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

A night shoot in Zionsville, Ind.

In a final push to capture nighttime holiday decorations, I accompanied a group of photo enthusiasts to the town of Zionsville, a northwest suburb of Indianapolis, on Thursday night, two days before Christmas. It was my fourth or fifth opportunity to put my new PowerShot G12 to the test, and I remain pleasantly impressed with its ability to deliver fine, sharp RAW images at shutter speeds as slow as 1/15 and even an occasional 1/6. Those were my default settings using Program mode and an ISO of 1600.

We were hoping to hook up with the Indianapolis Hiking Club, which was having its annual tour of Zionsville and Chocolate shop stop outing. But by the time we got out of the eatery where we dined beforehand, we apparently had missed the rendezvous. The four of us meanered through the nearby neighborhood then returned downtown to shoot.

We ended the evening in the upstairs restaurant called Plum's Upper Room, where we had a chance to experiment with different still life opportunities using our plate and drink dishes as subjects. Our nice waiter, seeing us shoot away, even brought over an empty wine bottle, suggesting that it might make for an interesting subject of our images. He was right.

I also tinkered, for the first time, with the HDR (high-dynamic range) feature on the G12; it captures three images at different exposures with one press of the shutter, then automatically melds the best exposure elements of each of those three captures into one, amply-exposed image. You get the best brightness, best contrast and best dark characteristics of the image. Because you are shooting multiple images when using HDR, you need to use a tripod to ensure stability (no camera shake). I didn't have a tripod, so I rested the G12 on the table. The HDR feature is an "automatic," not "creative," mode, however, which means the image will be rendered as a JPG, not a RAW data file. That was fine with me, as I didn't buy the camera for this feature, though it did pique my interest. However, I did like what I saw of it, and I'm likely to explore it more. I'll show you a frame from one of those HDR images near the bottom of this post.

A lot of the shots you see in the second half of the photos are looking into window displays of downtown Zionsville storefronts. The lead image at the very top of this post features two Zionsville landmarks: In the foreground, the Christmas tree that the town erects in the middle of brick-covered Main Street each December. And yes, cars respectfully drive around it. The structure in the background is Carter's Toy Museum and Ice Cream Parlor.

The first several images below are simply homes within a two- to three-block range of the heart of downtown.

To view full galleries of my shoot at Zionsville and the Plum's Restaurant, where I stopped afterward. follow the respective links in this sentence.

 

I would like to have tried to capture the tree above with a DSLR mounted on a tripod and equipped with a wide-angle lens. But as it is, it didn't turn out too bad.

 

The angle gives the illusion that this street lamp is ensnarled by leafless branches. But in fact, the lamp hovers well away from the branches.

Above, a member of the photo group silhouetted while taking a shot of the most spectacular home we came across. We chatted briefly with a resident of this home who had come out to go to her car to run an errand. The image above and the next three below are from the same residence.

 

Above, a holiday decoration in the display window of the studio, shop and gallery of "Painter of Light" Thomas Kinkade.

Above, another juxtaposed illusion: The colored-lighted building in the background is about a block away from this Zionsville street clock.
 

Above and below: Two frames from the 15 or 16 I took of the combination of candleholders, water glass and wine bottle.

Above: New props: a dish with leftover brownie and orange slice (two forks indicating the person who ordered it -- not me -- offered to share) and a saucer and expresso cup.

The picture above is the HDR-treated capture. Notice the background details picked up and the milky brown color tones to the table, which was actually very close to what I remember of the table's color. You can see from the pictures above this, however, that the single-exposure, non-HDR treated photos pick up very little by way of background.

Above and below: I couldn't decide which of these -- color or B/W -- I liked better.

Above: A college sports-neutral retailer displaying the logos of Butler, Indiana and Purdue.

 

Above: It seems like model trains are part of so many decorative holiday displays this season. The gnomes on the right are a different touch, however.

Above: An exterior shot of the studio and shop (the Sanctuary) and restaurant (Ghyslain at the Sanctuary) owned by painter Nancy A. Noel.

Above: A horn of plenty, but hardly plentiful, in another window display among the downtown shops.

Blogger's note: Plum's Upper Room closed in 2014.

A tomato for the ages?

This is a still life of something I picked off the vine of a beefeater tomato plant in my yard the other day. I tried to explain this to someone in an email yesterday, and had trouble doing so. I finally said, "You have to see it to appreciate it!"

Which is what put the idea in my head to capture this as a still life. This is, indeed, one fruit -- a sort of siamese twins (triplets?) thing with two parts smaller than the third, and one part yellow, two parts red.

This fruit measured 15 inches at its maximum girth, in case you're wondering about perspective. I used window light from camera right and the angle was slightly left of center.

I haven't consumed this fruit just yet; it's hard for me to do it!