CHAPTER 16More fun with still-life photography

 

In March 2010, one of the photo clubs I belonged to must have been discussing still-life photography, and how best to do it. "Doing it" involved lighting and background, especially.

I don't recall today whether the pictures in this chapter were taken as part of an actual assignment, but I know I took the subject matter to heart -- and with some levity -- and spent considerable time setting up the dining room table of my home again to serve as a station for various still-life photo concepts that came to mind.

The more I reviewed the pictures from this shoot, the more I think that the Indy Meetup Photo Club asked members to integrate monetary currency into a photo, but I wouldn't swear to it. But when I came across the photos from that session recently while preparing this series, I knew I had never used any of the material from my 2010 shoot in a blog post ... even though it would have been more than a year since the blog had launched. So I thought this series would be an appropriate way to introduce into the blog's official record the crazy concepts I came up with for my still-life experimentation at that time. 

I'm sure I borrowed (*wink*) the bottle of Crown Royal to use for the currency centerpiece. As for the empty Bud Light beer can, I must have picked it up in the nearby park (*wink*) on one of my various  ventures there. (Actually, as an aside, years before this shoot, one of my children's friends once tried to make me believe that an empty liquor bottle they had in my daughter's room one day was something they had found and picked up in the park -- and NOT discarded.) 

But I digress ...

When I tired of the liquor bottle shots, I grabbed a stuffed toy frog (above) that belong to my other daughter and decided to festoon it with the $20 bills, eventually integrating the pennies into the composition (below). I must have been annoyed by the encroaching shadows from all directions on the photo above because the shot below shows shadows appearing only at the bottom of the photo.

 

The next day, I limited my still-life to just this jar of popcorn salt (above), which I had just purchased at the grocery store. The levity thing must have gone with the wind, because I didn't even try to integrate anything else silly into the photo.

 

Going back three years from that 2010 shoot, I also tinkered with some other still-life experimentation, again using the dining room table as my "studio." I came up with the image above, an artificial plant that had been given to me as a gift. And in the following month, I played around some more with still life ideas, this time using a "fork in a row" and/or "forks lined up in a row" concepts that eventually included table salt and pepper shakers. The variations I played with are shown below. 

As you can probably tell, throughout the shoot, I varied the background type, the subject elements' position and even the lighting and consequential coloring. I'm not sure I came up with anything I was completely satisfied with, although I will say I enjoyed the gleam coming off the forks in images 3, 4, 5 and 6 below. I cannot remember what was responsible for that. Probably flare from a direct hit of the dining room window light on the open, reflective portion of the fork.  

As for the gray cardboard backgrounds ... in some cases it appeared that I must have healed a lot of the lines in post-processing at the time. At some point, I gave up the line healing and let the lines stand.  

I do know I spent a lot of time, while preparing this chapter, healing tiny spots I was finding on the images. I don't know if those spots materialized on the background boards ... or from the camera sensor. So if you see any spots still on there, I obviously missed them. 

I end this chapter with a final still-life endeavor I had some fun with, mostly because the unusual tomato you see below came from my own backyard garden in summer 2010. 

I thought it was a shame to eat the three-section tomato right away, so on Aug. 26 of that year, I quickly put together my makeshift dining room table still-life "studio," this time using a dark blue blanket for background. I believe I used the natural light from the room window for lighting. And other than doing spot healing on white specs of dust that appeared on the blue towel, this is exactly as the tomato appeared. 

While putting this chapter together, it occurred to me that I haven't done serious still-life experimenting like this since these shoots almost 15 years ago. That might be because it took a lot of work to set them up on furniture I know I'd need to use again soon for their given purpose, and to adjust and tweak, and/or sometimes reshoot repeatedly in order to get it close to being what I was aiming for. 

Maybe you've gone through the same thing ... 

Coming tomorrow: Chapter 17, Depew Memorial Fountain, University Park, Indianapolis  

Previously in Catching Up ... on pre-blog years:

Introduction

Chapter 1: Seek the Riot metal band

Chapter 2: City of Franklin, Ind.

Chapter 3: 2004 Memorial Day weekend tornado 

Chapter 4: 2006 Irvington Walk in the Park

Chapter 5: 2008 Irvington Walk in the Park

Chapter 6: Irvington Neighborhood, Indianapolis

Chapter 7: Lockerbie Square Neighborhood, Indianapolis

Chapter 8: Garfield Park-South Neighborhood, Indianapolis

Chapter 9: Tulips from home garden

Chapter 10: Indianapolis-Marion County Public Library and Downtown architecture

Chapter 11: First shoot using RAW format

Chapter 12: 2007 Miracle Mile Parade, Indianapolis

Chapter 13: 2008 Miracle Mile Parade, Indianapolis

Chapter 14: 2010 neighborhood yuletide lights, decorations

Chapter 15: Forking out over a class assignment

The colors, foliage of spring

I've been remiss here for a good couple months. Photo shoots have been down, but busy work -- photo and otherwise -- have kept me away from the computer to compose for great lengths of time, which is required of a blog post of the sort that I usually offer here.

So, I'm once again in the position of playing catch up, and I begin today with something in my recent shoots that I really enjoyed, a recent leisure shoot of the spring flora and foliage in my gardens at home. These images were taken in two outings -- the initial, longer shoot using a Sigma 105mm f/2.8 macro lens on a Canon 7D, the other no more than 10 minutes or so using my iPhone.

What you'll see here are tulips in my backyard circular and rear fence-line gardens, tulips, daffodils and frog figurines from my front yard garden; foliage from the perennials coming to life again; and even a closeup of a pair of dandelions.

Leading off the post is one of the iPhone pictures, a back-light composition taken just yesterday on a day when sunshine prevailed most of the day. Also an iPhone picture is the full circular garden and red bud tree perspective photo at the bottom of the post. The rest were taken with the 7D and macro lens two days earlier on a day when heavy clouds and splashes of rain were the day's weather in Central Indiana.

The first frog figurine you see below is from the front garden. This critter has lost a lot of its solid green color over the years, but the increasingly visible rust color seems to help it blend better with the crushed leaves and cedar-chip mulch. It reappears in a picture several frames below there, a perspective shot with the front garden tulips as a backdrop ... and juxtaposed as if the frog were guarding the bed. I did not pose the frogs for the shots; this was the position they were in when I started shooting.

The other frog figurine looks as if it is one with the daffodils, which date back to my first plantings in that garden, in 2004, the year I removed four monstrous yew bushes that concealed most of the porch from street view. The frogs joined the plantings a year or so later. There was a third frog, but it mysteriously vanished two years ago.

The orange tulips serve as the main attraction of my spring gardens in this, their fourth year, and now that the nearby red bud is flowering, the circular garden will be the focus for as long as the tulip petals last. Two purple tulip plants, new this year, were added as accents to each of the circular and front gardens.

Out in the country ...

Re the headline: Anyone for a little Three Dog Night? OK, I thought not, so I'll just move right along.

I had an opportunity to shoot landscapes, flowers and nature on Sunday on some private property near Martinsville in Morgan County (Ind.). It was an outing of the Indy Meetup Photo Club, so I used the occasion to capture multiple exposures on most of my landcapes to later process in Photomatix, the high-dynamic range (HDR) melding software I acquired a couple months ago.

My "nature" shots were limited; there were birds all over the place, as the property owner maintains quite a few birdhouses and feeders. But the birds must not have trusted or liked me; I could hear them quite a bit, and on several occasions, I camped out on a bench where the property owner suggested I wait because, she said, eventually they will come. But, no such luck for me there, except for a shot or two of a bird on a tree branch, no where near any of the feeders. Nor did I see any frogs at the frog pond, a man-made basin the owner installed at the foot of a steep hill in the back of the property that helps collect runoff and leave the remainder of the property relatively dry in damp weather. 

Now ... I did get a shot or two of a baby alligator in the west pond ... except that ... well, the gator isn't real. The owner has it there to dress up the scene -- and perhaps for comedic effect. So I shot it in HDR to try and help make it seem real. I did grab a few shots of lady bugs on flowers and some floral macros sans bugs or other insects (mostly early-season blooms like crocus). I'll post those on another day. 

This post is about the HDR shots from Sunday. The shots I was most excited about were the tree reflections on the southwest pond, the shots of the landscape along the road on the property's south perimeter and -- leading off the post at the top -- the one of the silo in the distance, a vista visible from the end of the property's owner's dead-end street.

To view a full gallery of HDR images from this shoot, follow this link.

Above and next two below: Different shots of the southwest pond, where I was struck by the reflection of the trees in the background. 

Above: the "alligator" that isn't real. 

Above and below: Portrait (vertical) and landscape (horizontal) perspectives of a scene in the property owner's peace garden. I tend to prefer the portrait version; it doesn't have the distraction of the foreground birdfeeder.

Above: A two-layered birdhouse. Upper- and lower-class housing?

Above and below: Views of a wheelbarrow, whose color and shape provide a nice change of pace to a bucolic scene. Rustic ... and rust.
  

Above: A closeup of the dead -- and contorted -- tree in the background of the wheelbarrow photos. 

Above and next three below: Scenes from the creek that forms the east property line. The bridge is part of a road that forms the south property line.

Above: The frog pond that produced no reptiles for me to photograph during my visit. Instead, I tried to focus on some tree reflections in the small pockets of clear water on one end of the pond.

Above: Another birdhouse.

Above and next three below: Views of the look east along the road that flanks the owner's property. The bridge you see in the distance is the one pictured above from creek bank level.

 

Above and next two below: Western views of the same road, a vista I enjoyed mostly because of the tree on the road's horizon.

Above: A bark-stripped tree in the wooded portion that dots the ravine leading to the lower level.