Still Life
Still Life is a genre about anything that doesn't move but it's alive. Most often these are natural forms like flowers and food. Each of the still life images usually have its own theme like colors or certain objects. The big advantage for a photographer is that he can take his time in taking photographs and freely move the objects he wants around to arrange them in a perfect way. Most often background and objects on a photo are the photographer's own choice.
In Still Life it's very important to focus on good angle and ligthting of the objects photographed and also there needs to be a balance in tones.
Mat Collishaw
Born in 1966, Mat Collishaw, he is one of the key figures in the generation of artists who finished Goldsmiths' Collage in 80s. He is performing a lot of solo exhibitions, recent ones were in The New Art Gallery Walsall and Library of Birmingham. He is doing many different types of photography includinng Still Life (His last work is "Burning Flowers"- 2014).
Collishaw's work is famous in many popular public collections like Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris or Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego.
Peter Zentjens
Peter Zentjens is an experienced Still Life photographer and also Watercolour painter. In his photographs he is specialising in work with a ''vintage, nostalgic look and feel, albeit sometimes with a twist''. Moreover, his painting skills also helps him with being imaginative in photography.
His hobby is traveling, he is also using this opportunity to capture an brilliant pictures; the clear evidence for that is his award for travel photography.
My photoshoot
Final Image
Personally, I like the effect of my final picture after some editing. I wanted to move forward my picture more in Mat Collishaw style. My intentions were to make the area around the main objects black to focus my photograph fully on it. Afterwards I decided to blur a bit the black area with a white Brush Tool with a low opacity and flow, this way, the background is looking more like it was painted. I then changed the curves of darkness as well as intensity of colours to make the flowers looking more real like it's a natural light. I decided to leave the apple in dark tones; this way in my opinion there's a bigger balance on a picture. In some ways I think I get to the result of mixing Mat Collishaw and Peter Zentjens work. At the end I also changed the brightness of a photo, personally I think this makes the flowers sun-like; giving out the light to the surroundings.