Black & White Sunday: Still Life

I’ll start with an excerpt from Wikipedia:

“A still life (plural still lifes) is a work of art depicting mostly inanimate subject matter, typically commonplace objects which may be either natural (food, flowers, dead animals, plants, rocks, or shells) or man-made (drinking glasses, books, vases, jewelry, coins, pipes, and so on). With origins in the Middle Ages and Ancient Graeco-Roman art, still-life painting emerged as a distinct genre and professional specialization in Western painting by the late 16th century, and has remained significant since then. Still life gives the artist more freedom in the arrangement of elements within a composition than do paintings of other types of subjects such as landscape or portraiture.”

It is this aspect of freedom that appealed most to me, to be able to arrange things to my liking and according to my own sense of aesthetics.

jabuka_trio_b_w-1_bf_potpis

 

This Sunday you are invited to capture a still life according to the above definition, or you can surprise me with an alternative interpretation that can bear the same title.

Be creative, have fun and enjoy your Sunday! (You have time until next Sunday to come up with your responses).

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P.S. 

As of this post there won’t be small preview images in the posts for the reasons I voiced in “To Whom It May Concern”. I will still try to honour your submissions by posting a recap of your assembled contributing photos on a separate page (sub-page to Scheduled Challenges). 

Even though I stopped posting little preview images of your entries, my blogger friends never disappoint. Please check out the links bellow to see how others have interpreted still life. Once compiled you will find all the entries in a slideshow here.

 

 Category: B&W, B&W, Black & White Sunday, Photography      Tagged: , , , ,

93 Comments on “Black & White Sunday: Still Life”

  1. Oh Paula, that is gorgeous. A beautiful still life, where your photography wins!

    And you really made me smile. After our little discussion earlier, I went off to think about my post for this challenge and I started with exactly the same Wikipedia definition as you! Great minds….. Off to think some more

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  9. Lovely, Paula. It’s all about being able to see beauty in the supposedly mundane, isn’t it? 🙂

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    • My first experiment at low-key. I don’t know why I haven’t done that before since I always admired low key photography. Thanks for your feedback Tobias. Enjoy your Sunday!

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          • you mean – normal bulb, no camera flash or so? nice.
            and I love the slideshow. it is really cool. it is great to have the overview of all (or most) of the participants.

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            • No, no flash. I never used flash before Ljubljana last week when I got hubby almost blind. It will be all, i am supplementing it all the time with new entries. I hope you read my “disclaimer” bellow, where I say that anyone can object. I will have to remove them eventually to replace them with fresh stuff. When you have a minute (no rush but preferably before weekend) see my mail regarding your guest challenge 😉

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    • So, you are one of those “glass half full” people? I’m part of the “glass already gone” bunch 😀 Lovely high key, very aesthetic result. Thank you, Klara.

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      • eeeee, not really ;-). it sounded more cheerful as a title. my thyroid has gone berserk and I am in the middle of search for new posology (with all the symptoms crushing me).

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        • 😦 😦 😦 I wish I could advice you somehow. Can you take a break from work and rest? Please don’t feel pressured to reply or to read mail where I am asking you to supply a picture of your person with intro about you. I’ll do it all, and if you need me to move the challenge to a later date, it is no problem at all. I just want you to get better.

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    • the black and white one in the! mentioned post!
      if you accept it, you make me sing and dance! Have a wonderful sunday evening! P.

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      • Of course I accept it. It is your interpretation of still life and that’s good enough for me. Have a great week!

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  17. Pingback: Black & White Sunday: Still Life | A Day In The Life

  19. This is just beautiful and even more so in close-up with nothing else on the screen. It is quite funny I had just answered your comment on my ‘Teaching is terrible…’ post and was remembering asking the children to bring in, or find in the classroom, some objects and and we constructed a ‘still life’ (an utterly obscure term to these kids). We took photos of cans of beans and all sorts, it was good fun.

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    • Yes, it is funny cause children are everything but still :D, but if one gives them something of interest they can become quite engaged. I loved those moments 😀

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  26. I like your apple photo and still-life can be an interesting subject to work with. I have a skull that I’ve been working on photographing that would be perfect for this post – I’ve already taken some photos of it, but I decided to improve the results.
    This weekend I’ve had visitors from such different places as Argentina, China and the Czech Republic, plus there’s a Russian coming this evening, so I doubt I’ll be able to post something this week…

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  27. These darkling shadows on the apples sprung a notion of Paris and his disastrous choice in his apple award to Aphrodite that in turn led to the Trojan War. You can see my mind is wandering, Paula. But this is such a dramatic shot – a hard thing to achieve with the inanimate 🙂

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  31. Like the (almost) black apples. 🙂
    One advantage of still-lifes for 16th-or later century painters, was that they did not have to pay a live model, and could then eat the still-life model. 😉
    (And a very soothing music you chose…)

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  32. Pingback: Still life – 60 mm

  33. Hi Paula. I am not one for photographing still-lifes in the normal sense, but thought I’d have a go using my macro lens (I need to practice a lot with this) and quite liked the way the light fell on my glass bowl filled with pine cones (and other dried bits and pieces) which sits on the top of the woodburner. As it is taken with the macro it appears on my dedicated macro site so you will not recognize the name in the pingback, but it is still ME!
    Jude
    https://smallbluegreenmacro.wordpress.com/2016/02/10/still-life/

    BTW I love the high key apples, beautiful light.

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  34. I love this one Paula, and was fascinated by your ‘ how to’ with Tobias. Beautiful music too. So much good stuff on here. When will I ever find time to catch up? Off to check Debbie and Jude xxx

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    • Don’t let my blog stress you, Jo. Tobias has been great help and source of inspiration recently. Men are usually less complicated than us gals 😀

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  36. Pingback: Black & White Sunday: Still Life | WordsVisual

    • I can understand that, Sue. Colour can be very seductive, but when I work with monochrome I can be sure that I did not overdo colours. 🙂 This is a low key image, my first attempt at it. I am very happy that you like it. Thank you.

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  42. C’est vraiment cool, génial! L’exercice sur les pommes donne un bon rendu, la lumière soulignant les formes de chaque pomme! C’est exactement comme cela que j’ai réalisé mes feuilles ツ

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