Good enough to eat!

About This Photo
Aperture: f/2.8
Exposure: 1/40
Focal Length: 50mm
ISO: 640
Lens: 50mm f/1.4

Fresh ripe strawberries ... YUM. I admit that when I was getting these ready for a dessert, I couldn't resist (no, I really couldn't!) taking a bite. After all, the cook has to sample the dish she's about to serve, right? I mean, what if it were horrible?

Okay, yeah ... I'm not buying it, either. But it is true that these colors together are somewhat irresistible (which is why, perhaps, red, green, and blue are the dominant colors of my kitchen). I left the bitten strawberry in there not only because it adds an element of visual interest, but it hints at just a bit of story, and of mischief as well. The viewer is free to come up with an array of possibilities.

I also made use of a considerable amount of negative space in this photo -- in nearly half of the photo, there really isn't anything to look at except for the turquoise cutting mat that serves as a backdrop to the strawberries. It adds some emotional punch and helps draw even more attention to the strawberries. But this guy says it better, I think, so you may want to check out what he has to say about negative space in photography and some creative ways to employ it.

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Lessons Learned or Affirmed:

• I played around a lot with the arrangement of the strawberries, and even took quite a few shots of different arrangements and ones without a strawberry that had a bite out of it. I'm still figuring out what works in terms of photographic set-ups like this one. In the end, I wish that I had put a strawberry that had a stem still on it to be the one that had the bite out of it. I think that would have been a lot better.
• Post-processing is still one of my very best friends! A little unsharp mask, a little cross-processing, and a little vibrancy boost an voila! Stemless strawberry or no, I still want to jump into the photo and consume every strawberry in sight. :o)