The New Strawberry
This is one of my favorite shots. It started out as a school assignment which focused on color. When I thought about the shot in my head, I envisioned using a strawberry. I headed to the store for the aforementioned strawberry and matching lipstick; however, when I arrived the strawberries looked horrible but the raspberries looked amazing, hence the change. Then over to cosmetic counter for lipstick, needless to say, but I felt like a fish out of water in very unfamiliar territory, but I prevailed.
Then off to the fancy studio to set up the shot. NOT ! The shot took place in our kitchen. I set up a quick white background. Then roped my “Lip Model” – Kimmie, my daughter into a sitting. I used two speedlights, one camera left which created the highlights on her lips and the raspberry. The second, was used to light the background. The real key to the image was using a tripod for stability. The reason this was necessary was that I used a 100mm macro lens to take the shot. The depth of field is sooooooo shallow when using the macro it’s tough to get the proper depth of field focus. The tripod and manual focus enabled me to really refine the focus on the raspberry stems.
The rest was easy. I popped few shots and made some positional adjustments between the raspberry and my daughter’s lips and the rest is history.
