Have a Palette for Life?

That's right. My little sister was painting today and boy is she cute. Sadly people are not part of still life shots, sooooo all those will be put in the family album. But her messy paint stuffs was a perfect little thing to photograph. I quite pleased with the outcome.

Now as the whole outcome was a painting project, I made an effort to Photoshop the first one to have a watercolor paint brush effect. Thought it would be appropriate. Sure I know this one wasn't exactly POW still life, it was still... well still. It gets sort of tough finding proper table space around here to get decent backed out shots, so those I do take aren't always that perfect.

Its definitely tough considering I thought this was going to be a walk in the park. But at least things are going well. I haven't done any looking about at well considered professional still lifers, but that will be tomorrow's endeavor since it will also be our last day of still life. Today was just another day among days. Also had a nice cooking party today with family and friends. English Toffee Bars. They were grand! But they did give me the idea that cooking utensils would be great for my next shot as well. Incidental, it shocks me to realize that most my favorite shots are close ups of utensils. Makeup, paint, and pens. Certainly this says a lot as to subject matter...

I think I'll have to talk to my sources about this notice...
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baggybunny

Stacking Blocks

You know it seems to me that upon looking further at these still life shots all over deviant art and on the net, that I should most certainly be taking a step back. I mean still life captures stillness, and I creep in so close because when I started doing photography I lived in its face. Macro is my safe place. Soooo today is another failure to quite capture what it is that still life is, but I do say that I still like these anyway.

Stacks seem to me a very common thing in still life. A stack of books, a stack of dishes, and even stacks of of pens and pencils. So today I tried picking out a few of my old school novels. Moby Dick is the big one. And then randomly stacking them on my side table. Upon this I discovered that books do NOT like flash. Ever try taking a picture of a book while its open? Not pretty I can assure you. You blind yourself and anyone else in the room, on top of that you can't read anything that was on the page. It reminds me of a white out in Antarctica.

By the way, while taking these photos I had to move the things off my side table and realized... I have perfect still life stuff. A random fake flower bouquet, an old looking bowl with some change in it, and little trinkets that look like leaves. So that will be my attempt throughout tomorrow. To manage to take a far away shot of these things on the table... or a table. You know I haven't quite decided where, but I'll figure it out.

Also I realized old things make for a very fine subject matter. Grainy things like wood for instance. Make a very fine texture shot. We'll see if I can't manage to stack some of the long books too for another shot in my spare time. Not for this of course unless it turns out great because we all know what a mood I get into when I photograph the same subject matter days in a row. Soooo here we go. Which reminds me, the photo below... its not some special diary of secrets, it might not look it there, but its just my plant journal, heh. I'm starting this one out to record how my sunflowers grow this year. So its not as secretive as it looks, haha.

So try it yourselves, its rather fun. Making the simple ordinary things look suspicious.