Creative Still life photography from Elena Erda

Still life photography is a genre of photography dedicated to capturing inanimate subjects. Whether it be man-made, lifeless, or even plants. Basically it includes the photography of anything that cannot move, react, or portray emotions.

In order for us to create an atmosphere and mood with our still life photography, we make use of several available factors we can manipulate:

• Lighting
• Color
• Texture

With lighting you can either go with available soft light, or with artificial harsh light to create drama. Same thing goes for color, you can either incorporate bold contrasting color, different shades of the same color, or even monochromatic black and white or toned colors.

Out of these 3 factors, light is the most important, mood-transforming factor to work with. To get a provocative still life photo, here are a few pointers to keep in mind:

• Side light is the most effective type of lighting in bringing out form, texture, and contrast of a still life shot. It can dramatically improve the look and feel of your shot and accentuate the basic elements of your composition, adding some sort of 3-dimensionality to your shot.

• Experiment with perspective. Whether it be light positioning, camera perspective, subject-to-light distance, or subject-to-camera distance. Try your best to get a few shots of every placement assortment for varying results and find out what works best for your particular subject.

Creative Still life photography from Elena Erda

Elena Erda is a photographer and member of the Russian Photo Union, from Moscow. For Elena, photography is not just a hobby. It’s a big part of her life. She enjoys working with black and white film using a single-element handmade soft focus lens called “monocle”, as well as printing her shots in her spare time.

In her early days Elena used to shoot digital and experiment with texture and color, nowadays she generally shoots with a Hasselblad 500c/m medium format camera, and she often experiments with pinhole, holga, and Diana cameras. She also employs modern digital technology in enlarging her film negatives, and making contact prints.

For more creative Still life photography from Elena Erda, please check out her flickr photostream here.