Walk By Faith and Grow in Grace

I am participating in a 52-week photo challenge this year.  Now that I am retired I have more time to spend working on my photography skills and a weekly photo challenge is a great way to force me out of my comfort zone to learn new things.

This week's challenge was "Still Life".  According to Wikipedia, "a still life is a work of art depicting mostly inanimate subject matter, typically commonplace objects which may be either natural (food, flowers, dead animals, plants, rocks, or shells) or man-made (drinking glasses, books, vases, jewelry, coins, pipes, and so on)."  This is an area in which I have made very few photos and none that I have been really happy with.  But I have to complete the weekly challenge.

I wasn't sure what to use as my subject.  I was pretty sure I didn't want to use dead animals, so I went to 500px.com and looked for other still life photos. I saw one with books so I decided I could use some of the old antique books we have.   I wanted to make the scene to be appealing and make the viewer want to sit down and read.   What better than a steaming cup of hot coffee.  The antique books needed a candle to complete the scene.    Add some coasters and I had the ingredients I needed.

I shot this in my den, which has plenty of distracting things in the background.  I tried several different angles, moved furniture and took things off the walls to get rid of the distractions.  I used an off camera flash with a shoot through umbrella to light the scene but not the background.  Using the flash also highlighted the steam coming from the cup.

The coaster says Walk by Faith.  If you look closely inside the cup "Grow in grace."  II Peter 3:18 is printed on the inside.  What better way to begin your reading.