Picking Grapes

These photos were done several weeks ago for a group of folks who are opening a winery. They needed photos of grapes being picked for publicity.

The shoot was early in the morning. The grape vines were in deep shadow, with really strong patches of sunlight in the background. There was also a house in the background that was really distracting. The grapes were photographing really flat, no highlights at all.


I set up one flash on a stand and moved it around until I had some light on the picker and the grapes. The light ended up being between the camera and subject. As I shot I moved the light trying different angles with both camera and flash.

The wide shot has the focus on the grapes and the distant background fuzzed out enough to be okay. The angle of the flash gave the grapes some highlight and seperation from the background.
The second shot was with a wide angle lens, but I used the picker to hide the backgrond. The lighting worked well, making nice shadows that added to the image. The cluster of grapes hid deep in the vine could have used a touch more light, but they are visible.

For the last photo, I backed up with the 80-200mm zoomed in pretty tight. The light was still good, the grapes hanging on the edge of the basket really pop. The telephoto gave some helpful compression and threw the background out just a touch.

All in all, worked out pretty well.