For a class photo-shoot I was able to convince my mother to allow me to harvest some fresh vegetables from our homegrown garden, and she provided the basket.  After setting up the still life, it was open to other students for shooting and adjusting the arrangement as we all deemed fit.  I positioned the green toned vegetables around the only red tomato.

With the suggestion of the teacher I was able lightly spray the vegetables so only a few water drops would stay on the surface, and also give the vegetables a natural shine.

When this shot was processed, the teacher was impressed with it, and suggested to make it sort of like an inspirational photo geared toward gardening.  The red coloring was sampled from the tomato, and the font used was Zapfino, due to the serif of the font resembling the leaves from the tomato.

This image was shot with a Nikon Coolpix E4200 and color corrected and finished in Photoshop CS2.

A side note about photography….

I find photography to be more of an artistic release, and tend to shoot for that purpose, rather than for commercial reasons or uses.

I engage in photography because I want to capture a secret split-second moment, and I want that moment to mean something.  Even if it’s something most see as trivial or mundane, it’s what I see and what that image means to me. Some of my images I have found to be able to transverse the artistic to commercial, but its only been in rare cases and never been the sole focus of this kind of work.

I was taught by my photography teacher that you can’t judge one’s photographic skill solely based on the gear they use. Sometime the best pictures can be taken from a simple point and shoot, and just because you have the latest model DSLR with the best lens does not mean you have instant photographic gold.

My photographic arsenal is equipped with a Cannon AE-1 SLR with multiple lenses, a Minolta Maxxum 7-Xl, a Vivitar film SLR, a Nikon Coolpix E4200 point and shoot, and Nikon Coolpix S4100 point and shoot, and occasionally the iPhone7.