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Project Educate: Still-Life-Stills Education cont.Groups for Still Life work are fast becoming popular on deviantART - but finding one that covers all of Still Life and sticks with being just Photography orientated is quite difficult. Therefore myself and *claremanson have today launched #Still-Life-Stills - a group for all of your Still Life needs. Whether that's exposing your work, getting tips and help, or just salivating over awesome food in the gallery or staring in wonder at fantastic cut flower shots or ornaments - we have it all! I've also enjoyed pushing Still Life Photography this week for Project Educate and therefore we are keen to continue the trend over at #Still-Life-Stills and keep educating. The group launch was inspired by this weeks #projecteducate - so hopefully we can continue the general theme of being helpful! :B
Members are very very welcome - so head over now and join if you're interested and start sharing your work. Our submission rules are
Enhancing Still Life Shots with LieveheersbeestjeSo you've got a still life shot but it looks nothing like those epic pieces you see hitting the front page here on deviantART - the lighting, hues and general feel of the piece is just not as good as you feel it could be. Well that's okay! Photoshop in particular helps you enhance your shots to bring out the best in them - or the worst if you're not careful.

These are basically the processes that she goes through to edit a shot - saved and uploaded to deviantART for your use (provided you read the rules.) There are many floating around - and they add that little something.
So How Do They Work?
All you need to do is download a file that contains such actions...

In this particular one =lieveheersbeestje shares her Photoshop Silver & Bronze Actions. Once you've downloaded the file you just open it as you usually would and it will go straight into photoshop ready for use
Project Educate: Still Life with ClareManson*claremanson pretty much  had me addicted to her photography the moment I stumbled into her gallery. Clare not only photographs her awesome creations but she also shares the recipes. But what really hooked my interest was the Oreo Pizza...

:iconclaremanson:
What area of Still Life Photography do you find yourself favouring?
It has to be food photography. I love to bake and i love to photograph so being able to bring the two together is a great feeling. There is nothing more satisfying to me than being able to capture the beauty of something you have put your heart into making.

What are the challenges and merits of undertaking Still Life?
The biggest challenge for me is lighting, being in the UK where the sky is often overcast natural light can be hard to come across.
A lot of the time i plan my baking and photography sessions around the weather and time of day to get the best
Project Educate: Interviewing Orwald!*Orwald has been on deviantART for just a year but has astounded the Still Life Photography community with her fantastic works. As well as putting together beautiful features of others works, *Orwald strives for the best with her own and shares some of her tips here...
What inspires you to explore Still Life Photography?
I like to show the things around us. It`s very interesting to find some ordinary objects at home and try to show them from different views/  I can`t say that there is some area of Still Life photography that I like the most but I recently noticed that there are a lot of "fruit" and "cup" shots in my gallery :giggle:

What are the difficulties and rewards of Still Life?
I'm not a professional photographer so there is always a dilemma - how to place all objects together, how to make the light and whole the scene look naturally. I like to play with colour combinations and it`s the
Project Educate: Getting Started with Still Life Getting Started with Still Life Photography...

Your Homemade Studio
You don't need a studio or amazingly fancy lighting in order to achieve some of the most popular still life photography shots that you see on deviantART. I take most of my still life photography shots on the window sill in my bedroom because the colour is neutral and the lighting best.
You can start pretty much anywhere in the home - using a backdrop of mottled glass will give a different effect to plain glass and so on - the possibilities are pretty much endless! Using paper, books, scarfs or other bits of material can provide excellent backdrops. Raindrops on windows can create a fantastic bokeh...

Your Subject
 
Fruit and Flowers are overdone. It's true. But that doesn't mean that you shouldn't try them out and if you have a creative concept in mind go for it. However there is so m
PE Stereoscopy: How to View Stereoscopic 3D ImagesHow to View Stereoscopic 3D Images
There are three basic methods of viewing the stereograms we have on DeviantArt. There might be other methods which differ slightly, but these are the main ones:
Anaglyph (and other glasses methods)
Viewing stereo images with glasses is great, because because you don't need to squint your eyes or focus in strange ways to see in stereoscopic vision (stereo 3D). Furthermore, anaglyph images are fantastic, because you don't need a special TV or screen, just a pair of anaglyph glasses. These are pretty easy to get, you can find them with some old 3D films, books, or even in some stores. Chances are you might have a pair lying around the house.
Most anaglyph glasses are red on one eye, and cyan on the other, these are the most common for people to own. But there's a whole range of types of anaglyph using different colors. the whole point is to hide part of the image for each eye, so many opposite-colors can work.
Because yo
Project Educate: Dragonfly-oli on Still Life`dragonfly-oli is fast becoming one of the most well known Still Life Photographers on deviantART. Whilst she has only been here for 2 years her artwork has certainly made its mark on the community. Here she shares a bit of insight into what she does and why.

:icondragonfly-oli:
Tell us about your style...
I do really like close-ups, as you can see in my other shots. So I tend to take pictures of little objects. All in all I do really like to do conceptual shots, because I cannot implement my ideas in nature photography.

What are the trials and tribulations of Still Life Photography in your opinion?
Well, it's easier than taking pictures of people or nature! It's a challenge to search for the right object to make a conceptual piece out of it. The light and composition are essential for a good photo here, because people look for the message and the technique in general.
Merits are th
Still Life Photography - The Beginnings Still Life Photography
Whilst Still Life Photography is often considered to be the staging and shooting of a group of inanimate objects - it's more than likely best recognised especially on deviantART as singular items and in particular dishes - such as meals or baked foods. It's an under appreciated art form for sure in that those who don't actively engage in the set up of such shots do not actively appreciate the effort that goes into staging, lighting and composing such pieces. A Still Life Photographer Makes a picture rather than just Take it.
 

Photography -> Still Life -> Food and Drink
Aims of this Project Educate Week
:bulletblack:
PE: Vexel Tutorials
Learning vexels takes quite a lot of time, especially if you have never worked with the pen tool. This is where tutorials come in handy.
If you browse DeviantArt you'll find some useful and good tuts, starting from the basics of vexeling, through making hair or eyes. The only thing you have to remember is that tutorials are here only to help you start and discover your own style and technique. You don't have to follow them step by step. Don't be afraid to experiment, you never know, you might create something extraordinary.
Basics
Here are few walkthroughs, step by step, explaining how to use the pen tool.

As said before it's really up to you which way you'll choose, there's no perfect method of making vexels.
Hair
Hair tutorial by `jussta :thumb90386972:
Eyes
:
PE Note to Daily DeviationHello all,
In this section of Daily Deviations (DD) PE week I wanted to write about how your suggestions are processed and then turned into DDs, but with a bit more of a focus on the process of how we Community Volunteers (CVs) utilize the note system.  I felt it was a place where some common problems arise which may not be talked about all too often resulting in confusion and frustration for both suggesters and CVs.  
The Note System
I think many are aware of this but just for the sake of being clear, CVs use the same exact note system as every other user on the site.  We do not have any special bells and whistles to organize our notes other than the same tools you all are also given.  There is no special tool or program that sorts or does anything special with our DD suggestions for us, it is entirely up to us, how we choose to sort them in our note system.  
Let's take a closer look at how the process works, shall we?  
:bul
People + Portraits: Capturing WeddingsThe Weddings category within the People & Portraits Photography gallery is often misused and misunderstood. It's not for capturing those generic wedding shots of shoes, cakes, decorations and rings. The idea is that there needs to be a person or people captured in the shot to make it portraiture photography. There also (and i know it's mind blowing) needs to be a wedding theme going on! Simply cropping in close on hands or shoes or a part of a dress isn't enough to get it into the gallery. If the gallery were simply 'Weddings' then it would be different of course. You should consider the use of the Photojournalism - Weddings Gallery too and if your shots are journalistic in style they need to be pushed towards that gallery.
:bulletblack: Fiddle with your settings to ensure you capture the bright white of the wedding dress (as this is the common colour anyway). A lot of cameras will over compensate if you've got this large white area in your view finder and expose the dress as being
Project Educate: Classic Portrait PhotographyClassic Portraits are Photographs of people in traditional pose. These are often formal, refined and restrained in style. As you will see within the  Gallery they often involve a plain and simple background which is a popular feature of Classic Portraiture. One of the most notable things within the Classic Portrait Photography Gallery is that there are a lot of art nudes. This actually occurs across the board with People & Portraits and I cannot stress enough - that if your work features nudity, it belongs within the artistic nude gallery!
:bulletblack: Conversion to black and white with concentration on bringing out tones and shadows creates that timeless classic look and is often favoured by the elite artists that submit to the People & Portraits - Classic Gallery.
:bulletblack: Whilst D-SLR's have a monochrome function, for the most part (mine h
Project Educate: Expressing and EmotingEssentially, these are mostly the same thing with a few minor differences which are explained below. But before we move onto that, there's an important message to share when it comes to categorising your work. To get the best out of the photography galleries it's vitally important that you categorise your work properly. That' why these weeks exist in some respects, to help educate you through that. With regards to Daily Deviations - Community Volunteers will not give features to pieces of work that are mis-categorised. They might assist you by moving your work or explaining where it should go, but seeing a deliberate miscat is a bit off-putting when it comes to choosing pieces to showcase. Take some time to have a look through your gallery (I'm going to do the same!) and figure out if everything is in the right place. If you're struggling, just ask. We're here to help. What we won't do is rearrange your whole gallery for you. We will however, work with you to try and straighten things
People + Portraits Photography Talent Spotlight`Kendra-Paige has been on deviantART for over eight years now and has made a strong mark on the people and portraits gallery especially with her fashion work. Her kit consists of a Canon 5D Mark II and a Canon EF 85mm 1.2L II lens using various other lenses and focal lengths but repeatedly gravitating towards the 85mm. She uses a combination of lightroom and photoshop to post-process her work although she keeps her editing as minimal as possible as she doesn't enjoy the post-processing bit of photography!
Why did you choose people as a photographical interest?
I have always found people to be fascinating, and I have a particular interest in expressions and eyes. The eyes tend to be the focal point in a lot of my work, and typically dictate the image. Aside from this, it’s the collaborative effort that I enjoy in portraiture. When you take images of animals and nature, there is only so much control you have with the subject - a lot of it is luck
Project Educate: Improving Spontaneity Spontaneous Portraiture 
Here on deviantART there is a whole gallery for your  casual, candid, secretive shots. I don't mean fetish. The Spontaneous People & Portrait Photography Gallery is where you should go if you are wanting to things that are less arranged, less planned and much more spontaneous. Have a browse here to see what's popular but keep in mind that miscats are in abundance, and that's why these education weeks exist - to try and educate and put the record straight.
I prefer to shoot all of my portraiture and people photography as candidly as possible. I believe that capturing people unawares gives them no time to organize their facial expressions and consider arranging their emotions. Eyes, are the windows to the soul - as they say, and if you're making someone stand and pose (which works well a lot of the time) you're closing off the honest
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Project Educate:Still Life with *LuizaLazar

Fri May 18, 2012, 11:27 PM



People & Portraits :iconkaz-d:



Still Life Photography here on deviantART whilst an overlooked gallery for the majority of the time is vastly becoming popular among conceptual and food photographers. *LuizaLazar, a female photographer from Romania has shared her thoughts and feelings on the gallery including some useful tips.

:iconluizalazar:

You & Still Life Photography...


Most of my Still Life works are based on fruits and flowers. I love to photograph raspberries (maybe because they are my favorite fruits, but I'm also attracted by their color and shape), cherries, rain drops or tiny objects. I must say I love food photography, but I'm not quite able to do the shots I wanna do. Other than that, I don't cook very often, therefore I have no item to photograph :giggle:




Your Likes and Dislikes about Still Life Photography...



What I like about Still Life Photography is the fact that you can arrange the elements in order to get the perfect shot in your mind. The real challenge is to have a good natural light. I don't like artificial light, it wouldn't even fit in this photography category. Then again, you need a good composition and a nice mix of colors. I think the most important merit is that little touch of personality added to the picture because, in fact, you MAKE the photo rather than TAKE it :)



Inspiring Still Life Photography artists here on deviantART...


My favourite Still Life Artist on deviantART is =popoks She is amazing :) Also, I like *claremanson for her food photography.



What about groups...


I didn't really find a group to satisfy all my visual (Still Life Photography) pleasures :giggle: Maybe...
:iconmagical-sanctuary: :iconshareart: or :iconsweet-little-moments:



And Finally, your parting advice...


Honestly, I would need some tips too, I'm not an expert, all I can say is take advantage of the sun light and do whatever your imagination wants you to do :aww: there are no limits!








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Project Educate:Still Life with *LuizaLazarby ^Kaz-D

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©2012-2013 ^Kaz-D
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:iconartbycher:
`ArtByCher May 20, 2012   Traditional Artist
The talented Luiza!! :clap:
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:iconkaz-d:
^Kaz-D May 24, 2012  Hobbyist Photographer
Very talented! :)
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:iconsesam-is-open:
*sesam-is-open May 19, 2012
Beautiful interview with a very talented artist:heart:
Congratulations to both of you!:iconwhiteroseplz:
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:iconkaz-d:
^Kaz-D May 24, 2012  Hobbyist Photographer
Thanks for reading!
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:iconsesam-is-open:
*sesam-is-open May 27, 2012
My pleasure!:)
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:iconchriseastmids:
*chriseastmids May 19, 2012
wonderful interview "Luizalazar" is vastly over looked .... well done :clap::clap::clap:
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:iconkaz-d:
^Kaz-D May 24, 2012  Hobbyist Photographer
Very much so! :)
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:iconchriseastmids:
*chriseastmids May 24, 2012
:-)
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:iconluizalazar:
*LuizaLazar May 19, 2012  Hobbyist Photographer
It's such an honor! Thank you very much, I love it :heart:
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:iconkaz-d:
^Kaz-D May 19, 2012  Hobbyist Photographer
:heart:
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