apple juice, apple pie, apple sauce

3 images captured tripod mounted 1/6/10, around 9pm • Canon 5D, Canon EF28-200mm f/3.5-5.6 USM • 40mm, f/4.5, 1/15, ISO 500 • Adjustments & merge in Adobe Photoshop CS4

No snow?! It's January in Wisconsin for crying out loud! I was getting anxious and frustrated that there was no snow outside to take beautiful wintery pictures of for this week's post (still can't believe I missed it all during our holiday travels to 3 different midwest states). This week I waited & waited for snowfall, but was so excited to create my second blog post that I decided to think outside the box instead. Glad I did!

Late Wednesday night (after spending a full sick-day sitting still under blankets anchored to the couch) I came up with this playful idea using apples. I even set up a little make-shift whitebox with a white tri-fold presentation board topped with a single white piece of poster board. It worked pretty well to bounce nice, even shadows around the apples with my flash, which was muted and pointed upward.

I had never done anything before with lighting subjects like this, so I made due with what I had and enjoyed experimenting with trial & error to get the shot I wanted. Plus, this was the first time I had really played with my new Christmas lens for an extended period of time, which was fun. Once I was satisfied with the result of the first apple shot, I changed it out for the other two and eventually had a triptych that I was pretty happy with. BUT, once I started messing with the arrangement on-screen this evening, it just made sense to merge the 3 into one composite image. I really like they way the composition ended up working!

SIDE NOTE: the very next day we got a gorgeous 6-inch blanket of snow. That would be my luck... BUT, I was sick anyway and I'm really glad that I forced myself to think creatively to come up with a different kind of photo. I even learned a little something while I was at it!