St. Patrick’s Day comes and goes pretty quietly in the Rice Household. The last couple year’s I had a toy photo to celebrate, lack of time and ideas this year so, we end up with a potato, it was this or Lucky Charms. Sorry, I had no Corn beef or Cabbage… and I have not had them since I was old enough to make my own choices in what I eat. I really wish the tradition on St. Patrick’s Day was Chinese food, I could get behind that.

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One Pot Pasta with Potato and Spinach, another great dinner by my wife.

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Now and then I get the urge to shoot food, I walk around a grocery store and look for stuff to photograph. I prefer Whole Foods for inspiration, fresh fruits and veggies, lots of color, sometimes foods I have never even heard of. This afternoon I only had time to browse Stop & Shop while Dan was at Martial Arts. I grabbed 3 potatoes, half a watermelon and bananas. Nothing exotic, but that adds to the challenge, make the ordinary interesting.  I am not sure why the potatoes worked, I am always drawn to brown tones.  I have a lot of wood boxes and boards I keep around for backdrops.  The shots are set up in an antique crate I found at a yard sale last year, works well with the colors of the potatoes.  The second shot I took the flash off the camera, shot it from an angle to let the side of the box act as a shadow, a couple toothpicks in each potato to prevent shifting, 3-4 shots to get the shadow line where I wanted it and the whole thing took maybe 5 minutes. The first shot is the original idea I had when I was in the store.  I had envisioned a police line up of different potatoes.  I am sure the woman next to me was curious why I kept picking up different types of potatoes and placing them in order by height, to see which ones worked. I was acting out the Usual Suspects movie poster Mr. Potato Head style.

There was some debate over which of the two pictures would be the dailypic.  The wife and daughter voted for the line up, I wanted what is now the extra shot, I really liked the lines and black space, the boy was not included in the argument due to school related studying. The best he could had done is caused a tie and well that is not helpful either, and it was already sad the rest of the family wasted anytime on the discussion to begin with.

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1/60, f11, iso 800, Nikon D700, Nikon 105mm