DSLR Photography Forum

I have to start with a little story...

I am working on a series with fruits. I want this to be on white, one image will be, let's say wide angle, and the other one will be showing the fruit more in detail.

Every now and then I gather my friends to show my latest works, they don't have anything to do with photography, so their comment is very interesting. When I showed my finished picture of the clementine to one of my friends she immediately told me "Hey, but your clementine is not shining" as if it were something wrong in the picture, something that she was expecting to see to believe that it was indeed a real clementine.

This is the picture I showed.
#1



When I showed this one she moved her head like saying yes, that is a clementine.
#2



Since then, I have been thinking how much of highlight and shadows one has to leave to make things look real. I learned to walk in the safe side avoiding highlights, under exposed shadows to have all information, detail of the image, but how much people needs them to believe what they are seeing. How much the importance I give to the histogram is not healthy for my pictures.

When Toad said he saw the segments of the clementine not so juicy, I thought about my friend's comment... I decided to make juicy clementines.

Here is the result.

Freshly cut with diffused light... you can see that even it has a drop of juice...
#3



Soak in water and again with diffuse light.
#4



Soak in water but this time with natural light and leaving the highlight as they were seen in my setup.
#5


Here with a thin brush I designed where I wanted my highlights.
#6


Sorry about the setup, but I just got what I had at hand.

The highlight give a lot of light to the segments and I see a change. I normally take my stills with diffuse light, so I was thinking that maybe to get some highlights in the clementine or any other subject I can make a double exposure of my stills, one with hard light and the other one with diffused light. Then I could take the highlights I need with mask. I am really excited about the idea! This is something I have to try...

Thanks for your comments and interest in making juicy clementines...

Interesting techniques. I need to look at these in greater detail and provide comments later...

So I got to thinking about these. I know that I was the one who said "make them juicy" - but I honestly didn't have any idea how to do that until I looked at your pictures.

Darkening the segments as in #3 and #5 worked pretty well as did removing some white from the segments like you did in #6. What really got me going though was the kind of artificial look that you gave #5 via the lighting.

In standard Toad fashion, I couldn't help thinking about what would happen if you gave the orange segments a really heavily artificial look. I hope you don't mind - I took a bash at playing with one of your photos. It doesn't look very real, at all - but I was intrigued by your work at making it look juicy, and...sorry - I just couldn't resist the challenge.

It was very interesting to make the study with light and the clementines.

I like very much what you did with this picture. What filter or plug in did you use to work with them? I also like the idea of include in my series of fruits something like this. I think people will like to see post processed pictures with graphic look.

Thanks a lot for the time to work with the picture. I appreciate it...

Looking at paintings and pictures, I have seen that clementines, oranges and lemons are most of the times presented sliced. I have worked some stills with sliced clementines as well, but first I will show some experiments with backgrounds.

In my dreams she still doth haunt me,
Robed in garments soaked with brine,
Then she rises from the waters,
And I kiss my (Juicy) Clementine.

From a poem. (Oh my darling Clementine)

I was searching about clementines when I found this post about pics and clementines. Nice ones, by the way. I had a great surprise when I read "Hey, but your clementine is not shining".

I grow citrus in Valencia area, Spain, and would like to mention that clementines are not shinny, they get this when post-harvest treatment are added at packhouses. By now we are developing an online shop to sell citrus direct from the fields to the costumers by currier companies.

If some is interested in getting photos about clementies / oranges from the tree to play, let me know and I will send some....by now I will add a couple to this post...





I did not know about this photo forum, but I like it....Clementines always bring good things

If interested about our project, please check www.clementinagarden.com or www.naranjasclementina.com

Thank you very much for your offer (both) your service selling fruits and your pictures... It is very kind of you.

Actually, now that I see your pictures I remember how they look in the tree and you are right they don't shine. In Mexico, my homeland, we have a lot of them, in this season but sadly nothing you can compare with the ones you get here in Germany. Btw, I most of the times buy my oranges from Valencia as I know they are famous... Naranjas Valencianas are the best!!

As you see we are a small photo forum, so if you have any question about photography or want to share beautiful pictures from Valencia, it would be great!

So welcome to Shuttertalk

NT...
What a sweet poem... Thanks for sharing...

Thanks for warm welcome

It would be great to share pics at this forum....and now I know where to ask in case of any doubt.

Thanks!!!