DSC_4768 Four Favorites
Mar, 2015Views
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Same photographer See allBehind The Lens
Behind The Lens
Location
I took this shot at Spare Bedroom Studios. It's the finest studio in my house if not the neighborhood.Time
I think it was late afternoon in late winter. The light coming through the east-facing window was subdued did not interfere with my lighting set up.Lighting
Very simple which is what I prefer always. The slices were backlit with a softbox with five 5500K fluorescents sitting at the same level as the fruit.Equipment
I used my Nikon D610 and a tripod for stillness and to maintain a consistent distance from the subject. The lens is the kit 24-85mm f/3.5-4.5 set to 48mm on the zoom, f/11 at 1/60 with an ISO of 400. I set up two sawhorses and laid out my old reliable sheet of plywood (not the one from the garage with spiders and dust on it because she told me to never do that again). The slices were set on edge on a small sheet of black acrylic. I propped them up with genuine wood toothpicks and tried to make sure they were all on the same focal plane.Inspiration
I've always liked the colors, translucence and textures of fruit. These are four of my favorites and they have colors that do well together. I was thinking in terms of things that signify good health, great flavors and look appetizing. I picked some that were close in size to each other.Editing
Well, I shot this in .NEF, Nikon RAW. I opened the exposures in Adobe Camera Raw and began to apply the usual suspects to my favorite one. I dropped the blacks slightly, and added a tiny bit of clarity and vibrance. I added a small bit of sharpening and examined the image for noise at 100%. I moved the luminance slider until I liked the result. I didn't notice any obvious color fringing, but I went into lens correction and checked the "remove chromatic aberration " box anyway. After that I opened it in Photoshop CC 2014. I did some "Content Aware" move tool to get rid of most of the visible toothpicks and finished with a tiny healing brush. Also, I used the healing brush to take care of scratches and smudges on the acrylic. I think that was all I did.In my camera bag
Depends what I'm out for. For wildlife I have the kit Nikon 70-300mm zoom mounted and since I'll be out and about in the wild, I'll have the 24-85mm because I always see a nice landscape. In the studio, I still like the 24-85 or a 100mm f/2.8 Tokina Macro if I need more speed or bokeh.Feedback
Just keep shooting and trying to learn from your experience, the experience of others and tutorials. Get inspired by other photographers' work. Whatever image you can imagine, you can figure out how to create it.
