My Red Tomatoes Photo

Photographer’s Note

Trying to venture away from the touristy side of the city of Nadi, we eventually stumbled across some local markets. Fresh fruit and vegetables were on offer here with plenty of locals dumping their food on sale into a crate.

This man stood out for me as he had obviously carefully placed his tomatoes in bowls. The way he sat on his crate overlooking his tomatoes I could feel a sense of pride from him at his work.

This was a hard photo to take, with the markets being so busy I had to kneel for quite some time before managing to get a gap between peoples legs.

PP involved desaturating all colours except red. You may comment on the different coloured tomatoes, but personally I like it as I don't like having images too 'perfect'.

cetrocomix, rtome has marked this note useful

Critiques | Translate

Carma (2440) 2004-11-30 3:39

Good compo an nice red in gray. You really show us all red details. Interesting photo.

thebecky (686) 2004-11-30 4:23

Sorry but I'm not sure about the desaturation. There's too much other red's in the picture which are distracting. I thnk if it was just the tomato's that were red it would be better. I also think the colour version might have been nice?

cetrocomix (309) 2004-11-30 21:42

Hi Brendan! I really like such kind of picture and the way you put in value some products with the colors. I remember you had already made such kind of picture before. It's true that the black and white brings out the poverty and emotion more than the colors. It's quite original so I suppose that each one will have his own opinion. As for me I don't mind that much to have red in other places. But I'm a little disturbed that the tomatoes are red + grey. I suppose it's due at least in part to the blue shadecloth overhead. A little grey it's OK but for me it's a little too much. An idea could be to select the tomatoes and invert the selection before to put in B&W. We can discuss and discuss a lot about it, but actually I already like the picture a lot like it is. And the composition is perfect. Congrat!

outofraine (2) 2004-12-06 8:32

You need to work on making the red fade better into the grey, and also making the red look more natural. Because the rest of the picture is black and white, it looks like the contrast is higher, so you can lower the contrast. Either that, or you can bring the color slightly back into the photo.

But either way, the shot itself is a good one, and the idea of only red showing is awesome too.

[2] +

noortje (17) 2006-08-07 10:30

I really really like this picture! I especially like the red details because red is the colour of passion (and that is exactly what I think this man feels for his tomatoes)
Keep up the good work!

Akiermanmax (13) 2008-11-04 0:31

Hello Brendan
The idea to associate B&W and colors always gives very beautiful results.
However I consider it regrettable that you didn't kept all colors of the tomatos (that would have returned more alive image) whereas you keep it pink of the carpets in background.
However a beautiful work on this photograph.
Congratulations.

Malgré tout un beau travail sur cette photo.

Félicitations.