Teach you how to share still life photography skills.

Lead: For a novice photographer, the easiest way to further improve his photography skills is to take a camera and shoot small objects that are often seen in daily life. For shooting portraits or landscapes, there may be many factors that cannot be mastered, but for all kinds of factors in still life photography, we are relatively easy to control. For example, when shooting a scene, if the light is too dim, move the subject to a place with light, or fill the light with a flash.

It is simple to teach you how to take a good still life photography and share this still life photography, but it is not easy to make a still life unique and artistic. Below, the author will share some skills of shooting still life with you, hoping to help you have a deeper understanding and understanding of still life photography.

Choice of theme

For the choice of subject matter, what kind of photos to take depends entirely on your own interests. But don't think that you must shoot fruits or flowers like others, and you can choose your subjects openly. For example, jewelry and colored stones, which are popular in the market now, are common decorations. They are smaller and have many styles. It is also a good choice to start with them ~

When shooting jewelry such as silver bracelets, you can use a large aperture to scatter the background and present a small aperture to add beauty to the picture.

For ornaments with national style, you can match an old cosmetic box to make the picture show a sense of nostalgia.

These ordinary colored stones have their own unique colors and textures after being magnified by a SLR camera. Is it interesting to observe them carefully?

? Show what you want to say to your beloved him (her) through the above shooting method ~

Shooting these small objects requires close-range photography, so the equipment used should be considered from the perspective of close-range photography. Therefore, for the choice of lens, I suggest using a medium telephoto lens or a macro lens. When using a medium telephoto lens, the closest focusing distance between the lens and the subject can be slightly larger, which is more convenient for light distribution. However, if the details of the shooting picture are required, you should choose macro lens to shoot.

Correct use of background

Choosing a good background plays a very important role in creating a successful work. For still life shooting, it is best to choose a simple and beautiful background, which will not have a great impact on your subject. Plain wall is a good choice.

? The white background wall makes the whole picture look simple and generous.

If you want to make the picture look richer and fuller, you might as well find some backgrounds with matching colors or backgrounds with great contrast.

? The harmonious combination of vicissitudes of background wall and foreground makes the picture look fuller.

For shooting silver ornaments such as rings, you can choose a bright background with large color contrast, which can highlight the texture of silver ornaments and make the picture look less monotonous.

For some small objects, it may not be necessary to use the background. We can use the substrate instead. For example, black velvet is a good choice, because it can absorb light and make the substrate look pure black.

composition

For still life shooting, there is no limit to the number of theme elements. So composition is particularly important. Before shooting, we should fully consider how to make our work achieve the best combination of various elements, which can not only make the picture look full, but also grasp the visual focus of the audience and not make the picture look messy. Below, the author will introduce several commonly used composition techniques for still life shooting.

1. Three-point synthesis method

Three-point composition is the most basic and safest composition method in photography. Divide the top, bottom, left and right of the picture into three equal parts, and their four bisectors intersect into four points, which is called the interesting center point, which is the best place to arrange works.

Triangular composition is often used in photography.

? 2. Dispersed composition

For shooting non-single objects, scattered point composition is the most commonly used composition method in still life photography. Random composition is a kind of free and loose composition structure, covering the whole picture without deliberately highlighting an object. Organize the pictures according to density or hue, so that the chaotic pictures are placed in order. This way of composition can give full play to the photographer's creative space, but friends have to work hard to make the picture look too messy.

When using the scattered point composition method, remember not to pile things together, which will make the picture look out of proportion.

? 3. Diagonal composition

Diagonal composition is a composition with the greatest visual impact and the strongest sense of movement. If you choose it properly, the effect will be good.

? 4. Triangle composition

Triangular composition is usually a triangular whole composed of three themes with the same nature. Because the three sides of a triangle are composed of straight lines in different directions, different straight lines form different forms of triangles, and different trends and changes will bring different feelings to people.

? Triangular composition shooting can make the primary and secondary pictures clear and dense.

? 5. Contrast composition

Contrast is a form of composition, and the polarization of contrast is widely used in photography, such as color contrast, texture contrast, size contrast, dark contrast and so on. But this composition method is also the most difficult to deal with, and most of the works that can successfully use comparative composition are extraordinary. Friends who have a certain photography foundation may wish to try more.

Solid grapes are in contrast to transparent utensils, and the smooth material of glass is in contrast to the folds of the base fabric.

? The metal mirror with smooth surface is in sharp contrast with the wooden board full of texture. Isn't this kind of shooting more interesting?

The use of light

The main performance of still life photography is to highlight the texture of objects. To show it, except some props, the key lies in the use of light. The light commonly used in still life photography includes direct light, soft light, side light and top light.

1. Application of soft light

Soft light is often used in still life shooting. It is not limited to shooting a certain kind of objects, as long as you want your image to show a hazy and soft artistic conception, you can use this lighting method.

Soft light mask will be used for soft light shooting.

? 2. Use of direct light

Direct light is suitable for representing some hard objects, which will give viewers a clear and powerful feeling.

? Direct light can show the metallic texture of hard objects.

? 3. Indirect explanation

Front light is generally used as auxiliary light, because it is not conducive to expressing the three-dimensional sense of objects. Side light has a good three-dimensional effect, and it is also the most suitable for expressing the texture of objects. Therefore, sidelight is the most commonly used in still photography.

? Porcelain should be shot mainly with positive light, soft light and refracted light should be used at the same time, the corners of the bottle mouth should be kept high, and the reflection should be minimized where there are patterns.

? Step 4: dome light

The direction of the top light and sunlight is the most similar, so this light distribution method can imitate the effect of sunlight projection and make the photo have a high light sense. Many works use this light as the main light.

? In the impression of many photographers, the more complicated the light, the better, and they like to shine all the light on the subject. In fact, this is wrong, because it can't reflect the layering of light, but it will leave a messy feeling.

Finally, the author reminds everyone that not only the lighting should be reasonable, but also the order of using light is very important. First, we should focus on the position of the main light, and then use the auxiliary light to adjust the contrast of the main light on the screen, highlight the level of the theme and control the projection.

Tone and emotion

An excellent photographic work not only records the truth, but more importantly, it can make the viewer feel the emotion it wants to express. Tone is the protagonist of expressing emotions. Good photography can usually convey emotions to the viewer.

Still life photography often creates different colors and expresses different emotions from the choice of props, colors, lighting layout and background. Sometimes a tone has a little contrast, just like inserting a pleasant high note into soft music, which is particularly refreshing. This technique is often used to express the theme in still life photography.

Making full use of color is my favorite way of photography. Pay attention to the color of elements, thus adding color to the picture and creating artistic conception. A good photo must give the viewer room for imagination. For example, the high-heeled shoes in the above picture remind me of a woman, whose casual posture seems like a sexy stunner, sitting lazily on the beloved rose throne, waiting for the dream lover to undress for it. Leng Yan's noble feeling highlighted in the whole picture is self-evident.

? Warm tones are also common tones in still life shooting. Its soft color temperature will give people a feeling of wanting to be close, and it is usually used to shoot nostalgic images. For example, the picture above is a copper pocket watch, a leather notebook, a small iron object, and a freely curled drawing. The whole picture with warm colors is like showing a corner of the study of the rich in the United States in the 1920s.

The above are the still life photography skills that the author shared for everyone. Once you have mastered the shooting skills of a single object, try to shoot several objects together, preferably with different shapes, colors and textures, and see if you can get good results. What are you waiting for? Set your camera, set your background, adjust the appropriate light source, find a unique and charming object, and start shooting!