It was a rainy day at Waconia’s Deardorff Orchards when Deb Zeller captured this photo, Rain-Washed Apples, which took second place in the Wildlife & Nature category of our 2015 Lens on Lake Minnetonka photo contest.
As the skies cleared, she headed outside. “It had just rained, and the colors of everything were rich, dark and clean,” she explains. She took the photograph with her Nikon D7000 and, she does admit, “This photo always makes me want to go to the fridge and pull out a crisp apple.”
While the simplicity of the subject matter—a cluster of ruby-red apples—is what Zeller is drawn to, there are other interesting compositional components. The texture of the leaves, the droplets of water hanging on for dear life, and the depth of field have us wanting to grab an apple out of the fridge, too.
How did she do it? “Lighting is key,” she advises. “An overcast day can be fantastic.” As a hobbyist photographer, Zeller says that her favorite subjects are nature, plants and animals.
Zeller is a retired engineer and spends her days as a full-time artist, mostly crafting sculptures out of bronze. She also runs the Minnesota Figure Study Collaborative.
