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Still Life Photography Tips - How to Shoot Great Pictures

Still life photography has many uses. Perhaps you want to take a photograph of a beautiful bowl of fruit or perhaps you have learned that an important key to eBay success is uploading quality photos of your products. Learning still life photography can also give you opportunities for selling your photograph downloads on microstock sites or to food magazines. No matter what your reason, still life photography is a great skill to learn and can give you some nice pictures to display in your favorite picture frames.

Unless you are photographing specific products or pictures for a magazine assignment, the subjects for your still life photography are endless. Fine art still lifes aren't limited to just apples and grapes. Even super simple items like a few artfully arranged spools of thread can be interesting and attract attention. These types of pictures can look beautiful displayed in decorative wood picture frames or unique ornate picture frames. Microstock sites like Shutterstock and iStock that cater to commercial users have a high demand for all sorts of still life, often of very simple objects, like a cup of coffee or a key.

People often times think of still life photography as a lot easier than other types of photography like sports or landscape photography. With stills, you often have full control over the composition and can arrange the inanimate objects exactly how you want them.

In other ways, good still life pictures are more challenging to capture. That's because they are close up so it's easy to spot imperfections like a blemish on a piece of fruit that would usually pass unnoticed.

Despite its challenge, using basic photography skills and the following tips, you can create quality still life pictures.

Lighting for Still Life Photography

With most professional photographers, they use a light box or soft box to take their still life photos. However this isn't absolutely necessary as you will see in a moment, but it can be a big help. However, if you do want one, you can find a soft box online or you can easily make one using instructions you find online. The purpose of these lighting tools is to provide even light on the subject.

Another way to get this good quality light is to set up your shoot outside. In fact, a high overcast (bright overcast) sky creates a soft box effect where you get good lighting without the harsh shadows.

Composition for Still Life Photography

Arrange your objects in a pleasing composition. You should consider using classical composition techniques like the "Rule of Thirds," "Leading Lines" or "Frame within a Frame" for ideas of how to best compose your pictures. Arrange the items artfully and use your imagination to get the exact placement that you want. For example, if it's a picture of a piece of cake, instead of including the entire table setting, place a gleaming, silver dessert fork upside down on the plate and remove a tiny bite from the cake.

Fill the Frame with Your Subject

Remember, the only thing that should be in your viewfinder or on your preview LCD screen is your composition. You need to remove any distractions or clutter from the background so you can have a clean and up close image. If you have a backdrop or background you don't like don't worry about it because it can be easily solved. The light box or soft box will solve this problem, but if you're taking pictures outside and have a distracting background simply place a piece of white foam board behind your subject and you'll be all set. Be sure to use Macro mode so that you get a sharp image.

Look for a Good Angle and Start Shooting!

Rather than taking a picture from your head level, try holding the camera so that it's at the same height as your subject. Then take some shots from varying angles.

Hopefully you can start applying these still life photography tips immediately so you can start seeing a difference in the quality of your still life images.

Fast Food Photography Light-Box

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