4 Frame up fruit

Get fresh, zingy pics from a simple setup

If you’ve got an old slide-film light box or a more modern LED drawing board, it’s the perfect platform for a spot of backlit still-life photography. Next, you can raid the fridge for things like lemons, limes or kiwi fruits to slice up thinly and use as semi-transparent subjects. Then just add a macro lens and a bit of careful composition to bag yourself some really colourful shots.

You really need to position your camera directly overhead, so having a tripod that allows you to fix the centre column horizontally will help enormously. Make sure the camera is parallel to the subject so that your shot is sharp right across the frame, revealing all the interesting details and textures. Overlapping some of the slices will help to create a slight variation in tone, and it generally pays to fill the entire frame with your subject. You’ll need to shoot in Manual mode or use Aperture Priority and exposure compensation to make sure your image is neither too dark nor too bright.