It was a weekend in September that I remember for two reasons. First, it was our annual encounter with Austin City Limits Musical Festival, and second, it was the first day of rain in over three months. I was walking around downtown with either an EP-2 or an EP-3 (don't remember which) and a pocketful of older prime lenses and I decided to head for home when the clouds broke open. I put my hat over my camera to keep it dry and walked back to my car. Whole Foods was on the way. I walked up to the front of the store and there they were. Pumpkins. The light was wonderful. A cloudy sky with hazy, diffused light and pumpkins just underneath an overhang. Nestled in the shadows but tickled to a gentle glow by a tentative. lingering light coming in from one side.
I like these pumpkins so much that I made a stack of 5x7 inch prints to hand out to my friends. Someone at my favorite coffee shop asked me to sign one for her. I was so flattered. I'm always incredulous when people ask me to sign stuff. I always thought people only wanted signatures from famous people...
I consider my pumpkin shots the closest thing to a landscape I've shot all year.
14 comments:
"… the closest thing to a landscape…" that's funny. I love pumpkins and squash in general, they are so portrait worthy and i've come to love tenous natural light for portraits as well.
Still life!!! You're a master in portraiture, and still life just doesn't move much, but the principles that you've clearly mastered still hold true and come through in these images!
Nice and subtle. I'm going to bet it was an EP-2, since at this time last year, there was no EP-3 to be had.
But Vu, It was just a month ago. And thank you.
I hope you bought one too. These pumpkins have a dense, sweet almost red flesh and are really tasty.
I just spent a month in France and did a lot of produce-scapes. Yours is wonderful.
Such wonderful lighting and color. Looks like a still life painting.
Funny. I get all my pumpkin photos at a local Whole Foods as well.
Bill, they look good enough to eat!
Awesome! Some of the best images are the simplest. I love it.
By the way, I'd love to have a signed print. . . .
Wonderful lighting and colour. Could you replicate it with lights to give such a richness ?
The light is so perfect that I assumed you used artificial lighting. It's a really excellent shot, and I also saw an oil painting still life kind of aesthetic. Bravo!
Available light. Really.
We shop quite a bit at Whole Foods and I always sneak my S95 into their produce dept. The light is sometimes nice but the symetry of those carrots and tomatoes, etc. make for fun images. Just wish they didn't have those darn stickers on, I wouldn't have to rearrange them so much.
BTW Kirk, these are some of the most beautifully textured pumpkins I've ever seen, maybe a 16x14 size would be in order?
Thanks
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