STILL LIFE PHOTOGRAPHY

What I like best about photography is its simplicity. Of course, I recognize and acknowledge the mind-boggling technology that goes into the production of even the least complex point-and-shoot camera. What I’m trying to say is that the process for the photographer is simple. Point and shoot is a good description of what happens.

Knowing where to point the lens and when to press the shutter release is another thing. Photographers like Atget, Arbus, and Avedon obviously possessed much more than a simple understanding of how and when to point and shoot; the photographs they left to us are the result of the special way in which they insisted on seeing the world.

I like still life photography because it is quiet and unhurried. For me, still life includes any subject that is not "alive," any subject which "waits" for the photographer. A bowl of beads and buttons, a yellow fire hydrant, a glass of water, a black knob in a white door are subjects that don’t move. They stay put until the photographer has found the right angle, the right light, the right everything before starting the action that allows light to pass through the lens.Their stillness is different from the quietness of a pastoral landscape. A good Still life photograph possesses a special kind of “thereness.” It doesn’t invite us in but allows us to stand quietly and see what on most occasions we would pass by and not notice.

It is often said that photography is the “art of the real.” The actuality of what is photographed cannot be denied.