This is an old-fashioned apple peeler, that my wife's relatives had in the family for generations. This one goes back at least to 1900.
I photographed this in a studio setting, with two Alien Bee monolights and a makeshift wall I built this summer for a background. The wooden surface is the cutting board I pulled from our kitchen cupboards and set on a stool.
The apple peeler is clamped onto the cutting board. I had to work fairly quickly, since apples tend to turn yellow/brown quite soon. In fact I ended up using PS to clone out a couple of distracting brown spots, as well as two bright highlights on the background apples.
As for lighting: I aimed my B800 almost overhead, about 4 feet away, at between 1/8 and 1/4 power. The B400 was used as fill, from about 3 feet away, at the camera position, - with the same power setting as the B800. The lens used was the Canon 50mm f/1.8
USM, selective desat via a selection layer, and curves and levels were applied.
Thanks for looking, commenting and/or voting.
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Thanks to all who commented during and after the challenge. I sincerely appreciate it. I was beginning to think that I would very likely never win a ribbon. Then, when the admins excluded from this challenge the likes of heida, kiwiness, jmsetzler, bradp, and others too numerous to list, I thought "Wow, at last... Maybe now I have a chance!"
Anyway, I didn't see an asterisk on my ribbon... ;-)
Well framed nice color and an obviously low tech answer to food processing. The angle adds a lot to the interest level as does the handle position and the plaster wall's stark bleach color. Only obvious thing I see that could improve this might be the punch of a contrast boost from the unsharp mask (%:20, rad: 50-100, levels:0). Perhaps too the back apple is not red enough for the rest of the shot. Great image.
Great subject, excellent composition, good use of color and lighting. Overall, a very strong shot that I hope does well. I especially like the fact that you presented your subject actually in use - the long peel with all the curlicues adds tons of visual interest!
The bright background is a distraction. The peeled apple looks very good in the lighting provided, though, and I like the placement of the other apples in the scene. The cutting marks on the wood in the foreground sort of cheapen the effort you went through to set this up. A 75% crop beginning in the left center of the image and just getting the tool handle would have improved this. It's still a nice effort. 6.
I really like this shot, good depth of field, it fits the theme well, but I wish the background wasn't so light, it seems to fade to almost solid white at the left side, losing all texture
Beautiful composition and perfect detail. I ilke the texture showing on the wall; kind of refreshing after so many clean, stark, perfectly white backgrounds.
Although the lighting is great, I just don't think it fits the image. I would have preffered to see a dramatic lighting technique with this subject, such as painting with light...and a black background would be better, but thats just my taste :)
A-peeling Apples
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