Dragon Fruit

[Mike Buckley]

I had not seen or heard of this fruit before today. As soon I selected the particular fruit I wanted to photograph, I knew everything about how I wanted to photograph it including this part of the fruit at this angle. It was immensely pleasing that my thinking about that produced the exact results I had envisioned, especially considering how little thought was required to arrive at how I wanted everything to look. All of that comes together so rarely with my desktop photography that it's darned near worth a small celebration.

Notice that the fruit has intense, fresh color while at the same time the edges of the "leaves" (what are they properly called?) are dried and brown. I lit the fruit to simultaneously display both characteristics.

Setup
The background and tabletop are a single sheet of green art paper. A small continuous-light lamp on the right side lights that side of the fruit and the background. Another one on the left side lights that side of the fruit. A flash light on the right side and slightly behind the fruit adds some very slight rim light and backlighting to parts of that side of the fruit. That light produced by the flash light might not be noticeable unless I then removed it, which is exactly the touch I wanted.

[Chrisclick]

So glad that worked out for you, Mike.

[JBW]

This is a rare occurrence Mike but this just doesn't work for me. It is altogether too harsh, conflicted(?) and glaring? All of which, if you were going for that effect has worked very well

[Mike Buckley]

Thanks for the comments, Brian, and especially for taking the time to think about whether my image works for you! I wouldn't use the words you used to describe the image but I think it's wonderful that they work for you. It's always fun for me to see how people respond to the same image whether their responses are in agreement or disagreement.

[mugge]

Mike, I like the way you have controlled the edges of the leaves.
Cheers Ole

[Dave A]

Nicely lit Mike. The tight crop works well for me.

Dave

[Wavelength]

Very nice

[Mike Buckley]

Thank you to Ole, Dave and Nandakumar!

[bje07]

The right light seems too harsh for me, this is just my feeling

[Shadowman]

Nicely captured.

[Mike Buckley]

Thank you also to Jean and John.

[DanK]

Mike,

I think of you as this site's master of subtle lighting, but this one doesn't fit that pattern, and it doesn't really work for me. I agree with Brian and Jean that it seems harsh.

Dan

[Mike Buckley]

Thanks for your ideas, Dan!

[Mike Buckley]

Several of you have described the light as harsh and I'm confused about that. That might be because I don't normally think of light in terms of whether it is harsh or not. Perhaps that's because of the influence the book, Light: Scienece & Magic, has had on me, as its authors primarily refer to three characteristics of light: brightness, color and contrast.

The one exception is that I do think of cloudless sunlight near noon as harsh, though I use that word to describe that situation only because so many other people describe that quality of light that way. The most important characteristic of light in that situation is that the contrast is high. A noticeable symptom of high-contrast light is that the shadows are hard; they have clearly defined edges.

I see only one small edge of a shadow in this image that is hard. Hence, my confusion that several people have described the light as harsh.

I have a hunch that we might be having a communication issue rather than a disagreement about the characteristics of the light itself. So, any discussion that can help clarify things could be interesting at the least and perhaps even helpful.

[DanK]

Perhaps a bad choice of words. After playing around with luminance changes, I think the issue is contrast--which can be a function of harsh lighting, even though it may not be here. For example, sliding the midpoint down in a levels adjustment reduced the appearance I was responding to, although it doesn't yield an attractive image. Decompressing the bottom of the histogram with a curves adjustment has a similar effect.

[JBW]

Several of you have described the light as harsh and I'm confused about that. That might be because I don't normally think of light in terms of whether it is harsh or not. Perhaps that's because of the influence the book, Light: Scienece & Magic has had on me, as its authors primarily refer to three characteristics of light: brightness, color and contrast.

The one exception is that I do think of cloudless sunlight near noon as harsh, though I use that word to describe that situation only because so many other people describe that quality of light that way. The most important characteristic of light in that situation is that the contrast is high. A noticeable symptom of high-contrast light is that the shadows are hard; they have clearly defined edges.

I see only one small edge of a shadow in this image that is hard. Hence, my confusion that several people have described the light as harsh.

I have a hunch that we might be having a communication issue rather than a disagreement about the characteristics of the light itself. So, any discussion that can help clarify things could be interesting at the least and perhaps even helpful.

if you click on the tiny pic announcement and then go to pic #1 you will find my take on your shot. Not being sure how to describe it in words I tried describing it in a shot.

[Mike Buckley]

Thanks for the clarification, Dan, about your response to the image. I'm confident that I now understand your thinking.

It might be helpful to others to point out that you're correct that the amount of contrast in an image can be at least partly the result of lighting or not and that it can also be the result of many things having nothing to do with the lighting.

[Mike Buckley]

Sorry, Brian, but I don't understand your most recent post. If I click the TinyPic announcement and then got to Photo #1, that photo is the same as my own photo. I believe that to be the case because the two image files have the same name when saving them to my computer. I was expecting your Photo #1 to be your preferred version of the image.

[JohnRostron]

I'm with Brian on this one. You might have got a more interesting pic had you sliced it in two first. I find Dragon Fruit one of those things that looks better than it tastes!

John

[Mike Buckley]

Thanks for your contribution as well, John.

After I made the photograph, I sliced the fruit in half just to see what it looks like. I then got the idea for a future photo.

As for the taste of the fruit, I licked the inside just to see what it might be like. I'm holding off on coming to any conclusions about that until I at least review some recipes. Having said that, that first lick had no wow factor either toward the good or bad.