This week has been totally dominated by tomatoes, and before you run away thinking this women is quite bonkers, let me explain. I bought vast trays of tomatoes last weekend so that I could photograph them for my City & Guilds Level 2 photographic assignment.
One of my favourite things to do when I visit another country, particularly Italy, Spain or France is to spend some time in their markets. I love all the different fruits & vegetables, locally produced cheese & meats they have to offer. The vegetables are all sold as grown, not grown to supermarket specifications…curly cucumbers that have a flavour and tomatoes with character etc. In Britain we do have amazing farmers markets and farm shops which sell fabulous produce but we are probably not so lucky as some of our european neighbours in having the variety in our supermarkets to buy.
Saying all this I still did quite well in my search for different shapes, sizes and surprisingly colours as you can see in these photos.
I wanted to create a set of images in different lighting conditions, and took some of my inspiration from various food photographers and stylists…now there’s a profession I would have thought about going into if I had my time over again, I could fancy that on my CV… Beverley Caspall, Food Stylist.
The final set of 12 pictures (I didn’t want to bore you with them all) for the assignment fall into 2 categories really, product shots and still life/arty shots. Many of them were photographed in garden with natural sunlight as I think the sunshine brings out a special colour quality in the fruit. The still life images were created using various lamps and bits of rubbish that I could get hold of around the house.
I don’t have any special photographic lights or the luxury of a studio so I just make do, I sometimes enlist the help of whoever is willing to stand holding lamps and bits of reflective board for me. I am quite pleased with the results considering the lack of equipment. Now all I have to do is the boring bit and writing up all the technical stuff to submit with the assignment… best get cracking.
Beverley Caspall - Artist 