IN THE FIELD: More Tasty Delights

Next on the docket to provide summer taste sensations from our local orchard are the sweet cherries. We’ve been waiting with anticipation since last summer for the next crop, and they should be ready in a few days. As with all the fruit grown at the orchard, customers are free to pick their own.

I was a bit overwhelmed when I was there to photograph the ripening fruit, because I found promising compositions everywhere I looked. After finishing with one cluster, I would see a better one. And then a better one than the last. And I hadn’t made past the second tree in that row. And there were plenty more rows of cherry trees to explore.

I experimented with sunny, cloudy, and shade white balance settings to render the colors as accurately as possible. Due to the bright, yet overcast late morning sky, the sunny setting gave the best results. The cloudy and shade settings brought out too much yellow in the green leaves. After about an hour it began to get darker due to an impending storm, so I got out my flash unit to provide some more fill light. I managed to squeeze off a few shots while the sky continued to darken. Then it became ominous with thunder and flashes of lightning. Now I had to quickly change plans.

It’s best not to be in an orchard with a metal tripod when there is lightning in the area. I felt like I was dancing with the devil as I put my equipment away in my backpack and hightailed it back to the Jeep. It was a close call and the heavy rain started just as I closed my door. It rained well into the night with high winds, lightning and thunder.

I hope the heavy storms didn’t cause much damage to this year’s bounty of cherries.

I’ll find out later this week.

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