You Like Tomato And I Like Tomahto

One of the things that tends to happen when you like photography is that you tend to see things and think to yourself, 'that might make a cool picture'.  Such was the case during a recent walk through the grocery store.  I was in the fruits & vegetables department looking for a lime for a different photographic reason, when I came upon a pile of fresh tomatoes that had just been put on display.  They were really smooth and the remains of the stem were full and pointed so I ended up having the above thought go through my head.  I've already had some fun shooting some cherry tomatoes, you can see those photos right here and the other set right here.  I carefully threw a couple in my basket and made my way home.  A couple of days later, I pulled them out of the fridge and while walking to a nice sunny spot, I promptly dropped them on the floor.  Yeah for being clumsy.  One tomato ended up getting a large bump on it, but the other escaped rather unscathed from its fall to the floor.  So, the two tomato session quickly became a solo effort.  I put the tomato on a white plate, just recently purchased by My Lovely Assistant for such culinary photo situations, and moved the plate around until the sun was hitting the tomato how I liked.  Then, I grabbed the Macro lens and just shot away.  The first photograph was shot at f/2.8, 1/30sec, ISO 100 at 60mm. The second photograph was shot at f/4, 1/100sec, ISO 800 at 60mm and the third photograph was taken at f/6.3, 1/250sec, ISO 100 at 60mm.  Those of you who like to read the photo information may have noticed a lot more different numbers than you usually do.  I had begun shooting at ISO 100, but the available light I had was not as strong as I had through it was, resulting in slower shutter speeds.  Afraid of camera shake, I raised the ISO to gain some shutter speed.  I wasn't really afraid of any camera noise that the higher ISO would might cause because I wasn't shooting anything overly dark.  For the final shot, I decided to use my flash so I went back to ISO 100, and I liked the way that the flash brought out more detail in the stem.  I also liked the way that the natural light from the window was hitting the camera.  While my shot with the flash has a little reflection of light just under the stem, the other shots without the flash allowed the natural light to hit off a few other parts of the tomato, helping to give it a more rounded look and to stand out a bit more from the white background of the plate.  I also liked how well the colour of the tomato came out.  No Photoshop adjustments here, that's exactly how red the tomato was in my original file.  The only Photoshopping that was done was a little bit of cropping.  I just hope that my Mom won't be upset that I still play with my food.