How to shoot small fresh still life photography

In recent months, more and more photographers in Weibo like to share their preset colors. Of course, I am one of them. However, some people have found out why the original author can get very good results with the same preset, but it is not effective or even counterproductive when used in his own photos.

In fact, a large part of the reason is that you didn't control the color well in the early shooting. So, what should a good life photography do in terms of color?

(1) color selection

First of all, what we need to know is the warm colors dominated by red, orange and yellow, and the cool colors dominated by green and blue.

This is a color circle diagram. As we all know, all the colors that our eyes can see are in this picture.

A photo with fresh colors should be bright and elegant, which can give people a feeling of healing after reading it. So I often use blue, green and yellow as the main colors in my pictures. Avoid a lot of brown, purple and red, which can soften the picture.

Secondly, among the three kinds of achromatic color, black, white and gray, white is the most refreshing, whereas black will give people a sense of depression.

Just compare the photos of two cats, a black cat and a white cat:

After comparison, we found that even if we shoot in similar environment and light, the white cat will look much fresher. To sum up, we should use blue, green, yellow and white to take fresh and natural photos.

(2) Color matching

In addition to the color selection mentioned above, color matching is also very important for a photo. If you follow the above color selection method when shooting, then you have succeeded a lot. Next, we need to match the colors of blue, green, yellow and white.

Generally speaking, we need to choose adjacent colors in the color circle, for example, blue and cyan are adjacent and can be matched together; Yellow-green and green-flavored yellow are adjacent and can be matched together. Of course, this doesn't work at all times. Life can't have so many coincidences.

A photo should have neither too many colors nor too few colors. It is best to limit it to three or five colors. Too many colors will be chaotic, too few colors will be too monotonous.

If black, purple and red are inevitable colors in the picture, then we must reduce their proportion in the picture as much as possible.

Second, composition skills

(1) Regarding the composition of life photography, I have always adhered to the principle of "no composition". When I say no composition here, I don't mean completely ignoring composition when taking pictures, but I mean not being bound by a series of theories of composition. I often see some photos on the internet that put all kinds of still life in a regular way. I can't see the words "life" and "temperature" in this photo that blindly pursues theoretical composition. The truer and more natural photos are, the more touching they are and the more healing they can be.

(2) Look at the world from a different perspective. When shooting the same scene, the person who looks up may take a plain picture, but the person who looks up can attract people's attention, which may be caused by different perspectives.

Imagine the same scene, what is the difference between what ordinary people see, what cats see and what bees see? Imagine again, which of the three is more unique to human beings? The answer is self-evident, so we change our perspective when shooting and imagine ourselves as a cat, a bee and so on. , so the photos taken must not be bad.

(3) Pay attention to the details in life. The details of life are full of shooting surprises. Pay more attention to observation, such as a few leaves on the car wiper and a broken net on the court.

(4) 4) The screen ratio of 6x6 is my favorite, and the square border itself is full of harmony and design, which can add points to the shooting effect.

The current SLR can't preset the frame rate in the early stage, so we need to cut it in the later stage, which requires us to determine the composition of the picture in the early stage. If the subject is too far to the left and too far to the right, it will be difficult to cut it.