For the Lens-Artists Photo Challenge – Still Life. This week’s challenge is hosted by Patti. Thank you, Patti. If you are a lover of photo challenges and the Still Life art genre, check out Patti’s post here.

Still Life art often portrays a created scene/image of inanimate objects, but Patti gives us plenty of leeway to explore different types of still life images, not only the traditional “created” arrangement, but also “found” still life scenes–which we might discover in store windows, in a garden or museum, or just about anywhere. That is good for me because my photo archive is remarkably devoid of created Still Life images. Let’s get on with it.

I am often filled with wonder by the way Still Life images pay homage to ordinary objects. Attention to the small details matter in this art form. Perhaps it is the impermanence and fragility of the scene that I find so wistful.

I have chosen two photos from my archives that I think convey that sense of fragility and impermanence.


Next is a recent photograph I took. Though it be a contradiction, Still Life portraiture can also depict death. Here I have attempted to pay homage to the life that once was. Nature creates life but also takes it away.


It is your moment now, readers.

Kind Regards.
Tracy.

29 thoughts on “Lens-Artists: Still Life”

  2. Great shots and interesting thoughts too on what makes a still life. As a favourite, I’m torn between the delicate flower and the monochrome shades of the shell image.

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  3. Beautiful photos — there are still life out there with dead animals, usually portrayed as future food or trophies from a hunt, together with the rest of a meal. It’s strange how long it took me to understand what they were saying “Hi folks! Here’s our 16th century dinner.”

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    1. Thank you, Martha. Funny how in modern times the images of animal food trophies are now too much for our modern day sensibilities, unless of course they have already been cooked. I also read about the concept of Memento Mori, so clearly death was also a feature of the genre. That’s life, eh?

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      1. Where I live now, people hunt most of them get a year’s meat that way and it keeps the elk and deer herds from over-population which leads to some terrible illnesses for them. I get it. I support it and I hate it at the same time. That is, I think, the internal paradox that led to our modern supermarket. But I’d rather eat elk than cow. At the same time, the elk that wander the no hunting zone of my refuge? I want to tell them to stay there. It doesn’t make sense. 🙂

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      2. Yep. Heartbreaking.
        Some birds get caught up in dog hair that people leave out for nesting material. They think they are doing the right thing ….
        My son saw a magpie trapped on a barbed wire fence on his way to band practice once. If we had not stopped, that bird would have died within the hour as the temperature was rising. 40 degree day. It took a while for the lads to free it but they finally did. That was one lucky bird.

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    1. Thanks, Lou. I took that photo with my old Motorola phone before I even owned a camera. I’m not a fan of the new phone cameras or the software they use. The colours are bereft of subtlety, but that is just my opinion.

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