Date taken: 14/2/13
Location: Next to a window
Settings: Shutter Speed: 1/250 | Aperture: | ISO: 100
For this photo, I wanted to try something different and not an obvious food photograph. My experiment was taking a close up of a lemon slice inside a glass jar with ice and fizzy lemonade with it. At first I tried with the standard lens but I didn’t get very good shots as it wasn’t close enough. I put the extension tubes on and was able to get the detail in the bubbles a lot better.
The photograph has good composition because of the way I framed the lemon slice, putting the centre of it in the top left corner and having it take up most of the picture. It has a small amount of negative space on the right but your eyes are drawn to the centre of the photo because that’s where the focus is. One thing I would like to change is to have a wider depth of field but with the extension tubes, it’s hard to change that. It would be a lot better with a proper macro lens.
For lighting, I set up the jar next to a window where the natural day light came in. I also put a white card behind so that the light would reflect off it and light up the fruit from behind. As a result of such good lighting, I was getting some overexposed photos at first. To change this, I put the ISO down to 100 and had quite a fast shutter speed (1/250 sec).
On Photoshop, I adjusted the curves to add contrast and changed things like the vibrance and colour balance to make the fruit look a bit more ‘punchy’. I also wanted to make the bubbles look more crisp so I adjusted this on the smart sharpen filter.
Joanna Dale 