Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with stilllife

Encyclopedia Green and the Case of the Perplexing Painters

jph — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 14:16:56 -0800

Help me track down some mystery artists! Vague memories within! A few years ago (2008, 2009?), at the Rittenhouse Art Festival, I ran across a couple artists whose style blew me away. I grabbed their cards, and vowed that someday I would purchase art from them. Then I promptly moved across the country and lost the cards in the move. I have tried a bunch of random Googling, but with fairly vague memories like these, I'm striking out left and right. I'd really love to track these artists down, and I've always been amazed at what you all can do with scant detail.

Artist one: An Asian(?) woman who specialized in still life paintings. Here's the catch: they were spectacularly precise. They were so crisp and clean they looked like photographs. In fact, I thought they were photographs and was kind of generally unimpressed until I got up close and realized that they were oil paintings.

Artist two: A man(?) who painted on rather large canvases. They were mostly remarkable for their size and for the artist's style. Imagine, if you will, that you're walking down a city street in some mega-urban environment, squinting, in the rain, at night. Fuzzy circles in various colors, like lights, float mysteriously on dark backgrounds in blues, greys and blacks.

Do your best, MetaFilter!

Can you ID this still life painting?

skidoom — Sat, 06 Nov 2010 11:02:51 -0800

Meta-art-historians: Can anyone help me identify this luminous still life painting? The fruit is almost old-masterish, but the cocktail glass with the pink liquid looks more modern. What do you think is the liquid in the glass?

I'm just sure it's called "Still Life with Bottle"

jferg — Sat, 15 May 2010 19:24:38 -0800

Can anyone identify this still life? Spotted on another site today, but no attribution was given. I really like the colors and would like to find a print of it. Tineye and revimg were no help.

Help me take better photos in my home studio!

arniec — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 10:52:58 -0800

I am a hobbyist photographer starting to do some serious studio work and I need help deciding on lighting equipment. To start, I run a website about collectibles. I find myself in a position of wanting to do "photo archives" of these collectibles, which range from very tiny Hallmark Christmas ornaments (1/4 inch in size) to very large items (3' long, 1' tall).

I started by using a fairly decent digital camera and the flash, or some desk lamps. I have slowly been upgrading my equipment and now have a Canon Digital Rebel XT, a hotshoe flash, and I bought a lightbox that shines light down on an item, and has white sides attempting to reflect the light onto the object.

It has mixed results. First, the box is too small for several items. Second, with the light being primarily from the top, the front of the item is often left in shadows.

Some self-links to photos to give examples of my current work follow:

One of the better examples of pre-lightbox photo

Picture from the lightbox; bright top, dark front

Overexposed from the lightbox

Circular items do poorly in the lightbox

Lately we've been photographing items and I think it's helped a bit but we're not where I want to be.

So I am looking at a new lighting set-up. I'm driving to St. Louis this Friday to talk to people at camera stores, but I thought I'd ask here what might work best.

We were thinking of taping the gray fabric to a wall and setting up a table on which we can put items, but what type of lights do I need, and how many? I hear about linking strobes to a camera, but is that better than "always on" light rigs? Do I need diffusing umbrellas? Two lights (one from each side), or three (one from each side and one from the front?)

I'm willing to spend up to $500 on this if the need be (the less the better) but I really want to take ASTOUNDING photographs. I think I'm almost there, but can you help me figure out what is needed now?

(and while the still items are my primary concern, if I can also do portrait photography so much the better)

Finally, I've been primarily using the camera's autoexposure to get the lighting right; would a light meter really help? (I'm guessing I still need better lights IN ADDITION TO the light meter...)

Thanks!!