Still Life Photography: Taking photos with your hand in the frame the easy

Hand in the frame still life photography has been a fascination of mine for a few years now. It is a great way to dip your toes into doing self-portraits without putting your whole body into the frame. It still falls within the still life category for me since I am usually using my hands and props to tell a story. Whether it be a food story where I'm picking up a muffin or a historical story where I'm holding an old letter with some pretty ruffled sleeves on my arms. You can get really creative in the stories you tell adding in a human element. 

In this class we'll cover:

• I'm going to introduce you to an idea I had for using books as inspiration for the stories we put together.
• I'll show you how I use tethering to make taking hand in frame photos easier
• We'll talk about the lighting
• I'll show you how I do tabletop photography using a tabletop camera mount from glide gear or using a tripod with a boom arm so you can shoot straight down on your setup
• I'll go over the props I pulled together for the story I'm telling
• I'll style the setup and talk about a few photos I might end up taking
• We'll also look at my final photos from this setup and do some editing in Lightroom.

This course is a great class for moving up a level in your photography by trying some advanced techniques for your photography.

Required Gear: A camera. You can do still life photography with any camera you have. A few props to tell your story, and I am shooting tethered - which you can do, or set your camera up with a tripod and use a remote to fire off your camera.

For your class project, I'd like you to shoot a collection of photos of your setup. Post at least 1 photo from your set with your hand in the frame. 

Concentrate on getting the best photo out of the camera that you can before you get into editing. Focus on good lighting, exposure, composition, and your styling.