What can you do with a pineapple, grapes, cherries and cucumbers? Create a nice table centerpiece. My wife made this by first slicing a pineapple in half to create the base. Then she used a flower shaped cookie-cutter to make pineapple flowers from the other half of the pineapple. Each flower center was made with a preserved cherry. Skewers and grapes added to the display. Leaves were created by using both cucumber skins and spinach leaves.
The setup for taking this shot was pretty basic and one that I’ve used quite frequently. I’m always in learning mode when it comes to lighting and I firmly believe that experimentation is the best way to become better and to understand the properties of light as it relates to photography.
I used a two flash setup (see photo below) with a Canon 430EXII and Lumiquest Softbox III to camera left and aimed directly at the white wall behind the subject. To camera right was a Canon 580EXII with a white shoot through umbrella. Using the softbox and umbrella make the light “larger” which means there will be less harsh shadows. The Canon 430EXII acts to “blow out” the white wall behind the subject.
I used a Canon 5DII with an aperture of f/6.3 and a shutter speed of 1/125th sec. Recently I’ve been doing a lot of shooting with the Tamron 28-75mm f/2.8 lens but tonight I went with the Canon 50mm f/1.8 which for the price is a fantastic lens.
So there you have it. A nice photo of a pineapple centerpiece that anyone can easily make. If you have any questions about the centerpiece or in how the shot was setup let me know. I’m happy to answer any and all questions.
Oh my, that’s really beautiful!!!
Hi Matt. First of all, good work.
I’m a begginer in this kind of work. I was trying this kind of shoot but I can’t make the flash pass through my white umbrella. I can’t figure out what I’m doing wrong with it. I’m using the same values for the aperture and shutter that you do, so the last thing to ask you about it is: Does your 580ex flash a special setup for this shoot?
I’ll appreciate your helpful comments.
Hi Adolfo! I’m a novice at off-camera lighting as well so I just play around and experiment with different settings. I didn’t do anything special with the flash for this shoot. I set the camera per the post and have both flashes on manual. I don’t recall what the settings on each flash were but I am guessing that the one for the background was on full power and the one in the shoot-through umbrella I probably played around with the power on it until I got what I was looking for. In general what I tend to do is set my camera with the aperture I want to use (maybe I want more or less depth of field) and then I try out different flash powers until I get what I am looking for. I hope that helps a bit.