Thoughts on Still Life Style (Be Still 52, #3)

Wedding Bud Vase

Only three weeks into the course, I can already tell that Kim Klassen's Be Still 52 is going to be a winner. This week's lesson was jammed full of all kinds of information and ideas. I chose to focus on two things from lesson #3: beginning to define my style and working with different textures in backdrops. I spent about two hours this morning shooting still lifes! I've got about 50 images still to process and cull through, but I wanted to share these first three with some thoughts on still life style. Kim shoots a lot of flowers, and I went out to the yard today to see if I could find any. I found one bud on my hydrangeas with which to work. "Wedding Vase Bud" is one of my favorite photographs from this morning's shoot. I like the focus, the cropping, lighting, and sense of peace. It is also very much in the same style as Kim's still life work.

Winter in California

Here's another of my favorite photographs from this morning's session. It features the same hydrangea bud, but this time positioned on one of my favorite props (an old wash board) and shot out doors on my back deck. This one feels much more like me - there's more saturated colors, a bit more quirkiness and more energy. It's still heavily influenced by Kim, in terms of focus, cropping and subject (the hydrangea), but it feels much more like me.

Boy's Life (taken on my ipad; unedited)

And, finally, here's one I took in my studio yesterday afternoon when I was digging out my washboard and looking for various props to include in a still life. It kindof fell together, and I really liked the composition. I didn't have my camera with me, but I had my ipad and decided to try taking a photograph with it. I really like the end result. It's go a bit of a journalistic feel to it. It tells a story. It feels almost like a mixed media/collage version of still life. Something that is very much me and hardly any Kim at all.

I don't think there's any right or wrong here. Just some thoughts on a journey which I am enjoying very much. If you take still life photography (or any photograph), do you have a style that you can identify? Which of these three photographs appeals to you? For long time readers, which one do you think is the most me?