Still Life

I've often been called a classicist when it comes to my taste in art, architecture and interior design, and that I most definitely am. While I of course enjoy the modern luxuries, I find art and architecture between the 15th and 17th century to be the most beautiful and alluring to me.

The Golden Age of art, set around the 17th century in the Netherlands is where my happy place with portraiture and still life is. Paintings done during that time were so incredibly delicious with their dark backgrounds, detailed textures and a hint of playfulness. When it comes to photography, a lot of portraiture work is still based on the so called Rembrandt lighting.

If someone paints a vase of flowers and a fruit bowl set against well lit, light coloured scene, it bores me to absolute death, but put the same still life arrangement in a dark environment and I'm in love with it. Same goes for portraiture. I feel like the dark scene and shadows really bring out the textures in the subject and add so much richness.

Today I set out to make my own still life image, inspired by the Dutch masters. I've wanted to do this for ages but haven't gotten around to do it. I collect all sort of little oddities and pretty things so I didn't even have to go out shopping for them. Though I did just score the little skull candle from the Halloween section on the store.

I'm pretty darn happy with what I made, though there is always room for improvement. I think the back left corner of the table is a bit too cluttered and messy and I'm not 100% sure if this white balance is exactly how I wanted it to be. Maybe I could also add a bit more space on top of the candle. I sprayed some atmospheric spray into the air (highly flammable lol) to give me a sort of dusty cigar smoke library feel, but it really just shows well near the light.

Shot with the Nikon D750 and Nikkor 50mm f/1.8.