First tomatoes of the year: a lighting comparison

Michelle and I tend our backyard garden every summer, and one of our joys is seeing the first produce of the year slowly ripen on the plants. Just this week our first cherry tomatoes (Solanum lycopersicum) are finally ripening, and so yesterday I took a few pictures of the glorious first fruits:

The first fruit of the year in our garden: two deliciously orange cherry tomatoes still "on the vine" (attached to the plant).  This plant is a "sun sugar" variety of tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) that we purchased from Orange Coast College's ornamental horticulture department.  This picture was taken in the field using natural lighting to create an in-vivo look. (Marc C. Perkins)
Two ripe Sun Sugar cherry tomatoes still attached to the plant, photographed using natural light only.

The tomatoes were in some nice diffusely-lit shade, and that’s what you see above – I used a tripod to stabilize the camera, but otherwise didn’t need anything else.

But since I’ve been having fun experimenting with off camera lighting recently, I decided to pull out my lighting gear and try some “studio” style lighting on the fruits.

The first fruit of the year in our garden: two deliciously orange cherry tomatoes still "on the vine" (attached to the plant).  This plant is a "sun sugar" variety of tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) that we purchased from Orange Coast College's ornamental horticulture department.  This picture was taken in the field using studio lighting (off camera flashes) to create a more dramatic look. (Marc C. Perkins)
The same two ripe Sun Sugar cherry tomatoes, photographed using “studio” lighting.

Those are the exact same fruits in the exact same position, but now they’ve been lit using the “invisible black background” technique I’ve described before1.

What a difference lighting makes! The black background makes the fruits pop out visually, thanks to less visual clutter, but I think it also makes the scene look more artificial (or as though it was taken at night). My favorite comment so far comes from my dad, who said that the fruit look like two “hot Jupiters”. Little tomato planets floating in space; I like it.

Footnotes

1 Two snooted flashes were setup, one on either side of the fruit, and I used my gray card to shade the background from the primary flash’s illumination. Both flashes also had great natural gobos: the branches of the plant itself.

More pictures

To see more of my plant-related pictures, head to my Botany and Mycology gallery collection.

2 thoughts on “First tomatoes of the year: a lighting comparison

  1. Your photography is outstanding, Marc. Your time and effort pay off in the detail and beauty.
    Karoleen

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