Aesthetically-pleasing apples in a bowl is a classic composition. I wanted something a little different on that theme for The Cook’s Cook and tapped into a lesson from an online photography class to do so. In class, my instructor, master photographer Bryan Peterson, had assigned us to improvise a rainy day photo shoot. An oscillating lawn sprinkler made it easy to do.

Having placed my camera, equipped with a zoom lens (to keep a safe distance), on a tripod (for stability), I focused on the still life in the middle of my front yard. To simulate rain I turned on the sprinkler and adjusted its trajectory relative to my apple tableau. When I thought the rainy moment was right, I triggered the shutter. Many attempts later, I decided on an image which was sharp front to back (wide depth of field using an f-stop of 8 or more) with the “rain” frozen mid-flight (fast shutter speed – greater than 1/125 second).