Look for Holiday Still Lifes at Home

I am one of those people that actually likes to decorate for holidays. Whether it's Christmas, Thanksgiving or Halloween or almost any other holiday, given the slightest excuse to hang some fairy lights or make an arrangement from pine cones and candles and I'm there. I'm sure this is a gift (or a burden) handed down to me from my mother who decorated the house so overwhelmingly at Christmas that we used to joke that Christmas had "exploded" in our living room. There wasn't a candle stick or banister or picture frame (or cat) that wasn't adorned with at least one red bow--and often several. What was the purpose of a holiday if not to turn the house into a Hallmark card?

I don't go as nuts as my mother did but, during Christmas at least, you would still be hard put to find a corner in my house that doesn't have some little holiday vignette. One of the nice things about having all of these little thematic nooks around the house is that they give me a chance to make some impromptu still life photos. Today, for example, while sitting at the dining room table reading mail, I noticed the pretty morning light coming through the blinds and illuminating this little candle dish and I had to photograph it. Much as I would love to ignore such moments and keep doing what I'm doing, it's nearly impossible: when a photo calls, I have to get the camera and respond.

Shooting still lifes around the house, whether it's of holiday decorations or just some interesting objects on a table or a bookshelf, is actually a lot of fun and it's good photo practice. Turning your home into a still life studio teaches you to pay attention to the lighting and to appreciate the beauty of the shapes, colors and textures of the objects that you live with every day. I don't make a big production out of these found still life shots and I try to shoot them exactly as I first noticed them. For this shot I moved a few little sparkly plastic snowflakes out of the way, but otherwise the shot is just as I found it. I shot the frame in RAW and I did ramp up the warmth a bit during the conversion process, but again, otherwise it is as I first saw it.

Most of the time with shots like this you'll be working either with existing daylight or a combination of daylight and artificial light from lamps. I shot a few frames of this scene with flash, even experimenting with using flash in a reduced-power mode (so it wouldn't overwhelm the daylight that was coming from a window to my right), but the shots made exclusively with window light were the best. The contrast from strong window light was a bit extreme and I was tempted to get a piece of white foam core out to reflect some light back into the dark side of this shot, but I got lazy and took care of the contrast later using a curves adjustment in Photoshop.

Taking photos of holiday still lifes has a few practical benefits beyond photography, too. For one, even if you're a sentimental fool (or especially if you're a sentimental fool), it's easier to put the decorations away if you know you'll always have the photos to recall how your house looked. Also, you can always turn your photos into greeting cards for the next year. Most important though, if you're the primary decorator, it's nice just to spend a few moments appreciating the beauty and creativity of your decor--even if the rest of the family teases you for turning the house into a Thomas Kinkade painting.

Find the Beauty in Found Objects

I don't know if it's a blessing or a curse, but I see still life compositions almost everywhere I look. A vase of flowers on the windowsill? Grab the camera. A pile of old tires in the garage? Wow, great shot. I remember spending a half hour shooting a variety of compositions of a flattened rubber dinosaur that I found at the dump once. I'm sure the people at the dump thought I was nuts.

The subject itself doesn't much matter when it comes to making interesting shots out of found objects, it's finding a clever and simple way to present them to your viewer. What attracted your eye to the subject? Was it the combination of shapes? The patterns of light and shadow? Or did the objects seem to define a universal theme? I was drawn to the still life of glasses and silverware at a sidewalk cafe in Paris for all of those reasons--shape, lighting and theme. The minute that I spotted this informal still life I knew that it defined the Paris sidewalk cafe experience for me. I shot the image without even getting out of my seat and I didn't arrange anything: the shot is as I found it (though there's nothing wrong with making adjustments in the subject if it suits your vision). If something strikes you as an interesting gathering of found objects, go ahead and shoot it--you just never know what you might find.

Take Your Camera Everywhere

Visual stuff happens. Beauty happens. Drama happens. Patterns happen. Nature happens. While it would be nice (photographically, at least) if we could predict when great visual things are going to happen, the best that we can do is to be prepared all the time. As photographers, that means carrying our cameras with us wherever we go. While most of us won't haul the DSLR over shoulders every hour of the day, it's easy to carry a tiny compact digital camera in your purse or jacket and you should. Beauty, drama, patterns, natural wonders--these kinds of things just suddenly appear and how many times have you said, "I wish I had my camera!" The opportunities don't have to be earth-shaking to be worth photographing either. I photographed these oranges in a grocery store in Las Vegas just because I thought the pattern was interesting. It's not the world's most original photo, but had I seen those oranges and not had my camera I know what I would have been saying to myself!