Today I was inspired to try to make a salad I had the other day when the Anderson’s treated me to dinner at Lucca in midtown Sacremento. It is an heirloom tomato and watermelon salad with a balsamic vinaigrette. I have a tiny seedless watermelon and a single heirloom tomato, well, sort of an heirloom; it’s actually a hybrid of Brandywine and Better Boy called Brandy Boy. To date it’s set only one tomato and that one’s ripe. I don’t know how my salad will turn out as the ratio of tomato to watermelon at Lucca was about 4 parts tomato to one part watermelon and I suspect my salad will be the opposite. Once again, I followed the Camera Raw steps recommended by Scott Kelby and boy did I need it today. I have no idea what’s going on but the downloaded photos looked nothing like the photos on the camera’s LCD screen, nor immediately after downloading. For some reason, as soon as the files loaded for me to view them, the color intensity increased to overwhelming redness. I had to make major adjustments to exposure. I also changed contrast, highlights, shadows, whites, blacks, clarity. But nothing looked right until I adjusted white balance. The original setting was fine weather and despite the fact that the natural daylight overwhelmed the weak overhead incandescent light, I needed to change the white balance to overcome the distinct yellowness of the shots. This was shot with my 50mm lens at ISO 100, f/1.4, 1/40 and it’s cropped as well.
