still life photography

here is the instruction from the course instructor to us for this assignment:

"Here are some classical Dutch still life paintings - Look at them and study the organization and composition. Chose one that you like a lot and download it - who is it by and what year painted?

Now, using your own ideas and materials in your own home, make - or find - your own still life composition and photograph it. It can be simple or complex but it should reflect your own ideas - it does not need to be a copy of what you downloaded. Use objects, food, or materials from your life and time".

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i did not read the instruction carefully. I just read about making a still life picture and all I did was I clicked to the Dutch paintings. I did not study them well. Actually I did not look at them carefully and analyzed them. My impression was they were all nice paintings with vivid colors and wonderful compositions and lighting.

why on earth I đi not even think about symbolic aspects of these paintings. Maybe it was not my usual way of seeing.

Then I realized that I was pretty ease with myself when I heard the critiques today.

A lot of good work by other participants and they seemed spending a lot of time to make a photograph like the paintings they liked and add some references of modern life in their work. It seemed there were a lot of thinking and making arrangement and they thought about meanings a lot too.

But I sent three photos. I made more than the three and I had some pictures I liked but i was glad that I did not send to the class as they were not quite still life pictures.

And I even did not bother to check whether my understanding of still life was correct. I had never thought the symbolic meanings of the still life work are related to death.

So the flowers, food, old stuffs, skulls, ect are not just objects but they carry symbolic meanings. For example, a table of food might indicate the last meal, happy meal of a dead person, etc

Some paintings has more direct meaning to death. For example, dead fish, or the fish which was about to be bitten by an hungry and skinny cat.

Some classmates made their pictures were very beautiful with almost death flowers. and the photos look like painting. Like a beautiful death.

And one work made everyone wondered if it was a still life as the artist took a white blanket and pillow which was arranged tidily on a dark floor and next to them was a weird yellow contemporary painting of still life. So there was a still life painting in a questioning still-life photo. Interesting

Here were mine. I thought maybe one of them was correct with the request of this assignment but surprisingly this time the instructor looked at three of them and they they had element of stills life and clearly i took something unconsciously from these paintings.

i did not have much time for selecting images but i did pretty quick and when I reduced to 5-6 images, and asked my friend Lam to give me his opinion about what seemed interesting to him and and chose three of these images.

If I was hard working enough, I should type "still life painting, meaning" maybe I got better idea. something quick and simple, like this one.

but it is me. I just learn a different , opposite way. Instead of doing research, i did first, learnt from other and did research later :)

should not recommend to my dear nephew and nieces :))

(by the way, the background of the third image was what I painted for my niece)

i just imaged the elephant and the tiger were about to jump out of the wall and catch the little horse who was trying to run :)

the next assignment, we have to take photos and chose two photos and put them next to each other to create another meaning the two and the gap between them create.