Assignment 5 - Still Life

Vanity. Photo by Andrew Adams.

Motivation

Until now most of your photos have been a kind of found art – the photograph captures something beautiful already existing in the world. This is not to say there's no creativity involved. Your interpretation of the scene, as expressed by your composition and your creative control over the camera, has been what makes the captured scene "art".

This week we'll extend your creative control beyond the camera to the scene itself. In still life photography you arrange the scene, choose the background, and alter the lighting however you want. You should take time to arrange each shot just how you like it. There are plenty of second chances to get the shot right in still life photography.

Instructions

This week there are four requirements that should be met by taking 5-10 photographs. The key difference between this week and previous weeks is in the selection of the scene. This week, only photograph objects you have arranged and lit yourself. Additionally, this week you should use your comments to justify your choice of background, arrangement of the objects in the scene, and your choice of lighting, in addition to justifying your choice of camera settings (i.e. focus, shutter speed, aperture, etc).

General Requirements

These two requirements apply to every photo you take this week.

• General Requirement A: Background

  • For every photo this week, carefully pick your background and justify your choice in the comments below each photo. Consider light, dark, and textured backgrounds. You can make nice backgrounds using materials like clothes, sheets, cardboard, tablecloths, etc. You should use more than one background in your assignment.

• General Requirement B: Lighting

  • For every photo this week, carefully arrange your lighting and justify your choices in the comments below each photo. You can use desk lamps or arrange your scene in relation to an open window to control the lighting direction and lighting color. Consider front lighting, side lighting, and even lighting your scene predominately from behind. You should use more than one lighting condition for your assignment.

Specific Requirements

The first three requirements can each be satisfied with one or more photographs. Requirement 4 requires that you post two photos.

• Requirement 1: Caustics.

  • A caustic is a bright shape created by the focusing of light through an imperfect lens or other curved transparent object. For example, the pattern of light on a tablecloth made by light passing through a wine glass is a caustic. At least one of your photos should include a caustic. It is also possible to create caustics from curved mirrored surfaces. Hint: One of the easiest ways to get a nice caustic is to take a side-lit photograph of a glass vase or drinking glass.

• Requirement 2: A Themed Collection.

  • Photograph a collection of objects that fit into one of the following categories (choose one category only): Mortality, vanity, ambition, or renewal. As this photograph requires multiple objects, you should also think about interreflections between objects.

• Requirement 3: Portrait of an Object.

  • Finally, photograph a single object with some sentimental value to you. How does this object make you feel? Dreamy, wistful, happy, or sad? Can you capture this feeling via careful manipulation of the composition and exposure, or by post-processing in Photoshop?

• Requirement 4: Levitating Objects.

  • Now it's time to have a little fun. In this requirement, you will create the illusion that one (or more!) objects are floating in mid-air. For example, you may want to suspend fruit, a flower without a vase, a stapler and a piece of paper, a camp stove, some jewelry, etc. There are many options here, so be as creative as you like!

    • There are many ways to achieve the floating object effect, but in general you may want to follow a procedure like this:

      • Mount your camera on a tripod or place it carefully on a hard surface so that you can take multiple pictures without any camera movement. (You can always use "photomerge" in photoshop to align the frames after the fact if there was some small movement between images.)

      • Choose your background, and take one picture of the background without the floating objects in the photo. This will serve as the bottom layer when you assemble your image in Photoshop.

      • Now, take another photo with the object in the scene. In order to "suspend" the object above your background you can hold it with your fingers, place it on top of a box, suspend it with a string, etc. Think carefully about how you do this, because you will end up removing these supports in Photoshop. Be careful not to obscure part of the object, or to cast any unwanted shadows.

      • Load the images into Photoshop and create a document with one photo in each layer (with the background-only image on bottom of the stack). Use a combination of layer masks, the clone stamp tool, context aware fill, and any other methods that you learned in section to remove the support and create the perfect illusion of a floating object.

  • In order to fulfill this requirement, you should post two images: (1) an image showing the setup for your shot, and (2) the final "trick" photograph with the floating objects. Use the comments to describe how you set up and lit your shot. Be sure to look at the example solutions for guidance.

Upload your photos and add comments.

As before, upload your photos to Google Photos as an album, caption the photos, and post the photos to the course's Google+ community as explained in Assignment #1, giving your post a title, like "Submission of assignment #5 (Sill Life) by <my name>" (substituting your name).

Example Solution

As usual, we've posted an example solution to this assignment to let you know what we expect.

Peer Grading

You should follow the same rubric as the previous assignments.

Note: There are no practice problems this week since we didn't cover testable material.

Due Date

Assignment Deadline: 11:59pm, Sunday, May 1, 2016

Commenting Deadline: EOD, Friday, May 6, 2016

Page authors: Marc Levoy, Andrew Adams, and Jesse Levinson, revised by Marc Levoy for the Google version of this course.