In this thesis I show that only some of the commonly used stellar populations models can account for observed broad-band colors of the local galaxy population. Through a stellar population synthesis modeling, including the e ects of dust, I show that a galaxy's star formation history, stellar mass, chemical enrichment and dust extinction can be constrained over a large part of the parameter space using optical broad band photometry. An essientially volume complete sample of nearby (<50Mpc) galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey are selected and u,g,r,i,z-band photometry for these galaxies are measured from the survey images. Using my stellar population synthesis modeling I obtain the aforementioned properties and study how these, along with galaxy sizes and shapes, depend on galaxy stellar mass and environment. In addition, these galaxy properties are related to the mass functions of galaxy groups providing further insight into galaxy assembly. Moreover, I have performed an imaging study of the Abell 569 cluster core revealing signs of galaxy interactions as well as a galaxy luminosity function with a at faint end slope
