with footwear to tell a story.

Every photographer has a humble beginning. Somewhere in the awkwardness is a pivotal moment that sends their photographic trajectory barrelling forward.

I believe it would be fair to say that I am known mostly for my landscape work, from broad “grand landscapes” to abstracts in the slit canyons. But throughout most of my career, I’ve also photographed human-made settings extensively.

While locked down in Sydney during the COVID-19 pandemic, I am keeping safe and sane. Try this "Ice Flowers" project at home -- it's fun and easy.

Photographer Brendan Barry has been shooting 20x24-inch color still-life images directly onto photo paper via a camera obscura using a color reversal process. In this short 3-minute video, you can watch how he does it.

These days we’re all trying to come up with new photo ideas to do around home, but how many of you have thought, ”Hey, I’ll freeze some flowers in water?” That’s a new one for me, but fortunately I know someone here who does that, and she’s happy to share her secrets.

Anyone who has had any exposure to still life photography or studio work will know just how expensive backdrops can be. I have a couple from Kate Backdrops company, one of which I use very often, but I've been hankering after a few more.

Forbidden Food is a new ongoing project by Slovenian photographer Ana Straze, who sticks pearl pins into fruits and vegetables for unusual still life photos.

Did you ever dive into an I Spy book as a kid? These photo books were filled with incredibly detailed images that showed tens, sometimes hundreds of objects in a single shot, and challenged children to find specific items within those pictures. And each illustration was captured using real objects by photographer Walter Wick.

PUTPUT is an artist duo based in Copenhagen, Demark, that works at the intersection between still life photography and sculpture. Its goal is to "create distinctly ambiguous images that challenges the viewer to look twice."

What is the best way to light glass? Glass doesn’t look good when you shine light directly at it. It soaks up the light it doesn’t define it. It just gives you specular highlights little pinpoints that don’t photograph well.

As a still life photographer, I spend a lot of time in my studio experimenting with different types of products. In a recent shoot, I did just this by photographing a perfume box. But instead of photographing the packing by itself, I used everyday objects to create the scene.

A while back, I had another roundtable discussion at the Film Photographers Association. This time the subject was Still Life Photography. It is a genre we all take for granted and include in it a great variety of photographs. I would like to explore the origins of still life in painting, how it came to photography, and eventually expanded in coverage and scope.

Here's a 2-minute tutorial overview from Circuito that will show you how to make your own automated turntable for photography. With the ability to start, stop, and trigger the camera all by itself, this turntable is great for people looking for a streamlined product photo workflow.

Here's an 18-minute video by Sean Tucker on how to improve your food photography skills at home without buying any expensive gear.

Here's a helpful 4-minute video in which photographer Phillip McCordall shares a few tips and tricks for dealing with reflections in still life photography.

It's difficult to stand out from the crowd in still life photography. When someone picks up a camera for the first time, still life is probably the initial thing they try. Therefore the internet is packed full of still life images, but these tips will help to give your photos an edge.

These water glass photos are not created in Photoshop. In fact, all photographer Alexandre Watanabe needed to shoot these striking shots was water, two colored plastic sheets, and a little bit of refraction.

Photographer Greg Stroube of the Bruton Stroube studio recently had a little bit of fun photographing cocktails. The still life series, called Classic Cocktails, imagines how the great master painters of the past might have painted the classic cocktails of today.

Photographer Neal Grundy knows how to mix multiple elements to create stunning abstract work, and his recent personal project titled simply Flowers and Paint is just that. By mixing two still life staples together, he creates something eerily beautiful.

Lake Natron in Northern Tanzania is extremely high in soda and salt content. After animals die in the lake, their carcasses are preserved through calcification as they dry, resulting in petrified "mummies" of birds and bats.

Photographer Nick Brandt visited the lake and captured a series of photos that features these petrified animals. The series is aptly titled Petrified.

Camden, London-based commercial still life photographer Piotr Gregorczyk likes to play with food and gravity. One concept he has focused on for a number of recent projects is the idea of showing various food dishes flying through the air as they come together on a plate or in a bowl.

Watches, glasses and combs... these are the kinds of everyday objects that photographer Ziyah Gafić has spent a great deal of time photographing over the past few years. They're objects that are seemingly mundane and unimportant, but in fact tell a tragic story that Gafić's work seeks to reveal and preserve.

Willard Psychiatric Center began its life in 1869 as Willard Asylum for the Insane, closing down over 125 years later in 1995. Thousands of long-term patients passed through its doors, and when the center was shut down, it was discovered that hundreds of suitcases belonging to some of its earliest residents had been set aside and forgotten in one of the hospital's attics.

Those suitcases and their contents have been preserved, catalogued and, thanks to photographer Jon Crispin and his compelling Willard Asylum Suitcases series, now they have been photographed as well.

If you're just getting into studio photography, trying to figure out how to light, shoot and set up your shots can be both frustrating and expensive. After all, if you're trying to take high-quality studio shots, you need high end strobes and all sorts of other gear, right?

Maybe not. Of course high end equipment helps, but in the video above, photographer Alex Koloskov of Photigy shows you how you can light studio still life shots using a few $30 dimmable LED bulbs instead of strobes.

If you want a daily dose of creativity and humor, start following the Instagram account (@cintascotch) of art director Javier Pérez. The Ecuador-based artist regularly posts simple and quirky photographs that consist of only a small object and a simple sketch.

Certainly there's ample artistic precedent for including a dead animal or two in a still-life. Old Master paintings are rife with images of freshly killed ducks, bunnies and fish awaiting a trip to the dinner table.

Photographer (and certified taxidermist) Kimberly Witham slyly subverts that tradition with "Domestic Arrangements," a series of still-life photographs that combine modern kitchenware and other items of domestic life with birds, squirrels and other animals retrieved from the roadside. All items come from within a short radius around Witham's New Jersey home.

For the most part, Dutch photographer Arjan Benning specializes in still life photography. Crafting strange scenes for advertising agencies, museums, magazines and cultural institutions worldwide, he tries to walk "the fine line between authenticity and amazement."

His series Ice Age does this by juxtaposing white, domestic, cluttered scenes -- which in and of themselves are sometimes quite strange -- with a touch of color.

When musicians sign contracts to perform in major concerts, their documents often contain riders (more commonly known as addendums). These are a series of special requests made by the band or musician, and outlines specifics of what they're expecting when they arrive.

Photographer Henry Hargreaves noticed that riders often contain strange requests for the foods and drinks requested, so he decided to turn the requests into a photo project that offer a glimpse into the lives of famous musicians.

Dinner Etiquette is a project by Melbourne-based art director Sonia Rentsch and photographer Scott Newett that consists of clever still life photos of tableware that's arranged to look like fine dining attire.

"33 RPM" is a project by Stockholm-based photographer Philip Karlberg that consists of still life photographs of various desserts spinning on various vinyl records. The combo above shows "'Don’t look back into the sun' by The Libertines: Sundae surprise."