Still life is a painting/drawing of a varied amount of objects, typically including fruit, flowers and objects contrasting these in texture such as bowls and glassware.

Artists mostly associated with still life are Paul Cézanne, Henry Matisse and Georges Braque.

Still life comes from the Dutch word stilleven,  created in the 17th century when paintings of objects enjoyed immense popularity throughout Europe.

This is my virtual gallery where I have presented my favourite photos that I have taken. I chose this layout because it is very plain and lets you focus on the photos without having any distractions in the background. I have put in two of my favourite still life images on the side and my tools object photos at the back in a row for an organised gallery. The frames around the still life images are plain black to make the photos easily visible and make them stand out more. They are angled forwards and with shadows for a 3D look to make it look like they are in an actual gallery.

I chose this photo because I like the colder tones of this photo rather than the warmer tones of the violin picture opposite it. it is a nice comparison in still life and shows how there is both cold and warm tones in both photos that has similar vibes but different contrasts.

I used this photo because I really like the angle its shot at and it contrasts nicely with the other still like imagine in the gallery. the violin is a warm tone and it looked better than when it was originally dull and neutral.

For these formalism photos I have presented at the back of my gallery because I think it looks organised and neat compared to if they were spread around on the walls. I chose these three photos as I think they are the best looking out of the tools photoshoot and I like how I have presented them in the gallery.

For this photo I had a metal box and piled books into it. I edited and got rid of the highlights and added extra shadows for an older look. The original photo was a lot brighter and less vibrant so I added clarity into the photo which made the photo and the reflection clearer. I added texture and shadows in the photo because I think it looks much better dark.

Before

after

For this photo of a violin and books I changed the colour to black and white to change the aura of the photo. This created a clearer image of the violin and books to make you focus on them more than the colour of the original photo. I cropped out the edges of the original photo as it looked messy and straightened it out as evenly as I could to make the photo look clean.

These photo of books are both edited but I prefer the second one as it is less dull and has a mystical feel to it as the books are glowing. I added texture to the second photo to give it a vintage vibe and added less clarity compared to the first photo for a less sharper image. the second photo gives a warm hue while the first photo has cold hue making it look crisp and sharp.

For the photos I took, I chose my favourite ones and flagged them green and rated them five stars, for the ones I disliked I flagged them red. The photos coloured yellow were the photos I wasn’t sure about.

This photo of plyers was my favourite and the best looking photo I took. I edited the plyers to have a darker ambience and sharp shadows around the tool.

For this photoshoot I arranged tools on the copy stand. These were well lit and didn’t require much editing after. As a result lots of the photographs looked well lit and bright and I edited the photos after to have a darker vibe like Walker Evans has in his photos. The six photos I edited all matched this vibe.

This photo is before and after I edited the paintbrush on adobe Lightroom. I edited the temperature to be darker and have more colour and changed the exposure to -50 to have a darker feel in the picture.

Walker Evans

Walker Evans began to photograph in the late 1920s. Walker Evans is known for his black and white images. He uses low light in his work which helps create the shadows he focuses on.

Darren Harvey

Darren Harvey’s photography has similar vibe but a different ambience as the colours used are a lot of brighter colours or more light involved to make the picture look sharp with the shadows behind the photos.

Formalism is the structure in a photograph. There are seven basic elements in formalism.

Lines – Lines are either straight, curved or a combination of the two. They can also be solid, dashed, interrupted, implied, or psychological. Horizontal lines can indicate distance and vertical lines can indicate height, balance, strength. Diagonal lines convey a more dynamic scene.

Shape – When a line connects to other lines it creates a shape. Shapes are two-dimensional. They can be measured by overall height and width. Shapes are defined by their value e.g. brighter or darker than their surroundings, differences in colour, texture and patterns. There are two different kind of shapes, geometric (circle, square) or organic (tree, bird)

Form – Form takes shape from the two-dimensional and brings it into the three-dimensional, form has overall height, width and depth. there are two different kinds of forms, geometric (sphere, cube) or organic (surroundings). The photograph shows form by capturing the spectrum of tonality from highlights, through the midtones, and into the core shadow on any object.

Texture – texture can be felt with both touch and virtually. Texture in “real life” can be smooth or rough. Other descriptions can be slimy, wet, hard, soft, bumpy, shiny, etc. In a photograph, smooth objects might have reflections or specular highlights. Rough objects might have aggressive areas of light and shadow without reflections.

Colour – Light itself has no perceived colour. But, send light through a prism or a drop of water and we can see that it is comprised of a literal rainbow of colours. Colour has three properties: hue, value, and saturation. Bold and bright colours are known for grabbing our eye. Harmonic colours are colours that compliment each other.

Size – Size in a photograph is relative and can be an illusion. The camera, lens, and print can render large objects small, or small objects large. Even objects familiar to our eyes can be rendered relatively large in a photograph, while things we know to be enormous are rendered small.

Depth – This perception of three-dimensional space is what our eyes experience whenever they are open, and that is what our eyes try to experience when looking at a photograph. Depending on the quality of the surrounding air or atmosphere, distant objects in a photograph will have less clarity and contrast than objects in the foreground. This Ariel perspective is indicative of depth in a photograph.