Still life photography is a genre of

photography Photography is the art, application, and practice of creating durable images by recording light, either electronically by means of an image sensor, or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film. It is emplo ...

used for the depiction of inanimate subject matter, typically a small group of objects. Similar to still life painting, it is the application of photography to the

still life A still life (plural: still lifes) is a work of art depicting mostly inanimate subject matter, typically commonplace objects which are either natural (food, flowers, dead animals, plants, rocks, shells, etc.) or man-made (drinking glasses, bo ...

artistic style. Tabletop photography, product photography,

food photography Food photography is a still life photography genre used to create attractive still life photographs of food. It is a specialization of commercial photography, the products of which are used in advertisements, magazines, packaging, menus or co ...

, found object photography etc. are examples of still life photography. This genre gives the photographer more leeway in the arrangement of design elements within a

composition Composition or Compositions may refer to: Arts and literature *Composition (dance), practice and teaching of choreography *Composition (language), in literature and rhetoric, producing a work in spoken tradition and written discourse, to include v ...

compared to other photographic genres, such as

landscape A landscape is the visible features of an area of land, its landforms, and how they integrate with natural or man-made features, often considered in terms of their aesthetic appeal.''New Oxford American Dictionary''. A landscape includes the ...

portrait photography Portrait photography, or portraiture, is a type of photography aimed toward capturing the personality of a person or group of people by using effective lighting, backdrops, and poses. A portrait photograph may be artistic or clinical. Frequentl ...

Lighting Lighting or illumination is the deliberate use of light to achieve practical or aesthetic effects. Lighting includes the use of both artificial light sources like lamps and light fixtures, as well as natural illumination by capturing dayl ...

and framing are important aspects of still life photography composition. Manmade objects like pots, vases, consumer products, handicrafts etc. or natural objects like plants, fruits, vegetables, food, rocks, shells etc. can be taken as subjects for still life photography. Typically, still life photos are not close up to the subject nor far away, but at a very head-on angle. The art in still life photography is often in the choice of objects that are being arranged and the lighting rather than the skill of the photographer. The

J. Paul Getty Museum The J. Paul Getty Museum, commonly referred to as the Getty, is an art museum in Los Angeles, California housed on two campuses: the Getty Center and Getty Villa. The Getty Center is located in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles and fea ...

, Los Angeles, mounted the exhibition “In Focus: Still Life” in 2010. The exhibition included works by still life photographers such as Paul Outerbridge, Paul Strand, André Kertész, Albert Renger-Patzsch, Josef Sudek, Jan Groover, Sharon Core, and Martin Parr.

References

Photography by genre {{photo-stub