Still Life Photography for Beginners

Sean P. Durham
5 min readOct 18, 2023

Still Life Photography for Beginners takes us into many aspects of still life photography and how we can create beautiful still lifes to sell.

In photography, intention is always important. Knowing what you want to express as an artist is part of the mind set that leads to successful still life photography outcomes.

Cooking Pot and Coffee Jug with Mandarine by Sean P. Durham. Copyright 2023
Image by Author

The very basis of good still life photography is to develop your ability to create compositions.

A good sense of design is the first step — this can be learned through constant practice.

As you get better, you will be able to distinguish between a strong and weak composition. Balance is a key factor in still life photography composition. This develops as you experiment with how you place the objects in conjunction and in juxtaposition to each other.

Image by Author Sean P. Durham

The spaces between objects have a meaning, they are referred to as negative space. Which is space that allows the viewer to breath out for a moment and contemplate what they see before moving their eyes on to the next part of the composition.

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Sean P. Durham

Berlin Notes — Creative Writing about art, Life, photography & cats. https://seandurham.eu