Beginner Still life, fruit and nuts re-take added

I quite like the second one, nice complimentary colours. Not so sure about the first tho. Just kinda looks like what it is a rather uninteresting bowl of fruit on a table. It's not my field so I dunno how to improve it. Exposures look fine tho.
 
Hi, For an early attempt I think you have done very well. The first shot is well lit and the exposure and colour are just about right, it's nice and sharp with a good selection of aperture.

The second shot is the best for me. The composition is very good with nice back lighting and once again good colour and exposure. The only criticism I have is that the point of sharp focus appears to be too far back on the sacking, with the nuts not being very sharp. Other than that I like it very much.(y)

Hope this helps.
 
BRASH said:
I quite like the second one, nice complimentary colours. Not so sure about the first tho. Just kinda looks like what it is a rather uninteresting bowl of fruit on a table. It's not my field so I dunno how to improve it. Exposures look fine tho.
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G.K.Jnr. said:
Hi, For an early attempt I think you have done very well. The first shot is well lit and the exposure and colour are just about right, it's nice and sharp with a good selection of aperture.

The second shot is the best for me. The composition is very good with nice back lighting and once again good colour and exposure. The only criticism I have is that the point of sharp focus appears to be too far back on the sacking, with the nuts not being very sharp. Other than that I like it very much.(y)

Hope this helps.
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Thank-you for commenting Gents, the fruit was shot with natural light and the nuts were back lit with a small amount of flash :)
 
For the first one, I'd get a little lower, more side on to the bowl, and maybe get some of the wall behind in shot, just to set it a little more in context.

The second one works better, but there's a lack of contrast between the walnut bag and the one below it.

Lightings not too bad, but perhaps try getting the light to shine in from the side rather than what looked to be head on in the first...
 
Hi Judi,

There have been a few comments on no.2 so I'll give you a few thoughts on the first one.
Exposure and colour all looks good to me and you've obviously given some thought to the surface that you've placed it on. Nice idea contrasting the grainy wood with the glass bowl and the fruit.
So all the elements are there, but there are a few things that I think would give it a lift from just being a bowl of fruit.

If you look at the composition you've chosen it's placed a little to the left of the frame, but everything is still fairly central in the image. It's also all very round - a round bowl and a fairly round mound of fruit on top of it.
This gives the impression of it all being very squashed, compressed and in the nicest possible way just not very interesting.

With this sort of subject, it often works well if you think in terms of creating loose triangles with your objects.
Just something simple like arranging the grapes so that they're draped over the edge of the bowl would immediately break up the round edges of the overall shape, give you one side of a loose triangular arrangement and allow you more scope to move the bowl further off centre in the frame without unbalancing the whole thing.

The other thing to think about is lighting. The window light from above has given you a good exposure on the fruit, but the glass bowl and wood surface are left in shade and looking a bit flat.
As I said, I love the idea of combining wood and glass to add some interest but they would really benefit from some lighting to bring out the textures. It doesn't have to be anything elaborate if you're just starting out - play around with home made tin foil reflectors to get some light bounced in from the sides at the bottom of the image. Nothing so harsh that you start creating unwanted shadows, but enough to give the glass some sparkle and bring out the wood grain.

Definitely on the right track though. Keep going and I hope we see more of these from you :)

EDIT : I see Mark snuck in there with a comment about side-lighting too while I was typing!!!
 
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TheBigYin said:
For the first one, I'd get a little lower, more side on to the bowl, and maybe get some of the wall behind in shot, just to set it a little more in context.

There is a black bg behind the fruit bowl as the window at the other end of the room was flooding too much light in and the table was one big flare it took all the nice colour out

The second one works better, but there's a lack of contrast between the walnut bag and the one below it.

I will try a different base maybe the table or i have a lge piece of cream marble ?

Lightings not too bad, but perhaps try getting the light to shine in from the side rather than what looked to be head on in the first...
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yes i have the window behind me, if I turned it to the side of the table let the light come from the side with reflectors is that a possible?

Thank-you Mark for your help much appreciated.:):)
 
SarahLee said:
Hi Judi,

There have been a few comments on no.2 so I'll give you a few thoughts on the first one.
Exposure and colour all looks good to me and you've obviously given some thought to the surface that you've placed it on. Nice idea contrasting the grainy wood with the glass bowl and the fruit.
So all the elements are there, but there are a few things that I think would give it a lift from just being a bowl of fruit.

If you look at the composition you've chosen it's placed a little to the left of the frame, but everything is still fairly central in the image. It's also all very round - a round bowl and a fairly round mound of fruit on top of it.
This gives the impression of it all being very squashed, compressed and in the nicest possible way just not very interesting.

With this sort of subject, it often works well if you think in terms of creating loose triangles with your objects.
Just something simple like arranging the grapes so that they're draped over the edge of the bowl would immediately break up the round edges of the overall shape, give you one side of a loose triangular arrangement and allow you more scope to move the bowl further off centre in the frame without unbalancing the whole thing.

The other thing to think about is lighting. The window light from above has given you a good exposure on the fruit, but the glass bowl and wood surface are left in shade and looking a bit flat.
As I said, I love the idea of combining wood and glass to add some interest but they would really benefit from some lighting to bring out the textures. It doesn't have to be anything elaborate if you're just starting out - play around with home made tin foil reflectors to get some light bounced in from the sides at the bottom of the image. Nothing so harsh that you start creating unwanted shadows, but enough to give the glass some sparkle and bring out the wood grain.

Definitely on the right track though. Keep going and I hope we see more of these from you :)

EDIT : I see Mark snuck in there with a comment about side-lighting too while I was typing!!!
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Hi Sarah thank-you for your help, if its ok with you I will copy and paste your replies to print them off, I am hoping to soon get some better lighting I do have two flash guns but find it hard to get good results with them, the shadows are far too harsh. Thanks again :):)
 
Hi Judi, absolutely !!!
Copy and paste in whatever way helps you.

It's far from the be all and end all but it's probably a decent enough starting point.

Once you get to grips with how lighting and composition affects the way your subject appears you can play around with it and mix things about.
For example, a central "round" composition like you have here would work well for a single type of small fruit in a bowl - strawberries or cherries perhaps. If you also limited your colour pallette to something like red berries in a plain bowl on a white background you'd get quite a graphic, striking image.
You might also deliberately want to make something look ordinary and mundane for a particular atmosphere or message in an image - perhaps as a contrast to something else unexpected in there. I'm currently imagining a huge, hairy Tarantula peering over your bowl of fruit :LOL:
 
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I'm FAR from being an expert with lighting, but most of my Still Life stuff was shot using either one or two flash heads (albeit mains powered studio flash with "modelling lights" rather than flash guns. This allowed me to dim the rest of the room and just simply experiment by moving the light around and seeing the effect of light in different places. How I actually "rigged it" was to use live view on the camera, tether it to a laptop and have the laptop facing me as I moved the lights about until I was happy with the "feel" of things.

It's surprising how much I managed to improve over the course of shooting a single project just by doing this though...

From...


Old Master Style Still Life (2) by The Big Yin, on Flickr

Too much of a looking down approach, messy arrangement, not a great deal of thought into the props, rubbish background (old curtains), and lit with an anglepoise lamp through a diffuser made from a cornflake packet and baking parchment...

through to something a little better...


Old Master Trial 2 by The Big Yin, on Flickr

Still a bit "iffy" on the props, but better angle on the bowl, using lines of items to match the curve of the bowl, and the Triangle trick that Sarah mentioned above on the fruitbowl... This was the first ones once I bought the flash kit, and was a real learning experience. Still don't like the table or backdrop though...

Then a few weeks more working at it, and came up with this,


Vanitas with Globe and Fruit by The Big Yin, on Flickr

finally happy with the table and backdrop (because I made them both for the purpose... the 2 weeks intervening were partly while I learned how to produce "stucco rustico" on a half sheet of plasterboard... If you follow the links back to flickr there's lots of information on all the "back story" and symbolism of the props as well.

By then, I was a little "still life-ed out" so had a break, but decided to have one more shot at it before the end of the year, and finally came up wiith something I was happy with...


Still Life with Wine and Walnuts by The Big Yin, on Flickr

This one had an awful lot of work put into the lighting, it was primarily lit by a large softbox to frame left - the one that's casting the "windowframe" highlights on the glassware etc. To get this effect I actually built a cardboard "windowframe" and attached it to the front of the softbox. The lighting was just a little too directional however so I used my other flash head directly above the camera shining straight on into the shot but at a far lower power setting than the main light - just to get SOME detail out of the areas in shadow. The set also had a large matt-black painted polystyrene foam board set to frame right just out of shot and another above the image to avoid unwanted reflections of other items in the room...

It May look like a tabletop arrangement, and to some extent it is, but to be honest, I could have done with a far larger room than the 5m x 4m spare bedroom...
 
Any excuse to repost that last shot, Mark! (Always nice to see it though ;))

Judi, to my eyes, the fruit bowl is showing too much bowl and not enough fruit. I would try draping the grapes over the side of the bowl to hide some of it and maybe even stack a few of the other fruits against it, possibly even just making a pile of fruit on the table and forgetting the bowl! I think having the grin of the wood table running diagonally rather than parallel to the bottom of the frame might work better (the joys of digital - free test shots!) I do like the nuts a lot though, I'm a sucker for monochromes that aren't straight B&W and the colours there are in that shot are all very similar so work together well. Could be time to ditch that "Beginner" prefix.
 
SarahLee said:
Hi Judi, absolutely !!!
Copy and paste in whatever way helps you.

It's far from the be all and end all but it's probably a decent enough starting point.

Once you get to grips with how lighting and composition affects the way your subject appears you can play around with it and mix things about.
For example, a central "round" composition like you have here would work well for a single type of small fruit in a bowl - strawberries or cherries perhaps. If you also limited your colour pallette to something like red berries in a plain bowl on a white background you'd get quite a graphic, striking image.
You might also deliberately want to make something look ordinary and mundane for a particular atmosphere or message in an image - perhaps as a contrast to something else unexpected in there. I'm currently imagining a huge, hairy Tarantula peering over your bowl of fruit :LOL:
Click to expand...
:LOL:
seriously though thanks a lot :)
 
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Nod said:
Any excuse to repost that last shot, Mark! (Always nice to see it though ;))

Judi, to my eyes, the fruit bowl is showing too much bowl and not enough fruit. I would try draping the grapes over the side of the bowl to hide some of it and maybe even stack a few of the other fruits against it, possibly even just making a pile of fruit on the table and forgetting the bowl! I think having the grin of the wood table running diagonally rather than parallel to the bottom of the frame might work better (the joys of digital - free test shots!) I do like the nuts a lot though, I'm a sucker for monochromes that aren't straight B&W and the colours there are in that shot are all very similar so work together well. Could be time to ditch that "Beginner" prefix.
Click to expand...

Thanks for looking and your reply Nod, I did take one or two with fruit at the side but thought that they looked too 'placed', if I turn my arrangement and shoot side on to the window the grain will be the other way. I hope to have another go at the weekend if not before :)
 
Much more pleasing IMO, Judi. Now they look like fruit in and around the bowls rather than bowls with some fruit in. See what I meant about having the grain at an angle as well - leads the eye through the image rather than straight across it. Using the wooden furniture as a backdrop helps keep it a bit more intimate too.
 
Thanks Nod, I'm a lot happier with layout now my only problem is lighting now, I would like to be able to use my flash guns but don't seem able to get enough output, both are quite high power so it must be something that I am getting wrong :( every thing comes out too dark.
 
I hope you don't mind me doing this Judi, but I just wanted to put the two glass bowl ones side by side . . . what an absolutely MASSIVE improvement !!! :clap:

Before


Bowl of fruit by 1 Jude, on Flickr

After


fruit in glass bowl by 1 Jude, on Flickr


The raspberries and blueberries is the stand out shot for me though. It's hard to believe that was all done with ambient light - beautifully lit and exposed with just the right amount of soft shadow detail.
It could do with a very slight clockwise rotation to straighten it up, but it really is a VERY good shot. Well done !!!
 
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a silly thing really, but you could try to polish the nectarine, orange and grapes to make the surface a little more shiny. This allows the highlights to glisten and make your fruit look a little more '3-dimensional'. You might want to try fruit that's a little more contrasty too, such as putting black cherries against granny smiths (and both are very shiny if you give them a good wipe), or something with a different texture (such as an avocado, lychee or kiwi next to a melon).
Also marks suggestion of putting something black on the opposite side to your light source as close to your subject as possible (but without it encroaching into your image) might make a difference by giving the shadows a bit more depth, as the highlights and shadows are what will make it look more 3-dimensional.
Try getting a little height into your image with a bottle, jug, vase or a piece of draped cloth in the background.
Hope this helps :)
x
 
Still life is typically brought to life through lighting. Play with light to create mood and shadows, this will make the shots more interesting.
The benefit of this stuff is it is simple enough to setup and keep playing around until you get it right. Find some reference images so you know what you are aiming to achieve that will help too ;)
 
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