Photo of the Day + Touch Up-Tuesday mini-tutorial

It feels so good to be taking photographs every day again! My head is buzzing with ideas for shots for this week. Maybe it helps that the weather has turned really nice again. Maybe it was good to take a break but it's definitely better to be back on track with my 365 project!

Yesterday I got the idea to photograph some orange and strawberry slices and as I was preparing it I couldn't help but throw in a little banana. However I didn't realize how difficult this combination would be to photograph. Throughout the shoot I had to continually rinse off and wipe down my fruit since their juices - especially the strawberry juice - was getting everywhere. You wouldn't believe that such a simple shot could create such a big mess! I was really wishing I had more experience with food style during this shoot!

Here's my mini-tutorial: setting up a good window light shot.

Here is my subject on the window sill with just a rough guess for what my settings should be - notice the white balance? Glaringly, obviously much too blue. So I custom set my white balance. (I had to do this another time during the photo shoot as the sun was warming up.) Remembering to set your white balance (and knowing how to set a custom white balance) is a life-saver!


Here is a sneak-peak behind the scenes of this shoot. I used a piece of white poster board to bounce the light. I use this poster all of the time and is wonderful for either a back drop or to bounce light. It fills in the shadows wonderfully without using a flash.

I started off with the oranges around the edges of the bowl but it just quite didn't look right to me, so I rearranged them in a different order. Lesson here: don't give up! If the first shot doesn't turn out right try again! Sometimes I end up with a really nice shot by accident, usually though it's the second or third time that I've attempted the same type of shot that I get something I really love.


Here is another shot from this set. I like the angle but notice the shadow in the upper right corner? I'm really unhappy with that. It's because I moved the poster board to curve around the fruit bowl but it made a nasty line - you'd think editing it out would be easy, but it's really not. Especially not with a wiggly three year old on your lap. I played with it for an hour and still did not get anything I was really happy with. I'm pretty upset that I ruined a shot with so much such potential.  But hopefully I won't make that mistake again!

Here is the photo SOOC:


Since the theme for my photography challenge this week is macro I slapped on my macro filter and snapped a couple super close-ups. (this is where I had to adjust my white balance again) I really like the detail and the light for these two shots.

I'm linking up this week with Paper Heart Camera for Touch-up Tuesday!