Using A Still Life To Learn Photography

Hi! I hope you had a lovely weekend. My weekend was just that. I relaxed, worked out, made a dessert that I CAN'T WAIT to share with you tomorrow, had a wonderful lunch with Amy of Your Southern Peach (the sweetest person!) and had a few dates with my camera. Speaking of my camera, I thought I would change things up today to tell you about something that has taught me a lot about photography...

 More after the jump...

Many of you sweet readers have asked me how I have learned photography. My one word answer is practice. Practice, practice, practice and more practice. I bought this Canon digital camera almost two years ago. At that time I knew absolutely nothing about the camera or photography for that matter, so I took an inexpensive six week digital photography class at this local photography school to learn the basics. If you are new to digital photography, I highly recommend taking a class. If you can't find a class in your area, then this online class would be a great option. You might not walk out of the class taking the best pictures in the world, but you will have a much better understanding of how the camera works and your strengths and weaknesses. 

The main thing about digital cameras is learning how to shoot in manual mode. Manual mode simply means that you control all of the aspects (i.e modes) of the camera. I was terrified and quite frankly terrible at shooting in manual mode at the beginning. But I got much better with practice. Lots of practice. I know I keep harping on practice, but it is honestly the best teacher. 

One of the ways I practice shooting in manual mode is by creating a still life. I simply gather a few items with various heights, colors and textures that I have around the house and style them. It's sort of the same concept as setting a dinner table. I put the styled items in a spot in my house that has good natural light. I then take different shots of the still life from different angles. I adjust the settings, in manual mode, based on where I'm sitting or standing and the direction of the light. If the picture looks too dark, light or blurry, then I adjust the ISO, aperture or shutter speed to get the desired photo. If those terms are foreign to you, this chart is a great reference tool...

So here are a few photos I took of a still life that I created along with the camera settings for each photo. I shot this on the floor of my entryway and the light was coming from a window on the left side of the photo (the first photo of this post). I used this 50mm f/1.8 II lens, which is the lens I recommend for beginners. It's inexpensive and pretty much takes good photos of anything anywhere.

ISO 800, aperture f/5, shutter speed 1/80 

ISO 800, aperture f/5, shutter speed 1/100 

ISO 800, aperture f/5, shutter speed 1/80

ISO 800, aperture f/3.5, shutter speed 1/80

The light was indirect morning light, so I used an ISO of 800, which is good to use when shooting indoors. I mostly used an aperture of 5.0, which means that from where I was shooting, there was enough light that I didn't need the lens to bring in additional light. However on the last picture, I was standing in front of the light, so I used a lower the aperture of 3.5 so that the lens would bring in more light. The lower aperture also defined the texture on the juice glass and created a blurred background. Even though the light was indirect, there was enough light to use a medium shutter speed of 1/80, which isn't fast, but isn't slow either. If this were direct afternoon light, then the shutter speed would be must faster (i.e. 1/125 +).

So the main takeaway from all of this is that if you are interested in learning photography, practice as often as you can. It might get frustrating at times, but keep going. You will get better as long as you keep trying! Creating a still life is one of the best and easiest ways to learn, so try it out!

If you have any additional questions, please feel free to ask in the comments section or send me an e-mail!

P.S. These were slightly edited using iPhoto. Yep, I use iPhoto even though I own Photoshop! Yikes. Editing photos in Photoshop terrifies me just like using manual mode terrified me when I was learning how to use my camera. But my goal is to learn how to use Photoshop to edit photos- one day! :)