Still Life Photography: Found and Created

Credit: C-reel

Experienced photographer and teacher Ben Long has an interesting key takeaway about still life photography. He simply said:

“Nothing is moving and you’re in complete control - Ben Long”

Still life images can be about anything that does not move. Sometimes, they are life forms like flowers, fruits, plants, rocks or shells. But most of the time, still life images take the form of inanimate objects arranged in a pleasing composition within the frame. 

In still life photography, artists create images rather than take them. It’s a learned skill in which the artists are required to be able to form their work with a delicate sense of lighting, combined with compositional skills-- the composition is king. One thing that makes still life unique is that often the objects are just something ordinary that people normally didn’t pay much attention to. This doesn’t mean that the objects of still life are not interesting. In fact, every object in the still-life photo has some sort of attractive feature. It can be the shape, the object’s function, or texture. There must be something appealing about the objects. And it’s the artist’s job to figure out what that something is or create “appealing looks” with lighting, props, composition, and so on. Surely, the goal is to do both to create a stand-out image. 

Technically, still-life photography covers two different categories. You have found still life and created still life.

Found Still-Life

Found still life is when you photograph inanimate objects as is without making adjustments. Nothing is moved into place by the photographer and no perfecting is involved; perhaps rearranging them somewhat but sometimes not. The idea of found still life is like something that you run across it naturally rather than set it up. It can be a natural or everyday object that is captured and treated as something with artistic value. In found still life, the photographer is like a narrator that tells a story and shows the emotion of the found object. Of course, the excitement comes from noticing beauty in the course of nature and ordinary life. Take an example from the legendary photographer, Irving Penn who photographed litter he found in the street and turned it into the series of “Cigarettes” and “Street Material”. Although these two personal works of Irving Penn are different from the idea of found still-life in the process as what he found was perfectly composed against a white background. But through his eyes, street litter became something captivating and even iconic. 

“I can get obsessed by anything if I look at it long enough. That’s the curse of being a photographer - Irving Penn”

Created Still-Life

A created still life is where the artist builds the entire composition-- from choosing the most photogenic property to the objects of still life, arranging the position, light, and other elements. Here are a few of its subcategories :

• Product Photography

Credit: Still-life by Sam

Product photography is considered a type of created still life because it involves shooting inanimate objects. The main objective is to showcase a product and generally focus on providing a clear image of the product with white background and used for commercial purposes. Aside from the clear and plain type, some product photography does adopt the strong characteristic of still life shots that has artistic direction and creative tendency.

• Food Photography

As a part of still life, food photography is similar to product photography. Only, the main objective is to portray food in an appealing way. When it comes to food photography, styling is something that you can’t avoid.

• Tabletop Photography

Credit: Still-life by Sam

When people think of or hear about still life photography, the tabletop is what usually comes to their mind. Like the name, tabletop focuses on capturing objects placed on a table based on the photographer's art direction. The most common photographic objects on the tabletop are usually food and drink as well as commercial products such as cosmetics and gadgets.

“In the age of Instagram, everyone is a still-life photographer. Now, still-life is all about developing your own style. And so I would say to break the rules! - Hannah Concannon”