I read an article this summer on the PetaPixel.com website which described Edward Weston’s technique to capture his famous pepper images. Weston created a special f/240 aperture to ensure the entire pepper would be in focus. This was a very small aperture and required exposures in the range of 4-6 hours. This is a fact I didn’t know about his images and it got me thinking about how I could use the focus stacking technique to emulate his results.
That was the starting point for project that spanned about 6 weeks at the end of this summer. I challenged myself to create images inspired by Weston, but are still unique to my vision. My curiosity started with one visit to Parsons Farm in Dagsboro, DE where I picked up three fascinating peppers. I raced home to photograph them and was hooked on the results. Over time, I ended up visiting multiple farm stands every week, picking peppers in the fields of Magee Farms in Selbyville, and collecting over 100 red bell peppers. The farm stand operators got used to me picking through thousands of peppers to find ones that would photograph well.
During this period, I acquired additional lighting equipment, added a large rectangular light modifier, and worked hard to perfect my images. For peppers, shaping light was just as important as picking the right pepper or the capture technique. The wrong highlight in the wrong location can ruin an image. Like my other focus stacking images, the peppers were often the result of capturing 50-100 separate images and recombined using computational techniques. I tend to oversample my images and found it was necessary because of the shiny surfaces of the peppers and a tendency to create ghosted images. Each image is then processed through black and white conversion software and then retouched to focus the viewer’s attention on the abstract form and shape of the peppers.
I have posted 9 images of whole bell peppers and 10 images of close up macro abstracts. All pepper images are reasonably priced and available for purchase. I’ve really enjoyed this project and definitely improved my craft in the process. Thank you PetaPixel.com for piquing my curiosity and of course Edward Weston for your mastery and inspiration.
