So many good images here.
When I was learning photography in the late 1950s and 1960s, one of the interesting assignments was to "Photograph Eggs." No other guidelines. It was quite a challenge. We photographed single eggs, multiple eggs, back-lit, side-lit, from above, from below. With dramatic shadows, high-key, low-key. How many ways can you photograph an egg? You learn lighting!
Some time in the '60s, while I was also learning offset lithography, which was the coming art form of fine printing, and all commercial printing, I chanced upon a magazine printed in Switzerland, I believe, devoted to Large Format photography and high-end printing. No expense was spared in the production of that masterpiece. It was a showcase of LF photography and offset lithography. I don't think there was anything smaller than 8x10 original images. Many were 11x14 and larger, printed on 9x12 heavy-stock pages. Glossy, full color images, cover to cover. Color reproduction and printing were not then what it is now. That magazine, in contrast predicted what the future of color reproduction was going to provide.
There were architecture shots, advertising, portraits, landscapes, product photography. It was my introduction to the modern view camera with all its swings, tilts, superb lenses, control of focus and DOF and composition. I was dumbstruck. And seriously in love. In every image, the scene was more life-like than the real thing.
One of the images was similar to this. But of course, much much better, taken with an 8x10 camera, a Schneider lens, multiple strobes. It was just drop-dead Gorgeous.
Over the years, I tried to replicate that LF shot with 35mm equipment and 6x6 MF cameras. I eventually got some pretty good results on 4x5, both color negative material and Velvia.
In 2001 I got my first digital camera, a Canon Power Shot G2, 4MP model with a 1/1.8" sensor. This shot is from that camera. This is the full image, processed today in the latest version of ACR and Photoshop and sharpened in Topaz Sharpen.
I hated that camera. At close range, the 7-21mm zoom lens performed pretty well as you can see here. But at mid and long range, there was some terrible distortion, which Canon refused to acknowledge. I put it up for auction on eBay after a month. The eBay environment was so crazy then and the demand for digital cameras so high, that it sold at auction for $100 more than the retail I had paid and which was still in effect.
I ate the egg after the shoot. 😏
Rich