Photographing Tomatoes

In my ongoing quest to take good photographs I’ve been reading everything my sister has sent to me about photography. She’s included articles on food photography as well as general tips on taking good pictures. I’ve studied them all and I’ve also been reading the online (because I can make the printing huge) manual for my camera. And I’ve learned some things. So today I spent my time photographing tomatoes.

I’m frustrated. While I am acutely aware that good photography takes lots of practice; years, in fact, I thought my pictures would show some improvement. But I’m unhappy with my photos. I can attribute some of the fails to the wrong white balance or trying to take photos too close up. Others have me stumped.

These pictures haven’t been adjusted in any way except for size. I did not try to tweak the colors or contrast. I wanted opinions on the “as is” photographs.

I’m pretty sure this was just because I had the wrong white balance. I had it set for “far from a window” while it was actually fairly close to the window and the sun is really bright.

Strangely, the white balance should have been white but the picture is so yellow!

Again, this seems too yellow. I’m perplexed.

I threw a banana pepper in the mix because I was sick of just the tomatoes. It’s not horrible but still doesn’t seem quite right.

If you are a photographer who can determine where I’ve gone wrong, please, please help! My shelf life isn’t long enough to spend a decade or more learning by trial and error.