Parsnip

nobody@flickr.com (~ Maree ~) — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 16:01:33 -0800

~ Maree ~ posted a photo:

A year in pictures ~ Week 6 of 52, Seasonal Fruit and Vegetables

aka Panning the Parsnip

Another wonderful seasonal winter vegetable, parsnips abound through the coldest months of the year, and you just know that they're good and fresh because they look and feel great and you can store them for longer than at other times of the year. They speak earthyness to me, and it's not rare to see them in the most amazing convoluted and knobbly shapes. Whether you enjoy them roasted alongside other seasonal veg, or chopped into a warming casserole, they are one root crop that I associate very firmly with the hearty, wholesome fare of the season. Another favourite of mine is to team them with slightly tart cooking apples to make a memorable soup.

Apparently, the parsnip is even more laden with vitamins and minerals than its close relative the carrot - and has particularly high levels of potassium - so I'm guessing that it helps you see in all kinds of places :D

The colour of this vegetable is understated, and I wondered whether it might suit a soft image, with a pastel palette. I've been enjoying my experiments with photos that move away from the heavy dark backgrounds that I'd come to rely on, so I'm keen to keep pushing in that direction. Ever since the DSLR Skills course module on panning techniques, my great friend Sarah and I have often joked about panning various things, so I decided that I'd pay tribute to it by trying to 'pan the parsnip'. I created a background with pastel blue acrylic paints, interspersed with patches of darker blues and russets to pick out the browns in the parsnip, in the hope that as I panned, those colours would streak and soften in a pleasing manner. In the end I rather like the resulting hues, and the softness of the overall image, I can see it working as a printed image in the range, which ultimately is what I'm aiming to achieve.

ISO100 f3.2 @ 1/4s. The lighting for this one is relatively simple, a desk spot lamp lighting the background and parsnip body, an LED torch to highlight the top of subject (when I was setting it up I thought of it as a 'hair light' - I know that sounds crazy for a parsnip, but such is the way my mind works :P).

Beetroot

nobody@flickr.com (~ Maree ~) — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 15:45:45 -0800

~ Maree ~ posted a photo:

A year in pictures ~ Week 2 of 52, Seasonal Fruit and Vegetables

After a lot of failed experiments, and a large amount of flaffing about, I stumbled rather by accident on this idea. Taken on my stove hob, lit from above by the hood lights which I thought created an interesting halo effect around the beetroots. I was originally working on an idea that it had been pouring with purple beetroot juice rain, but this is the slightly 'spotty' alternative.

Beetroot seems to divide opinion, some people love it, while others can't be doing with it. I fall firmly in the group that relishes it, though I'm less enthusiastic about it pickled than when it's been freshly cooked, or better still roasted. The young and tender leaves have become popular in recent years as colourful additions to mixed salads, often with some raw beetroot shredded in. Maybe I was destined to love it, I believe that Mum ate rather a lot of it when she was pregnant with me. I also know that I was apparently taken to a doctors at a young age, because my poor parents thought that I might have some gastro-intestinal bleeding. The culprit it turns out was harmless, the strong colours from the beet tend to dye anything they come into contact with ;-)

ISO100, f1.8, 1/20s on tripod. Lights from cooker hood and white balance adjusted. PP adjustments to curves, slight lightening vignette and unsharp mask on the beet portions that are in focus.

Uploads from ~ Maree ~, tagged root

Parsnip

Beetroot