Fruit in water photography

This photo was created using a glass terrarium that I purchased for $12 (on clearance) at our local Petco. I've always wanted to photograph food in water to see if I could re-create some of the food photography that I have seen in various magazines.

Of course timing is everything. The fruit was dropped by hand and the camera was triggered with a remote infrared trigger at the time that I though it would enter the water. As you can see in the above photo I released this one too soon.

This is the setup. Two speedlights were suspended over the terrarium by boom stands. One aimed at the fruit with a frosted clear filter and one aimed at the background with a blue filter over the flash head. The background is a large piece of white cardboard. I used a black piece of cardboard to stop the background light from spilling onto the fruit. Two small white pieces of cardboard were used to reflect light from the main light onto either side of the fruit. One silver reflector was used to reflect the main light onto the front of the fruit.

Here you can see the large silver reflector used to bounce the main light onto the front of the fruit. (If you look closely, you can see the camera position at the top of the reflector.

NOTE: Use distilled water to perform this type of photography. The chemicals in regular tap water will etch and water stain the terrarium glass within a couple of hours.

See you next week! Keep shooting!!!
Michael Montgomery
http://www.positiveimage.biz/