Fix that miscat! is the first of a series of articles which aims to help you distinguish between galleries that are commonly confused or abused in the category system here on deviantART. Submitting to the correct categories here can make a huge difference to exposure and feedback for your work as well as features within the Daily Deviations so we want to give you the best chances possible! Let's get started with Artisan Crafts Versus Still Life Photography! 

Artisan Crafts (Culinary) & Still Life Photography

DeviantART is a hive of activity with work from all sorts of genres and areas being shared and submitted on a daily basis. So it's only natural that sometimes, confusion happens. And there are a few pesky categories that are difficult to define and differentiate between. We've recently found that Photography -> Still Life and Artisan Crafts are a great example of this.

Still Life Photography is defined as "Studio-style photography featuring inanimate objects in an arrangement and compositional in design."> That's the up to date description that you'll find when you click the category information when submitting a deviation. Artisan Crafts -> Culinary Arts is defined as "Food that is prepared and presented artistically. Items are usually edible but they can also be meant as decoration." So where, when submitting your Food Photography, do you put it?

Artisan Crafts -> Culinary Arts is all about the food. It's about showcasing the best of the food and it doesn't matter if the execution or composition are not the best of the best (although it's always great if they are good) because it's about capturing the food for what it is. If your intention has been to capture the food, to showcase something you made, and you aren't paying much heed to technical details, arrangement or styling, then it is more likely to belong in Artisan Crafts -> Culinary than it is Still Life -> Food.

To look at it in even more detail, ^maytel, Artisan Crafts CV raises a great point. If she were to take a photo of a slice of apple or a piece of garlic, she is likely to submit it to Still Life Photography - because simply she has not crafted her ingredients in an Artisan Crafts sense. So with Artisan Crafts you are making something, most of the time, from a bunch of things. With Still Life Photography you can photograph a slice of Orange and it's perfectly well categorised within Still Life but would look out of place within Artisan Crafts.

Still Life Photography is about the execution and the composition. You are likely to spend more time on your surroundings, making sure you have the right backgrounds, the right props and the right lighting. You are more likely to think about what would make the Photograph look good than just snap away. As ^3wyl says, It doesn't matter about the kind of food, you could have insects in a bowl and if done well, it'd be an exceptional still life Photograph.

`Talty notes that photos of crafts gravitate more towards showing off the work rather than the composition, so simpler backgrounds are usually best... it's interesting to notice that most popular craft photos have simple white backgrounds. If you check out etsy you will notice that this is specially important, about 99% of the items in the front page have white backgrounds.
Often, we all forget to frame our shots, to use props and side references and to check our backgrounds. I once took a photo of a forkful of pasta and didn't realise someone's cleavage was framed right behind it. Some wouldn't complain but...yes, so often we forget our surroundings, and when you start to pay attention to those you are starting to think in terms of Still Life Photography. When you are thinking more about your dish, whether it tastes good, whether the ingredients are right and whether you've burned it or not - well, you're thinking like an Artisan Crafter. If you do both of the above - then you're no more enlightened than you were at the beginning of the article and we suggest, flip a coin to decide where to place your work!

~ ^3wyl ^maytel `Talty & ^Kaz-D