The Story Behind the Photo:

January 2021: Still Life

Old Books

by Jennifer Taylor

In preparation for this assignment, I looked at some still life paintings to get ideas for elements to use in the photo.  I was inspired by some works that had old books, as I have a small collection of them.  I chose some that had nice character in their wear-and-tear and whose colors worked well together.  I also saw many symbols of time in still life paintings, so I draped this clock necklace I have on the books.  I decided to have the lit lantern slightly out of focus in the background to add another level of interest.  I had sketched out a few different setups before shooting, and this one was based off of one of those sketches.  

It was shot with natural light in front of a large window in my living room on a cloudy day.  I used a couple black foam core boards to help block some of the light so that mainly the clock and the spines of the books were lit.  I processed the photo in Lightroom and mainly worked on the tone curve to give it more of a film look.

Camera Settings:

100mm f/2.8 Macro lens

1/8 sec at f/5.0

ISO 100