INDOOR STILL-LIFE

11 fun photo assignments you can enjoy in the warmth and comfort of your own home – take a still-life masterclass with James Abbott…

Still-life photography at home is a simple and, indeed, wide S subject that can feed your photographic desires at any time of the year, come rain or shine. Let’s be honest, it doesn’t matter how great the weather is outside, it’s not always possible to spare a few hours to get out shooting, which is where shooting indoors comes into play.

One of the most enticing aspects of still life photography is that it can be as simple or as complicated as you like, so we’re going to show you 10 projects you can try yourself; each with items that most people will have lying around the house, including using a desk lamp as a light source.

Our first project uses a desk lamp and paper reflectors to achieve studio-quality lighting to capture the shape and texture of a yellow gerbera against a sheet of A4 yellow card. The colour wheel suggests that blue would be the perfect complementary background colour, but matching the flower to the background creates an arguably more refined result.

PROJECT 1

FABULOUS FLORA

Master lighting and sharpness to capture fantastic shots of flora in the comfort of your own home

1 SET UP YOUR SHOT

Position the flower in front of the A4 card and angle your desk lamp to illuminate the front/top of the flower. Use sheets of white paper to reflect light into the shadow areas to brighten them.

2 CAMERA AND COMPOSITION

Attach your camera to a tripod and compose the shot. Use a kit or macro lens and shoot at ISO 100 with an aperture of between f/2.8 and f/11, depending on the desired depth of field.

3 FOCUS ON THE STAMEN

Focus on the lower part of the stamen to ensure this is the sharpest part of the flower, using either autofocus or manual focus. It doesn’t matter if the outer petals of the flower are out of focus.

James Abbott

PRO SHOT

Colour matched

Matching the A4 card background colour to the flower creates an eye-catching image, where the flower stem provides the contrast required to make the flower stand out. There’s no vignette here, although adding one in post-processing could help enhance the flower.

James Abbott

PROJECT 2

CREATE A GRAPHIC DRINK SHOT

Use simple photography and editing to create an infinite pattern

Repeating patterns can create an interesting infinite look, but these can require you to have abnormally large numbers of an object. So rather than spending your cash on something you don’t need, such as shot glasses, we’re going to cheat and use Photoshop to create a graphic drink shot using a ‘normal’ number of shot glasses.