What is still life?

• A still life painting /image is a composition of inanimate objects such as, fruits, crops, flowers, items of prosperity, and household items.​
• The items in question are usually filled with disguised symbolism and hold a deeper meaning, E.g. a burned-out candle to emphasize mortality, while a lit candle symbolizes light , truth, and knowledge.

The development of still life.

• Still life began to develop in the 17th century from northern Europe and the growing prosperity of the European world. The new-found wealth from the age of exploration gave the wealthy new expensive (often perishable) imports they wanted to show off, so they would often commission a painting in an attempt to immortalize it.​
• Unfortunately, These goods were often collected off the backs of the exploited minorities during the golden age of colonization and the height of the slave trade.
• still life continues today not only through painting, but photography.

vanitas

Vanitas began in response to the prosperity in 18th century Holland. From the Latin word meaning vanity, vanitas are images of collections of objects (often fruits, flowers and expensive objects) that are saturated with hidden symbolism, often about morality towards material goods and how worthless they are. These symbols often include things like bubbles: how brief life can be and the capacity of spontaneous death, just like how a bubble pops.

Memento Mori.

Memento Mori is something within a still life portrait that symbolises death. similarly to the bubble, these could be objects such as burned out candles or skulls. The words its self means ‘remember you must die’ all in an attempt to display the novelty of the human life and its fascination with luxury items.

what kind of symbols and metaphors are presented in still life?

• Skulls symbolise the certainty of mortality.
• Flowers can symbolise life and growth, flowers can also symbolize innocence as well as impermanence
• Mirrors display the soul In reflection.
• Musical Instruments symbolise beauty and transience.
• Silver and gold are luxury In still life paintings.

Both these artist capture photograph’s with a dull/ mysterious meaning behind it. Both artist’s paid careful attention to choice of objects , composition, lighting and exposer. The photographs of Walker Evans told the story of American working-class life with an exacting frankness that was truly revolutionary for its time. He took many photographs of his selected objects and he approached them from different angles or using different cameras. Evan captured the image in the moment, rather than in the darkroom after the fact. Walker Evans was a famous renowned American photographer who was known for his black and white images showing the impact of the Great Depression. However, Darren Harvey is a more modern artist, interested in the concept that photographs do not exist just to show things, but are physical things that become objects themselves. He used a load of different tools and the montaged tools become both beautiful and bizarre objects, in which a ratchet wrench is combined with a pair of pliers.

They both took photos with great meanings , looking carefully at the light and the structure of their objects and the way they structed their photos. They both work in the same area and both have earnt many awards for what they do.

I tried to impersonate theses artists images with my own work and here they are;

I used a different Varity of colours and tools to try make my photos vibrant. I was careful with how I placed the backgrounds and how I angled the tools. There are different tones to these photographs’.

In conclusion

I think that this photo shoot went well with all the colour and different styles of backgrounds, however I think I could’ve made the photos more clear and lit up the room more or even in light room. Although I do like the lay out and how you can move all the colours and pictures around.

Formalism in photography emphasizes elements such as line, colour, shape, texture, and other aspects rather than the subject matter.

The seven basic elements to photographic art and formalism are:

Line – A geometric element that is made up of a moving point which extends along the path of the point.

Lines can be curved, straight or a combination of the two. Lines can be vertical or horizontal or somewhere in between. They can also be solid, dashed, interrupted, implied or psychological.

Shape – The visible characteristics which makeup a particular spatial form.

Shapes are two-dimensional and can be measured by height and width. Shapes can be the outline of an either familiar or an unfamiliar object.

Form – The shape and structure of something as distinguished from its material.

Form can be geometric (regular) and organic. Form is three-dimensional and has an overall height, width and depth.

Texture – The visual or tactile surface characteristics and how something appears and looks.

Texture is able to be smooth or rough, but there are other commonly used descriptions also used such as; soft, slimy, wet, hard, shiny, bumpy, etc. These are often presented in two dimensions, like in photographs.

Colour – A phenomenon of light or a visual perception which allows us to view the appearance of objects and light sources and be able to differentiate otherwise identical objects.

The three properties of colour are hue (description of a colour, e.g. blue, red, etc.), value (brightness or darkness) and saturation (intensity/purity of a colour). Light itself has no perceived colour.

Size – The relative extent of something, the overall dimensions or magnitude of it.

In a photograph, size is relative and can be an illusion. When an unfamiliar object is in the scene, it could be difficult to get an understanding of its size, however, familiar objects in the scene help us determine the scale shown in the photograph.

Depth – The direct linear measurement from front to back.

Most images have a foreground, middle ground, and background. Even a casual photo has a sense of depth due to visual cues. A stronger sense of depth in an image is when the delineation between those “grounds” is stronger.

Definition: The Design, Composition and Lighting are dominant over Subject Matter. The photographer becomes a visual designer whenever a frame is captured.

The main components of formalism are:

symmetry when two halves of an image hold the same weight and give a perfect balance between two sides of your photograph.

Photoshoot – Contact sheets

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Edits

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Final Images

Here are most of the photos I took over 2 different photoshoots. I used multiple different camera setups, some with a top down view using multiple lighting set ups, others using an infinity curve with soft box lighting and some with the camera placed straight on with a powerful flashlight to capture striking shadows (requires a high shutter speeds to keep exposure levels at a normal amount). I took a few photos with a single subject with no background noise to make the subject more important, other photos have multiple images to create a chaotic and unorganised look, as if it wasn’t placed there on purpose.

Here are 5 unique images that where taken in different ways, using different angles, lighting and object setups. Keeping with the theme of nostalgia, I used objects that are from the past like the old violin, flower holder, books, old packaging, tower of pisa, ext. These objects all have a nostalgic effect on me due to there old, worn appearance. I kept the subjects in the centre of the frame to make them more important. For the camera settings, I used manual focus and exposure, so I can adjust the image to how I like it.

Editing and best images

For this Image I only really changed the colour grading to be more yellow for the shadows and added a vignette, I also slightly increased the contrast. Old camera photos where often very yellow because Photo paper and chemicals deteriorate over time and change their properties. The strong shadows makes it seem like it was taken in a dark room (it was). The violin is almost fully in frame, in the centre of the frame, making it the main subject and the most important one.

For this one I used the same camera setup and editing settings, but just adjusted the placement of objects. A flash light was used for these images (requires a fast shutter and small aperture) to increase the contrast.

For this one I did a similar thing to the one above (increasing the yellow in the shadows) and bumped the exposure up (+30). I also added some grain in adobe light room too replicate pictures taken a while ago with worse camera quality.

I used a top down camera setup and placed the pencils to point at the chapter, leading the eyes to the text. I edited it similarly again, but with a more dramatic vignette. Continuous lighting with 3 different angles to reduce the shadow intensity. There is a slight over exposure so to combat that I reduced the exposure and contrast In editing.

Here I added the B/W editing pre-set to these to images and bumped up the exposure for more dramatic lighting. For the top image, I changed the camera settings to have a low f-stop (aperture) So the hammer will be out of focus. This gives for a more dramatic image, as it appears less flat. I tried to make the bottom image almost have a comedic effect as the box is like a mouth eating a violin 💀.

What is formalism?​

Formalism is said to be “the design, composition and Lighting are dominant over Subject Matter. The photographer becomes a visual designer whenever a frame is captured”.

There are said to be 7 basic elements in photography which are: