Tomatoes in a Bowl

JonA_CT · Jan 5, 2016

My daughter is sick and I ended up staying home from work today. During a nap, I played with some still-life? subjects. I think I like the results, but I wonder if it would be better if I had closed the aperture some more and increased the ISO to get the DOF a little deeper.

20160105-_MG_2975 by jwa04, on Flickr

Designer · Jan 5, 2016

The DOF may be mostly a matter of personal preference, but in this shot the shallow DOF probably is o.k. simply because there are several tomatoes the same, therefore the viewer is not likely to feel like he missed something that was out of focus.

More than the DOF is the crop choice. By cropping the bowl as you have it makes an awkward composition. My preference would be that the entire bowl was included in the frame, regardless of the DOF.

JonA_CT · Jan 5, 2016

Fair point! As a noob photographer, I make noob mistakes. Now that you mention it, I realize I was much more worried about getting the shutter, aperture, and light right, and as far as framing the shot, I just put the subject in the center without looking at the edges of the frame. Notes for next time. Thanks!

Derrel · Jan 5, 2016

I would suggest equalizing the crop, by shaving some off of the left side, so it matches the crop of the bowl as seen on the right hand side of the frame. Showing the bowl in a symmetrical manner will improve this shot a faikr amount.

Good use of an odd number quantity for the tomatoes with the stems still on them; odd numbers usually look better in tabletop work than even numbers do.

JonA_CT · Jan 5, 2016

With the crop -- also twisted it a bit to try to line up the sides of the bowl in the frame. Any more and it started to look funny.

20160105-_MG_2975 by jwa04, on Flickr

Derrel · Jan 5, 2016

The crop is exactly as I envisioned it would be. This is the type of tomato in bowl image that an area Subway sandwich shop around here used to have on the walls, printed at huge print sizes. if you did a few more fruits and vegetables in this same bowl, you could have a series, or a small collection.