lime – photoblog of a fruit

Location:

At home

The Setup:

I was cleaning up in the kitchen before work and was about to put a strawberry in the bin, when I noticed that it had grown a little. Strawberries seem to grow very quickly if not kept refridgerated, in my experience, and this one had been left out over night. I used my mini-tripod pointing down at the strawberry to capture the mould.

The camera & lens:

Camera: Canon EOS 400D DIGITAL
@ 27/1mm
Exposure: 1/50" @ f/5/1, ISO 1600

Post processing:

Lightroom - I cropped right down so the whole picture was of the smallest details. The curve I used was lights +30, darks -30, shadows -10. Finished off with recovery at 100 (to darken the top of the photo a bit - otherwise it was distractingly bright), fill light to 45 and blacks to 30. I wanted to set the blacks lever higher but it killed the rest of the photo. I did one other adjustment - a graduated filter for clarity. Setting clarity +100 over the whole picture ended up making the tips of the stalks in the background stand out too much. The graduated filter allowed me to set clarity on the lower third of the picture and leave the rest alone.

The wash-up:

The photo looked different to how I saw it with my eye. I found I wasn't able to bring out as much detail in the stalks of the mould as I wanted... but it's not too bad.

What do you think?

All constructive criticism is welcome! Please let me know what you think, and what you don't like about the picture. Everything is on the table, including the setup, equipment used, and the post processing. Nothing is off-limits and I'm always eager to learn!

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2011-08-31 05:39:20