This farmer’s hand photo is one of three that I’ve donated to a silent auction for the Westerville Fire Fighters Memorial. The memorial is dedicated to fallen fire fighter David Theisen. Included in the memorial will be a piece of the steel from the World Trade Center.
The silent auction is presented during a dinner celebrating the City of Westerville Fire Department’s 150th Anniversary.
This is a worthy cause and certainly worthy of a donation.
The photo is from a series I shot two summers ago at the Wednesday Farmers Market in Uptown Westerville.
I’d worked the market for some time making it a regular Wednesday stop both for good photo possibilities and to buy Doran’s corn as soon as it was ripe.
The hand and egg photo is one of two photos from the series that stands out for its simplicity.
Shot with a 60mm f2.8 Micro-Nikkor lens, one of the sharpest Nikon makes, the D300′s smaller chip extends the focal length to about 90mm. Exposed at 1/125th at f8, the photo has enough depth-of-field to hold detail in the egg and the dirty hands and nails of the farmer. The focus point was the index finger tip putting the plane of focus through at least three fingers and the leading edge of the egg.
The farmer’s hand is close to his blue jeans for a clean, out of focus background.
The light came through the open side of a white sales tent. You can see a strip of light in the highlight on the egg.
Edited in Photoshop, I increased the contrast and brought down the blacks to help frame the egg in the hand.
