Pineapple torture
First, if you're one of my friends who's a photographer, stop reading right now! Click on one of the interesting topics in the Archive list at the right instead. I'm trying to preserve my image as a decent photographer, built up over years of nice shots here and there. But what follows will destroy any credibility I have (days like today convince me that I have a lot to learn about photography).
My goal was a straight-on shot of a slice of pineapple to use as the basis for an interface design for our upcoming Private Screening student media festival. Each year has its own fruit theme, and this year it's the pineapple. So I bought a can of pineapple slices at Dave's Supermarket and I was ready to go.
As you can see, what I cobbled together looks more like a tropical fruit torture chamber than a photography studio: a translucent cutting board, my halogen desk lamp, a large piece of white paper, everything but the kitchen sink. Well, no, the kitchen sink is there too. I was taking advantage of the light from the window over the sink, but unfortunately it was such a gray day that it didn't help much.
I took about a dozen shots using this set-up, with varying degrees of success. The texture of the cutting board was so dramatic that I was facing a lot of work in Photoshop to isolate the pineapple slice.
After a frustrating 45 minutes it hit me that I could just lay the pineapple on my scanner and probably get something much better. You can see the results below: photo on the left, scan on the right..
The scan gave me a perfect starting point—very little Photoshopping needed.
I spent a few hours this afternoon working on the design for the interface and came up with something 
I was reasonably happy with. I was all set to call it done when I learned that instead of showing five projects, I needed to show eight (later this became ten). So the simple, uncluttered look is facing a challenge.
At right is where I'm at: five thumbnails and students' names in script would look fine, but here I've only added three more thumbnails to the original design and it's getting pretty crowded. Maybe time to go back to the drawing board.
Anyway, to see the final version in action visit the Interactive Lounge that's part of our Private Screening student media festival this Thursday, May 1, at 7:30 pm. More info on the Private Screening website.
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