-
Kitchen stories
The March assignment in my still-life photo project for this year featured “Kitchen stories”. As each kitchen hides and reveals countless objects and activities, I initially thought it would be an easy theme. But as I discovered, when you dig into the details, this is too worn, that is too reflective, this does not look as interesting as expected and those elements simply don’t complement each other… Among my ideas was a composition with frozen strawberries placed in an old metal bowl alongside frozen blueberries and a beautiful dish towel. I loved the result – until I noticed the blueberries had smudged the plate they were sitting on, the strawberries had unsightly…
-
Shapes and shadows
The February assignment in my still-life photo project for this year focused on capturing “Shapes and Shadows”. When the sun shines, you can find countless interesting shadows outside. I was fortunate to discover one on our terrace, just in front of the doors. We have several pots decorating the terrace in winter, and in some of them stand rusty metal plates depicting trees, a mushroom and a hedgehog. I love watching the shadows they cast. While incorporating shadows into still life photography may sound simple, the opposite is true. You can take a photo with a shadow in it and it can be both nice and interesting but creating one that…
-
Winter warmth
When planning my still-life photo project for this year, I chose “Winter warmth” as January theme. My goal was to capture the feeling of being warm and comfortable despite winter chill. I even unwrapped the light chain I bought several years ago to use it one day in my photographs! As I imagined warmth, my mind filled with a cup of good tea to enjoy, an absorbing book to read, soft glow of candle light to admire, and comfortable layers of warm clothing to wear, such as sweaters, scarves, hats, and gloves. A bunch of Muscari flowers helped to add a pleasant touch of winter’s quiet beauty to my composition.…
-
My photo project for 2025
For 2024 I decided to get back to still life photography and now at the end of the year I am quite disappointed by what effort I made or rather didn’t make. Just a few posts with just a few shooting sessions, not much time and effort devoted. When starting that project, I decided not to limit myself by planning any topics or assignments. I thought it would be easier then, but I am afraid the contrary was true. The free arrangement did not motivate me enough. I always struggle to come up with interesting ideas for photos, I find it difficult to start, and it supported postponing and avoiding…
-
Flower, ribbon and crate
Getting back to playing with simple still life compositions… their light and shadows… shapes and colours… Sometimes a small difference makes a huge impact.
-
Frustrating lilacs
Frankly, my photo project for this year hasn’t been progressing much, I haven’t been feeling inspired at all lately. Yet I admit, I know that good results are much more often achieved based on persistency and regular showing-up than on the famed inspiring sparks, and more often than not there is an opportunity to do something about it. My last photo post featured some lilacs from our garden and though they are long gone, more of their photos inhabit my computer. I chose two more this time and after endlessly struggling through their processing, here they are… You know that frustrating feeling when you see what result you want to…
-
Lilacs
We had an exceptionally warm April this year and lilac bushes burst into flower almost three weeks earlier than usually. Felt sort of strange… But as lilacs are great flowers for any kind of photography, and still life is no exception, I used some of the flowers for playing with still life compositions. Here is one of them, in several editing results. It seemed to me I could get an interesting result when flipping the photo horizontally and adding it to some other version, so I created one more edit… …flipped two of them, and here is what came out of the experiment! What have I done? Now I cannot…
-
Rose, ribbon and heart
I had some time this morning for following my still-life photo project but the mind was not there at all. I took several objects out of cabinets and saw no usage in them so I put them back, and felt absolutely no inspiration for creating a composition. You know that oppressive silence inhabiting your mind instead of burst of ideas, don’t you? Frankly, that’s where I would have left before. But isn’t it the reason why we so often don’t get anywhere – because we give up too soon? We expect wonders from the beginning and when they don’t arrive fairly quickly, we don’t persist in the effort? Yesterday I…
-
Birdie and candle
As I promised myself, I started this year’s still-life photo project in the previous days and after the first two weeks I can tell you I find it quite technically challenging (as I expected so no surprise here). Controlling light is definitely not easy but together with visualisation it is the vital part of still-life photography… It is nice to have some helpful equipment but you must know how to use it, so first of all I need/ed So many options and for the moment such unsure results. But I do make the effort and I am really glad about it and already feel intrigued by all the possibilities. The…
-
My photo project for 2024
It is here… The New Year… 2024! And in this year I intend to start a new photo project of mine focused on still life, by which I mean manually created compositions photographed either indoor or outdoor. I paid attention to still-life photography back in 2015 and 2016, you can read about that experience here. I liked the style and wanted to continue to improve my skills as it was a genre I seemed to have a sense of. True, in the following months and years I took a few photos here and there after creating some simple still-life compositions but I missed guidance and lacked space, technical skills and…
