My White Pentax

FOUR ANGLES ON A FRUITPLATE

To some, it’s a dessert. To me it’s homework. How best to photograph such a thing? Today’s self-taught photography lesson is on composition. Above is the fruit plate my friend Josette served at Justin’s birthday party, lying like a blob in the frame. 

Someone told me to experiment with interesting angles on pictures, so here’s the fruit plate from a weird perspective. There’s a lot of shadowing in front, and the watermelon is blown out. 

Above is the fruit plate with the focal point only slightly off center. 

Above is the fruit plate with my favorite crop, with the focal point slightly to the right of center. But my husband Joel, a lighting expert, notes that the contrast is too high on the pineapple leaves, leading to black shadows. Is that my head shading the purple grapes? Lighting, the most important element of all, will be my next lesson. 

DEPTH OF FIELD

One of the first things I learned about taking pictures with my new camera is how aperture—shutter opening—affects depth of field. The wider it’s open, the blurrier the background gets. The smaller the arperture, the crisper the background. I experimented with depth of field when taking photos of baby Justin’s totally over-the-top birthday cake. 

The photo above was taken with a narrow aperture, or shutter opening. See how clear the background is? But who wants to see all that crud? 

Aaah. A wide-aperture setting clouds up the background, obscuring the electrical cord and keeping the focus on the cake, where it belongs. Ineresting that the background is also lighter. I wonder why?

A photo of some of my friends, taken with a flash. 

The same photo, taken with no flash.