This was an attempt at an Edward Weston-style black and white shot (like his bell peppers). It took me awhile to get it right and the hardest part was figuring out why I had such a big highlight/hotspot. That actually required a bit of research on my part.

It’s all very much part of the physics of light — the angle of incidence, the angle of reflection and the “family of angles.” Now the book that I was getting this information from said that it was tricky on a flat or curved surface to get rid of a direct reflection (basically, a mirror image of the light that is hitting the object). But on a sphere it would be impossible to get rid of…and my apple was pretty darn spherical. That meant I was stuck with the direct reflection and at best I could crop it out, but there was no getting rid of it.

I also had a hard time getting a nice rim light around the edges of the apple until I remembered the trick I did with the silver pitcher.

So here is the behind-the-scenes shot. The tiny little softbox is pointed straight out because I was hoping that by feathering the light I would be able to lessen that direct reflection and just get enough of a kiss of light to provide some definition for the top of the apple. Just ignore my poor broken table. : (