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| Bell Pepper #30, Edward Weston |
Man, this is hard. Gives me a new appreciation for Edward Weston's
natural studies series. He photographed several bell peppers; take a look at his most famous, "Pepper #30." I don't know how he controlled the light to get such depth of tone and beautiful interplay between highlights, shadows, and negative space. Not to mention the interesting composition. I fell short in a couple of places in this image. As I was taking it, I realized that I (
a) couldn't quite visualize how I wanted the light to work, and (
b) didn't have the technical proficiency to make it happen, or even experiment. There's a lot to work with here: the arrangement of the avocado halves and the space betweeen them, the light/dark interplay giving depth to both the convex pits and the concave holes, the shine of the hard outer skin and the soft matted texture of the avocado flesh, and three-dimensional frame of the bowl itself. That's a lot of variables to control, and without some kind of vision at the outset, you're setting yourself up to photograph one big mess.
Still, I like working on this series. It provides a nice controlled method of practicing, without the time constraints or lack of repeatability when shooting "in the wild." And if I don't like this image, well, we just may have to eat guacamole again next week. Such a shame.
