10 Amateurs Try to Master Still-Life Photography in One Week | Glamour
over the next week everyone in this zoom meeting will be learning to do still life photography and at the end of the week we'll pick a photo to be evaluated by a professional photographer to see how much we've progressed i'm samantha barry i'm the editor-in-chief of glamour and this is day one this is day one day one of learning still live photography and i am petrified my experience with filming photography and still life is like negative i have none but i also love taking photos fresh out the womb doesn't even know what a camera is i have always gone into projects and tried to learn on the job my photography skills are limited to whatever is being posted to instagram stories most of my photography is taking pictures of family and friends because basic i know what aperture is and the f-stop in a time where we're surrounded by literally all of our belongings it'll be interesting to manipulate them in visually exciting ways my one goal for this experience is to be able to take a picture that a person who is like good at instagram could look at and be like huh i like to win so i don't i want to win the competition at the end so i would love to say that i am a research first person i am not i'm more of a trial and error learner i am a person who learns by action by doing things the best example of cell life photography is the photo that we discussed earlier by edward weston pepper number 30.
I feel like it doesn't look like a pepper no i'm uncomfortable looking at this i think it looks like two people like coiling together i'm looking at the angles it's so interesting some are kind of from the top and some are yeah it's a lot of deaths right it's not working with an iphone a new iphone tell you that i think the lighting and shadow work is the key here that picture was sold for 341 000 let's do this that's it let's do it [Music] i think i have a setup i might like i have to get this out of my system now if i don't i will be thinking about taking pictures of house plants for this entire project and that will help no one oh you need a light modifier for all of these so the mvp of my photo shoot apart from my dog is this flashlight it's super dramatic obviously handheld so i could manipulate my subject super easily and make it look way more interesting than just like the lighting in my room the photo that we discussed earlier pepper number 30.
I think i'm going to try and replicate that with something that i have i think a pineapple might do the trick i did google what is a still life photo a still life is a painting or a drawing of an arrangement of objects typically including fruit and flowers and objects contrasting with these in texture such as bowls or glassware and i do feel i fulfilled that with this art [Music] maybe i'm the only one who's gonna understand it but i'm excited to learn more and i don't know fun for a first day right it is day two of the still life photography experiment it's interesting i've already learned a lot first of all from the team we were on a text message thread last night and i was really impressed with a lot of their photos today's task is to learn a little bit more about how the camera works then to take a photo using clothes and make it funny we are going to google how do cameras work i don't know how cameras work so it's a great question for me it gets really granular and it kind of starts to feel like opposite day when you're talking about shutter speeds and f-stops but basically it just determines how much light is entering the camera the f-stop is relates to like the aperture of your camera and the shutter speed is how fast your camera clicks and how much light enters your camera when you're shooting i didn't know that there was a way that you could lock focus on a photo i knew you could press that like yellow square that comes up when you take photos but i didn't know you could lock it in it's called the ae slash af lock i feel like that takes so much pressure off yeah let's get started [Music] so i'm working on my pile my messy pile of clothes that is kind of a self-portrait because she's wearing vans and a beret i did something more conceptual that i hope is not uh worthy of being fired i originally wanted to call it eating ass but then i thought better of that [Music] i think my main takeaway is i feel like i let out some creativity and pent up energy that i had if inspiration doesn't strike right away just keep at it and something will come eventually all right it's day three of learning still life photography we're getting a little bit more into understanding the basics of what makes still photography work our challenge for today is to shoot anything incorporating products while considering traditional framing techniques in photography such as the rule of thirds so i just looked up the rule of thirds in photography the rule of thirds is a type of composition in which an image is divided evenly into thirds both horizontally and vertically and the subject of the image is placed at the intersection of those dividing lines or along one of the lines itself so you use the negative space to draw the eye to the subject matter in the right hand side huh interesting okay i'm gonna be honest that sounds like a bunch of gibberish to me before i even start doing anything i need to just look up photos and hopefully then i can apply that to my still life for today we'll see [Music] oh revelation i didn't realize this but i guess that's what the point of the grid on your iphone camera is so now that i know what the rule of thirds is i can play around with that let's dive right in shall we i've recently received some very pretty face oils to test so i'm going to see just to double confirm that they're more photogenic than me which i'm already 99 sure of i have no idea if i'm doing any of this right that is definitely in the back of my mind percolating as i do these challenges i am finding it a bit frustrating now that i can't quite improve the focus on the camera i have a ton of browns a cognac like leather chair this coffee table's wood and these are brown so i'm gonna try a monochromatic kind of moment [Music] i feel like i've actually learned something about framing a picture and not just sticking everything in the middle which is usually what i do and how to draw your eye to something with a very simple trick and that was that day three this is day four of the still life challenge today's challenge is to use kitchen items and take a dramatic photo using different lighting methods so different times of day natural versus practical earlier today we had a call with catherine who's going to be our final judge on this project the main thing that i think is always really important to think about is the difference between natural light and found light so there's this like very yellow light on my face coming from the lamp i am a huge fan of natural light i think it's incredibly beautiful and see how naturally the window just lights the side of my face like that when you sort of get rid of that yellow cast so when you're making your pictures i think it's so important to think about the light and a lot of times less is more the problem is i worked all day and lost track of time and so i don't have any natural light to work off of but catherine said something really interesting about computer lighting and refrigerator lighting there's light in all different places just because i personally prefer daylight generally that doesn't mean that the light from your freezer your refrigerator your iphone or the really harsh light in your bathroom may be the perfect light to make the picture that you feel like you want to make right now so it was really good to hear that we don't need crazy light sources to take photos especially since we are all bunkered down in our houses and don't have much available i have a really cool idea that i think could work so let's try it out i'm excited to see if it works [Music] my first thought was to use my dog's led light that i use when i take her out and it's really dark at night this sounds crazy i had the idea to put water on the mirror so i'm going to spill water all over this mirror now i was spending so much time looking at things from one angle that the minute i just changed my position i thought that the lighting was more in line with what i was looking for and the image was drastically different in terms of interest and there was just more depth and more dynamics to work with i got this pomegranate because the prompt is to create something dramatic and i thought that having the pomegranate blood maybe with a knife would definitely fit the bill i have this idea of turning off all the lights in my apartment leaving just my computer light on and using some kind of like bowl with holes in them to like let the light pop through the holes [Music] i'm like so excited about the photo i just put together so yeah successful day it's day five of the still life photo challenge today's challenge is to take a really simple photo of fruit i have a terrible awful idea and i'm gonna try to burn these i don't know what's gonna happen but it'll make for a fun time [Music] lapse burning the grapefruit didn't produce the effect that i was hoping for i think you need like a really dry fruit i decided to be very simple go back to what the actual assignment was and i took a grapefruit and i cut it and i thought it was cute because it actually kind of looks like an apple with a little leaf on it i was able to find a bell pepper and i figured okay we've talked so much about it let me see how hard this is or is it you know a really simple easy thing to photograph [Music] i found the more interesting shots for the ones where i went really up close to it like taking an object that looks boring and getting super super up close to it and turning it into something that you wouldn't expect that's it see you guys for day six hello and welcome to day six today my task is to create a picture that has meaning oh what is meaning even me i actually found this to be the hardest of all the challenges i think some of the other challenges like a simple photo of a fruit or a funny photo it's easier to just see something and go okay let's go with this but when it had some personal meaning to it i found that that i struggled with it a little more [Music] in december i was in a car accident i broke my wrist and my leg i needed three surgeries i was in the hospital for two weeks and in a wheelchair for about 12 weeks after i left the hospital this thing was such a challenge in my life and such a thing to overcome and it loomed so large and trying to convey that through the photograph so my grandpa used to call me firebug because i like playing with fire it all kind of i don't know it all kind of made sense to me it was like i was missing home my grandpa lives in orange county he calls me firebug and i had this awesome book of matches that i burned true to form and the pictures ended up really well [Music] i've learned that i've learnt nothing that i don't know enough yet it made me realize that i can express my emotions and feelings and other mediums besides writing to know i can do other things and still feel as good as i feel when i write a great article that's exciting welcome to day six it's day seven it's day seven welcome to day seven one last still life let's do it so i decided to try my hand at a flat way people do it all the time working at beauty and fashion brands but i can never really get it right [Music] so today we had the final critique with catherine about our still life projects i look forward to learning from her as much as a person who knows this little about photography can learn from a photography expert so we've done the seven days it's over we've made it through is there one person who wants to go first that's me so i think it would be helpful if you just talk through a little bit about your process and what drew you to these subject matters we had to do something with meaning i was in a accident in december i broke my leg and my wrist and i had been in a wheelchair for like 12 plus weeks at the start of the year i don't think it's my strongest like visually but in terms of like the storytelling aspect i spent the most time trying to convey that with the photo the way that it's backlit and the light is coming through the armature of it it's sort of a weighted meaning this is sort of what would be considered a worm's eye view and i think it's a really powerful way to make a photograph because you're really using the physicality of the camera to sort of create part of the story this was the day where it was supposed to be a meaningful photograph and it was it happened to be the first day in new york in a while that was hot and then it reminded me that my grandpa's nickname for me is firebug and i have a couple photos of the matchbook unlit although it's a little bit unfocused i ultimately went with the photo of the matchbook just lit up i think that it's like so powerful that it's not in focus because that makes me feel like something's really dangerous and happening like if it were perfectly in focus i would know that you were in control and what i like about this photograph is the chaos of the flame eight of them are burnt and one is red like it also gives me a sense of time and duration i think there's a lot going on here which is really exciting the third photo was part of the clothing do something with clothing it was one of those days where i did not know what day of the week it was i was like is it wednesday is it sunday i could not tell you it was kind of the perfect opportunity to pull out this dress kind of to symbolize like how lost i am in time and the concept of time and seasons and anything like that i think that it's really hard to be funny in photography it really takes rye and wit there's a photographer named martin parr he does a lot of work related to food and bodies and this picture sort of reminds me of that kind of cheeky sort of sensibility i think this is a pretty funny great photograph this was the day we did the lighting assignment and i just turned my computer line on and then turned all the lights off in my apartment it ended up giving this what i think is like kind of cool like spaceship meets nightclub vibes and it just really made me think about like nights out dancing with my friends a photograph can tell us something without telling us something exactly it feels like i'm in a club there's like a disco ball and i really get the sense of your longing in that photograph and it feels really inventive and experimental like something three-dimensional in the real world that i have maybe never seen before which is interesting for the clothing picture i am back in my parents home where i wear sophie shorts and so i wanted to put the shorts in a meal scene and think about like how we use clothing to serve up our bodies kind of for consumption and especially sometimes being in jewish spaces a piece of clothing has so much weight and of course the way you wear it on your body has so much so i enjoyed putting that in a more traditional domestic scene conceptual photography is more about like an idea based photography and that's what i feel like is really going on here the visuals and the conceptual elements come together and work together which is again i think a really like fine line an important line when making work i would say the challenge here was just kind of like trying to pare down and figure out the focus of the shot i felt like it was pretty clear that that chunk of pomegranate was the focus but then there's still tons of drama all around thinks of the dye and you sort of want to know what carnage lies beyond what i love about this picture is the sense of like something that's happened before right like we're coming upon a dinner party that ended or a picnic that went awry or something and so i might have taken out a few of the vases sometimes less is more and so i think that with a little bit more open space that narrative could be a little more ambiguous baseball has always been part of my life i played little league as a kid i was the only girl on the team it kind of you know indicates both this great thing that my dad and i love to do together and then also mowing the lawn which both are very calming for me the way that you've cropped it um you know it verges on abstraction even though we all know exactly what we're looking at and so i think that's part of what makes it successful as well i was really inspired by the pepper number 30 photo that we saw i did take a few photos in color that day but they didn't really speak to me as much as this one i put it up near our window and the light shined through but it still obscured a lot of what was happening in the photo so i like this one a lot i think it was a really smart decision to put it in black and white and i think that the dark grays and the blacks are really mysterious and i don't know what it is about the perspective but i feel disoriented and that's good i don't know whether i'm standing above it or under it or you know it sort of gives me the illusion of being in a tropical place i think it's really beautiful the way that the blacks and the whites are described by the light it was the day that you spoke to us and you talked a lot about lighting and how to utilize light in spaces where you have none and we live in a basement and so i turned off all the lights in our really long living room and i left one tiny spotlight right at the end and i was just walking around the room and i saw that when i stood against this portion of the room the light hit me in a way that i think expressed how i was feeling at the time the way that the silhouette and the light refraction appears to sort of be melting your head is like it's almost like it's pouring down it's really really beautiful it's definitely a still life right i mean we don't know who we're looking at i think that really is powerful once i took the photos i was less drawn to the imagery of the actual bottles and more kind of in love with the reflection of the window and the lamp in in in the background it wasn't what i set out to do i really wanted to make the product look pretty but i i don't think i succeeded in that in this photo in particular for me this is the way i love to see product right to see it how people really use it this just really sets a scene in my mind that i think is really atmospheric and beautiful the pictures are really amazing and i would definitely choose one from each person and create a gallery and i think that it'll be really amazing how powerful and strong the photographs are and so different right they're so diverse and they represent so many different points of view thank you we did it we are at the very end of the glamour still life challenge the still life photo challenge is officially complete i am so happy i did it it kind of felt like an end of the year project like i felt like the ice cream truck was going to come outside afterwards and our parents were like going to let us all get ice cream to celebrate our accomplishments catherine was amazing and hearing her talk about these photos and really like dig deep into them it was it was great at the end of this challenge i am feeling pretty satisfied with the progress i think i've made i've learned to keep trying um keep experimenting i think this project will definitely lead me to explore other things that i'm interested in but might be intimidated by what i really appreciated about the critique and just this entire process was getting feedback from everyone in the group and fellow glamour teammates i think if we hadn't had that group text message shred if i wasn't seeing what everybody was sending every day i think i would have lost a bit of momentum i think doing it as a team really helped me to follow through rather than just try it once or twice and then give up it was a really great chance to feel part of the group when you feel so alone right now so yeah i think that if you are going to try learning a new skill you should definitely get your friends involved and have fun with it really find some kind of joy and if it's not making you happy take the day off don't do it i ended the week with a photograph i'm really proud of i think overall that makes everything a success in the end i would recommend taking up still life photography to others even though i can see that i'm not obeying the rule of threes at all in this selfie video i am taking i would still recommend it long story short this is great and i hope you learned something out of this from others and you get to try it and see how things go that's it for me you
