Because Take 1 just wasn't good enough.

This past week, a few of us gathered over at Tea Junction in Dubai to dabble in photography. The goal was to have an informal setting for people interested in photography/food photography (without necessarily being photographers) take a picture of a mystery food item - told to us at the venue - and use the settings around us to come up with 2-3 core shots that we'd share with the group. This could then lead to some feedback, suggestions and a general sharing of ideas. We also worked on a couple of concepts in pairs.

If, for some insane reason, you missed the title, then well, the mystery item was a plum. Well, okay, plums. 

I went with three different colored plums so that I'd have contrast - a dark one, a mixed one, and a fairly light one. Unfortunately I couldn't get the whole 'journey of the plum' idea done well, although others were more successful [links will be posted soon]. My idea was to go with one very traditional food shot, one random one, and one hopefully somewhere in between.

To start with - and knowing my love for iced tea - I picked up a Boston Iced Tea (ie, Iced Tea with cranberry juice) since I knew the color symmetry would help. So the opening shots were very cookbook-like-traditional.

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I'd happily accept the real name of this flower from anyone, but seriously...how cool is that. It looks like it's exploding from within!

Edit: Courtesy @WajihaSaid, we learn this is the bottlebrush, and it's not in full bloom yet. 

My visit to Massachusetts was brilliant primarily because we visited a lot of what one could term the country side - open spaces, lots of green and tons of peace. We visited Cape Cod, the JFK Memorial (which had all those beautiful roses), where we befriended Seagulls that really like Doritos and I've also added some pictures of where we stayed in Norton.