Clean Crisp Capsicums

For this month's 'Foodography Challenge'.... capsicums. Or known simply as 'peppers' here in North America. 

I thought this would be a good opportunity for me to play around with water splash photography. An exercise which proved to be a lot more difficult than I expected. 

From observing the experts, they use 2-3 speed lights or strobe lights for this in order to freeze the subject's motion as much as possible. I only have access to one speed light so placed it behind the subject, and placed household lamps in front for as much light as possible. 

Next item required = a fairly large glass tank. This glass bowl was the largest thing I had available which made it difficult for me to capture shots at the subject's level. Therefore, I decided to shoot from above, hoping to capture nice splashes around the entire subject. I am not posting this image because I am proud of it, nor do I think it is appropriate for any sort of publication - this is to simply show you what my amateur set up looks like (haha). 

After what felt like millions of shots, and after creating a mini flood of water on my living room floor, I was satisfied enough with a couple of my images. In need of cropping of course. 

I was informed that manual focus is the key. Practise makes perfect. I still need a lot of practise with water splash photography.

Here are some of the images I submitted for this month's 'foodography challenge'. Due to the simple colours of the capsicums, I wanted to keep the image simple as well so avoided using any props, and as a result achieving a much cleaner, more crisp and commercial shot.