STILL-LIFE HOME STUDIO
You don’t need a studio space full of stands, clamps and backdrops to create striking still lifes. Tracy Calder talks to two photographers who have made incredible images using what they find around them
Angi Wallace
Angi Wallace is an award-winning photographer with a passion for macro, nature, creative portraiture, landscapes and gig photography. She recently turned her hand to creating and shooting still-life arrangements in her home studio. Angi’s work has been highly placed in a variety of prestigious photography competitions. She won the close-up round of APOY in 2020. To see more of Angi’s work visit www. angiwallacephotography. com
When Angi Wallace moved in with her partner, Michael, he soon discovered that he would never be eating dinner at the dining room table again. Angi commandeered the room for her photography, transforming the space into a mini studio. ‘Michael asked me when I was going to tidy everything up and I said “never”’, she laughs. It’s hard to complain about mess when your partner wins countless awards for her creative still-life, floral and close-up work. ‘We eat in the living room now,’ she adds, with a smile. The basic set-up comprises a table, a series of backdrops on a pole (which Angi flips over), three lights and walls of shelves packed with vases and other photogenic props. ‘You can barely get into the room now and there’s hardly any space around the table for the lights,’ she confesses.
Angi studied history of art at school and believes this early training might have fuelled her passion for still life. ‘I like the Old Masters, but I’m also inspired by a lot of European and Russian still-life painters,’ she says. There’s a lot to be gained from looking at accounts on Instagram, where people share their behind-the-scenes lighting set-ups, too. ‘These can be very handy to learn from,’ she says. ‘The set-ups people use are very much like the old-fashioned painters.’ When she started shooting still life, Angi didn’t give much thought to the lighting. ‘I used to position a light on either side and just point it at the subject,’ she laughs, ‘I wasn’t very imaginative.’ Now, however, she is ‘obsessed’ with harnessing the power of light. ‘It’s not just about how it hits the subject, it’s about how it hits the backdrop and how it’s reflected back into the scene,’ she explains.
Choosing a theme
When it comes to setting up a still-life arrangement, Angi sometimes starts with a theme. ‘I might decide to play with shadows, certain colours, shapes or textures,’ she explains. ‘I like playing around with colours that are opposite each other on the artist’s colour wheel – l
