‘Desktop Stories’ – Photographer Reimagines Her Office, Bringing Scenes To Life

Turning the everyday mundane into something exciting is a challenge for almost anyone, but creative still life photographer Dina Belenko readily accepts the challenge and aces the test.

As Dina describes it, “I tell animate stories about inanimate objects.  I believe that each thing contains a kind of ‘folded story’ inside.”  Looking around her studio, she saw a wealth of stories right before her and set about bringing them to life.

Desktop Stories

You can take a coffee cup or bunch of keys or school-box with colored pencils and see that all of them are covered by a set of meanings and associations, a kind of connotative moss. You can tell that they belong to someone special — an adventurer, a dreamer.  One broken plate can tell what it saw, who held it, who accidentally broke it, who lovingly gathered it in pieces and repaired it. The gardener’s rusty watering pot can tell how many beautiful roses it helped to grow. You can see a living dinosaur in a pressed leaf of fern and a supernova explosion in a sparkler.

All of the images in Dina’s “Desktop Stories” collection were created in physical space, often using tweezers to hold objects “in motion” long enough to shoot a frame.  While various images may have been composited to achieve the final result, Dina insists that all elements are genuinely real and photographed in place.

It’s amazing to see how seemingly innocuous stuff lying around our homes can be reimagined in such a fascinating way.

When was the last time you turned the mundane into the extraordinary?

To see more of Dina’s stunning work, visit her on 500px or stop by her blog.

[“Desktop Stories” by Dina Belenko]