Guild designer Dee Bee Designs shares these observations about taking still-life photos.

I’ve always been an admirer of Artisan Notebook ™ contributor Sheryl Cody’s photographs. I love the “still-life” photos that she takes and want to learn to take similar photos. This morning as I was reading my Bible during my quiet time I was thinking about how we send Valentine’s Day cards to those we love and how the Bible is in a sense God’s Valentine to us. I began thinking about creating a layout on this subject and realized that here was my chance to experiment with taking some still-life photos. I propped open my Bible, got out my camera, and started experimenting with some aperture priority settings.  I knew that stopping-down the aperture would affect the depth of field focus so I started playing around with various settings and compositions. I used an Olympus E-500 with a 50mm prime lens. This is what I came up with:

In this photo I made sure that the focus metering was set on the single, center point. I lightly pressed the shutter to focus on the pink rose, held it down, re-oriented the composition to include more of the Bible and then pressed the shutter completely to take the photo. (1/125s at f/2.0, ISO 100)

This second photo was similar to the one above but I moved in closer for a tighter crop. (1/125s at f/2.0, ISO 100)

I decided to turn the page of my Bible because I thought the yellow post-it notes might be drawing too much attention to themselves and perhaps the blue post-it notes on these pages would create a more pleasing color harmony. I used a higher f-stop with this shot so more of the entire photo is in focus. (1/20s at f/6.7, ISO 400)

This is the same shot as above but I changed the crop from a horizontal shot to a vertical shot. I also moved in a little closer which blurred out the foreground a bit, lending a more romantic, artistic look to the photo. (1/60s at f/6.7, ISO 400) This last photo is the one I ended up using for my layout:

This layout uses my most recent kit, “Love Bugs” which is available as a FREE gift with the purchase of the February 2012 issue of the Artisan Notebook. It may also be purchased seperately and is currently on sale for 40% off at these fine stores:

E-scape and Scrap
Natural Designs in Scrapbooking
Pickleberry Pop

During this season of romance I encourage you to look around your home and find some pretty still-life scenes with which you can experiment. And don’t forget to think about scrapping, “things you love” to celebrate this Valentine’s Day!

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