what is still life?

By definition, still life is a painting or drawing of an arrangement of objects, usually flowers fruit or random objects depending on what the artist is trying to show.

my interpretation of still life:

before :

after editing :

For this photo, I stacked 3 ‘old’ books in almost a careless looking way to give the sense of ease. I used a small spotlight to almost give the illusion of a glowing sensation from underneath the books to bring some light into the photo.

The original photo was a lot brighter overall because of the large lights that were used in the studio, so to improve the quality, I lowered the brightness of the photo and heightened the saturation where the spotlight hit to give an ominous effect.

After going over some feedback I decided to re-edit the photo bringing more light and clarity to it. I kept the spotlight bright and slightly added highlight to the spotlight to enhance the light and let it light up the book.

before :

after editing :

For this photo, the original, seemed too gloomy and didn’t have the right light to shadow ratio that I wanted. So on light room, and decided to reduce the brightness and add more depth to she shadows.

I made sure highlights and important parts of my image were highlighted like the ceramic pot just to give the picture some dimension and something for the viewer to focus on since its ‘so dark’.

I did make the photo of the tool box brighter then the original just to make the photo more clear an visible. Now I’m looking at it again, I do need to brighten the photo a lot so that you can actually clearly see the photo and the objects in the photo.

I revisited the photo again and decided to add more light again to make the photo brighter and more clear. I kept the shadows and darkness of the photo but still added the brightness.

If I could retake the photo, I would remove the warm spotlight because it clashes with the cold light on the main lighting and doesn’t compliment the photo how I wanted it too.