I would try to increase the contrast in the water drops by adding a dark or colored (yellow ?) surface around the scene, outside the immediate view of the camera. The color will then will be refracted in the water and might (need to experiment !) enhance it.
What kind of light did you use now and from which angle ? I got a nice (but very different) image in the past by having a strong permanent light at an angle from the back, combined with a flash on camera.
The example is here
I wonder if a black backdrop would yield better contrast in the water dops. I think the lighting is OK, there's just not enough contrast. Look at the winner for the Book Title challenge. Might work, might not, but it would be interesting to see...
You could try adding food dye to the water to color it, which could give it an interesting contrasting gradient of color. I'm assuming if you used a white background and a light/flash that it bounced a little.
I quite like the shot as it is. Maybe it's just taste, but I prefer lush green apples myself. :-)
Below I fiddled about with the apple's colour and added a background. The Photoshopping isn't great; I was more doing it to say how I'd have tried to take the shot.
I also went for the green apple look, and tried to get the drops to pop more. I did not use any non-DPC-legal techniques.
I think I was somewhat successful, but not totally satisfied with the tone of the apple.
Here's what i did:
- Open in Photoshop, convert to 16-bit
- adjust hue/sat to get the green apple the way I wanted.
- Adjust levels, black point & reset white point since it shifted during my hue/sat adjustment
- Adjust curves slightly to get a bit more emphasis on the droplets
- Desaturated a bit, green was too vivid.
- sharpened a bit more. It's now maybe a little oversharp, but pleasing for web display at this resolution, I think.
