Light Painting The Still Life... The Foundation Becomes The House

"Brick Study #1" by Harold Ross

When I teach students about creating a still life composition, I often say: "Build the foundation before you build the walls".

This simply means that when composing a still life in the studio, one should consider the larger elements first before worrying about placement of the smaller elements. We should achieve a generally balanced composition before worrying about the details.

If, on the other hand, we get the small elements perfectly placed first, with the proper relationships between them, proper overlapping, etc., and we then decide that the larger elements (I refer to these as "Big Blocks") need to be re-arranged, we then need to reposition the small elements again, and this represents a loss of time and energy.

In this image, the bricks are both the foundation and the walls, and so, the foundation becomes the house.

Vera and I found these beautiful bricks at a junk shop, and it reinforces my opinion that Light Painting ideas and subjects can appear anytime and anywhere!

And, of course, Light Painting enabled me to reveal the incredible texture and sculptural dimension of these beautiful subjects.

Happy Light Painting... and always remember... Skim The Light.

- Harold

Creating light painted still life images is extremely rewarding, and something which I teach in great detail throughout my comprehensive light painting online video course.

See what students are saying about my Light Painting The Still Life Foundation Course.