Not So Still Life

When compared with outdoor nature photography, which requires lugging equipment around, finding locations, waiting for the moment, (missing the moment), getting rained on, etc., creating still-life photographs seems like a no-brainer. Simply think of an interesting scene, acquire the pieces to put the scene together, put them together in a climate-controlled room in your house, light appropriately, snap a few shots, and voila! Great results! Right? Um, wrong.

Why not? Well for me, my brain just does not work that way. Maybe it's a deficiency in me, but I have a hard time creating an image from scratch. It's like staring at an empty canvas. I just have a hard time creating compelling still-life images, at least the kind that I have to assemble myself.

I guess my strength is what many people refer to is my "eye", as in "You have a great eye." I like having nature provide me with the starting point, from which I figure out what would make a great image. I can work around what nature provides, but I have a hard time replicating it on my own.

I thought of this as I was photographing a bunch of tomato filled baskets at a local farm. The shots I made reminded me of still-lifes, as if I could have brought the filled baskets to the farm myself and placed them in just the right spot. But instead I was fortunate to find about 15 baskets spread out along the edge of the field. This provided a number of possible image set-ups, and the one below is one that I like.

And I only had about 15 minutes before the pickers came back with their tractor to collect the tomatoes.