Pumpkins Still Life
Pumpkins Still Life
Since a long time I am fascinated by the variety of pumpkins – in shape, colour, warts, appendices, curvatures and the mixture of all of these elements.
My first attempts to make still life photos of these subjects date back to 2008. Back then I was shooting with Canon 450D and 2 budget studio strobe lights + black paper background. I just improvised and the results were, well, of low quality and artistic value. Although I used refelected light by a studio umbrella, the light is too harsh, as well as the shadows as you can see in the photo below.
For 13 years I didn’t attempt any more still life photos and switched to other genres of photography. But 1 month ago I saw Joel Grimes “Still Life Masterclass”, was very intrigued and completed it. Geared with a very different camera – Sony 7A IIIR and Godox Speedlight + Dynaphos softbox and the knowledge from the excellent masterclass from Joel, I managed to achieve a completely different look and feel for my pumpkin still life session, as you can see below.
You can learn a lot from Joel’s Masterclass, but I will list for reference 4 major topics:
- how to choose your subjects and arrange them in a series of images in order to captivate your audience
- how to light your subjects with 1 light source and reflectors in order to achieve “Old Masters still life” effect
- how to use 50% gray background and manipulate it afterwards in photo editing software to obtain a unique atmosphere in your composition
- how to arrange your images in impressive series
Following all the steps from the Masterclass I shot my pumkin series and arranged my images in enneaptych (9 images put together) as they tell a different story, when put together vs when presented in single shots.
And because I already had all this magnificent pumpkins, after the studio session I took them outside for a walk and did a park session, which is also good looking, but in a different way and with mech less control over the lighting conditions.
