I would like to thank the officers of the club for letting me use this space to explain some of the thought processes I go through when making an image. I just hope the information about the following two images is found to be useful.

The first image was made at Roman Nose State Park and is a Tragopogon dubius Scop (yellow salsify) or more widely known as goat's beard. This blossom was on the end of a three foot long stem that had fallen over into a nearby bush and this is where I found it.

Equipment used:
Minolta X700 manual focus camera
Minolta 100mm manual focus macro lens
Bogan tripod and head
Photo Flex 42 inch diffuser
Fuji Velvia 50 ASA slide film

Settings:
Aperture, F 11
Shutter speed, 1/15 sec

I couldn't get the composition I wanted in camera so I composed with the intention of cropping the image after I scanned it.

I took care not to clip any of the leafs below and to the right of the blossom because they were on the same plane as the blossom and would be in sharp focus.

After scanning, I cropped the image so all the stems would be in the corners. This gave me three strong leading lined to the blossom.

This is the image I ended up with.

The second image is a still-life of a Yellow bell pepper and is intended to be a study in color, textures, and shapes.

Camera Equipment used:
Sony Alpha 700
Minolta 70-210mm F/4 lens
Bogan tripod

Lighting Equipment used (Lighting diagram below):
Main light, Minolta hot shoe flash through a 24" X 24" Soft box
Fill light, White foam-core used as a reflector
Back light, Minolta hot shoe flash with a Pringles can snoot
Background light, Minolta hot shoe flash with a blue gel
Inexpensive radio triggers to trip the flashes.

Camera settings:
Focal length, 210mm
Aperture, F 11
ISO, 200
Shutter speed, 1/200 sec

I didn't want a new fresh looking pepper so I cut it in half and let it sit on the kitchen counter for three days. When setting up the image I wanted to give a sense of importance to the pepper so I placed it on a pedestal and photographed it from a fairly low angle.

I used a soft box camera left as a main light and a reflector camera right as a fill. Both of these were slightly in front of and angled toward the pepper (see the lighting diagram). Angling the light sources toward the pepper still didn't give me the light I was looking for on the inside of the pepper so I used a backlight. I placed a flash with a snoot made out of a can coozy and a Pringles can behind the pepper and to camera left.

The backlight worked well in illuminating the inside of the pepper along with bringing out the veins in the pepper's flesh.

To add a little extra detail to the image I sprayed the pepper with a water glycerin mixture. I used two parts water and one part glycerin (the glycerin kept the water from running off the pepper).

After I showed this image in competition one of the guest judges suggested having something in the open area of the pepper would make it a better image. I took her advice and remade the image and filled the space; however, I don't think the new image is as strong as the original, even with the addition of a red canoe.

This is the lighting diagram I used when I made the image.

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