I was inspired to start working on a new photo series after reading “Tips For Shooting Fascinating Close-up Photos” in the April 2013 issue of Popular Photography featuring a photographer named Bruce Peterson. I started with pecans because they had loads of salt which made for an interesting texture. I did not have a lot of success replicating the exact technique as described in the article. The solution I discovered was to take three exposures moving the strobe in a half-circle around the pecan. I used a white board behind the pecan to reflect the strobe in an effort to soften the shadows. I then layer masked the three images together to get a uniform exposure across the pecan. Lastly a solid white fill layer for the background to make the image pop. Next in the series…the almighty peanut.