I've tried to take on board the feedback from Dachs from my recent Sycamore post ~ hopefully this is a slightly better specimen! All CC welcome Thanks Lucie
It's a sweet chestnut which is the same family as the beech tree. This is the sort of chestnut you can buy roasted to eat.
In Italy they are grown large enough to eat but it's rare to get English ones that are of a decent size. We have one in the garden that once, and once only, grew chestnuts that we could roast and eat, but that year was the exception to the rule.
Sorry Lucie, about the photograph; it does look dramatic with the lighting and black background but I'm not sure whether you have quite enough light on the subject. It would have also been nice to see an unopened seed case alongside this one perhaps and/or a few more chestnuts without getting away from your idea too much. Overall you have achieved what you set out to do I think and a bit more experimentation should improve this further.
Looks nice to me, but only query is whether the black void background really suits this kind of subject. Sort of disconnected beauty shot, rather than a more natural one.
beautiful job of it, I want to eat it right now, but agree with RM the black in back kinda swamps what is a fairly delicate thing. This was one to pose on green velvet or even (hackneyed but true) a big autumn leaf of suitably dark non-clashing hue. cracking specimen this time though! Juicy even.
Thanks for all the feedback...I do need to expand my background props (can't say I have any spare green velvet!) I did take one outside, in situ but I had thought the black background would be less of a distraction.
I like your first photo and don't find the black background too dark for the subject. Maybe because I often use black backgrounds myself. Utterly irrelevant to this thread but, as an avid amateur cabinet maker, I'll add that the wood of the sweet chestnut is often used as substitute for oak as it has a very similar in grain but is much lighter in weight. The wood of the horse chestnut is all but useless for serious work.
I love them both but have to say I prefer the second one with a more natural background to it. But good work on both !!
