Breaking the Rules

A few days ago, I was out with JD while she was shopping for something (?).   I am still not sure what I did to warrant this terrible punishment, but . . .  

We were going in and out of all these little shops when I spotted these bowls of candies.   I was immediately attracted to the colors and shapes, so naturally I thought "PHOTOGRAPH."   

But, I was not sure what I wanted to do with the shapes and colors.  For some reason, an assignment of our photo club late in the year came to mind:  Breaking Photographic Rules.   I looked hard at the bowls and tried to think of the rules that I wanted to break.  

Now, here I must admit, I often break rules (all sorts of them) without even thinking about it.  I was now having trouble coming-up with the rule(s) I wanted to break.  I finally settled on centering my subject--the multi-colored bowl.  After taking a few shots, I knew that I needed to open my lens up to get a really shallow depth-of-field that I thought was needed to clearly show what my subject was.  In doing this, I broke another one of those sacred rules, do not have anything in your foreground that is out of focus. 

Is this a great photograph?  No.  However, it was a learning exercise.  It reinforced the idea of using depth of field to make your subject stand out.   It also shows how a little extra care could have produced a much better photograph by moving the bowl in the upper right hand corner down so that the pattern formed by the bowls was even more obvious.

"Old and over the hill, but still learning" --I think I might put that saying on a bumper sticker. 

Camera Settings:  Nikon D3, 105mm Macro f/2.8, ISO 200, f/3.3, 1/60 of a second

Post Processing:  Lightroom--set white and black points, corrected white balance, added midtone contrast, and increased vibrance and clarity.