What is still life?

multiple settings (this is a composite)

          So for TOP we are entering 4 categories. Sports, photojournalism, thematic, and still life. We were on teams for thematic and still life and I was a part of the thematic team which we did Town That Dreaded Sundown for that. On Saturday, we realized that the still life still was in need of 3 pictures and our deadline was Monday. So, I went home and decided to attempt a still life. The big debate/discussion is what exactly is a still life image? These are candles. They do not move. I consider this picture still life. But if you are being really picky, they are lit, and fire is not still. So technically I guess you could say it is moving and not still. But I am calling this image a still life image, even if you disagree with me. (I feel like I just argued with myself. I am a strange child.)

         We had a wedding shower at my house like a week ago and used these candles. Except they started off tall and not melted and by the end of the shower this is what they looked like. I thought it was really cool so I decided to get a picture of it. I did a composite/HDR and combined like 3-5 different pictures. One was really dark-to get the flames to look right. On another I used a secondish exposure and used a 430 flash and pressed the pilot button (I didn't have a pocket wizard or sync or anything) on the tray and candles coming at an angle back toward the camera. The third image, I used another long exposure and used the pilot button on the flash again but this time flashed the ferns in the background so there was some depth to this photo. My ISO was 100 and my f-stop was f/4.0. I started with a smaller (bigger number [f/80.0]) aperture but the background was rather clear and I didn't like that so I kept changing it until I got to f/4.0 so it wasn't so clear. With a smaller aperture it was too distracting, and I like it like this better. So this is my still life image that I created for TOP.