4 Tips for More Creative Still Life Photography

Still life photography is both enjoyable and accessible for many photographers, but it's easy for your work to become stagnant. Here are 4 tips for more creative still life photography.

Still life photography has a low barrier of entry but a high skill ceiling, meaning while it's attractive to beginners, it can be disappointing. I fell into this particular genre of photography quite by accident but I quickly got hooked. As is often the case with these things, I improved quickly, but then the law of diminishing returns meant that I slowed progress. From there I had to work out how to be more creative. Mastering the basics of lighting objects for still life is one thing — and a big thing — but creativity is less scripted.

One of my favorite tips for creative still life photography is the integration of props. Still life photography can be tremendously dull if it's just one object on a backdrop. Instead, work out the theme you're aiming for with the shot, or if you weren't aiming at anything in particular, look closer at the subject to see if that has any themes within its design or aesthetic. From there, build yourself a small set that creates surroundings relative to the subject of the image.

Robert K Baggs's picture

Robert K Baggs is a professional portrait and commercial photographer, educator, and consultant from England. Robert has a First-Class degree in Philosophy and a Master's by Research. In 2015 Robert's work on plagiarism in photography was published as part of several universities' photography degree syllabuses.

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Really good video well thought out and well presented that gives a lot of pretty good and key advice. Since the day of Caravaggio‘s first and only still life it has been a very underrated yet very challenging and demanding genre that really offers artists/photographers a chance to show their more creative side.