New Tomato Season

Talking about tomatoes might seem off topic for a photo blog, but in my case, my passion for tomatoes and photography over the years has been intertwined. With so many "heirloom" tomatoes available for gardeners to choose from, it's really difficult to distinguish one plant from another during the growing season. Every variety of tomato has a slightly different leaf structure, and if you happen to lose the tag or not mark the tomato stake with the name of each variety, you end up having to wait until the plant bears fruit to remember what varieties you had grown,

I've made a habit out of taking photos of my plants during their growth stages throughout the season and then matching these plant photos up with photos of the fruit. I had one major heirlooom tomato grower here in Southern California tell me that there really wasn't any extensive source that shows backyard gardeners detailed photos of both the plant and fruit. He even offered that I could come to his gardens and photograph all the varieties of his plants to build this collection of photographs. After thinking this would be a fun project, I realized it would take a tremendous amount of time, and therefore I much prefer just documenting the various tomato plants we grow each season and enjoy the fruit of my labor.

As end of March or early April in California is typically when we can put plants in the ground, I've recently started my 2007 crop of tomatoes. As I wanted to take some early photos of the plants, I used the DA* 50-135mm lens with my K10D to photograph both the plant structure from the side and a top down view of the leaves.

The four photos below were all shot at ISO 200 in RAW at 100mm; f/8.0 at 1/15 to 1/20th second. As it was a really overcast, cloudy day the only processing I did when I converted from RAW to JPEG was to set my white balance to "cloudy".

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Soldacki.
Heirloom tomato from Poland. Dark pink fruit with mild, super sweet flavor.


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Black Tula.
Heirloom tomato from Russia. The fruit is blackish-red with green shoulders. Chocolate flesh is rich and sweet.


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Since far too many folks only know of the hybridized, perfectly round red and tastless tomatoes sold in supermarkets, here are a few photos taken several seasons ago that give you an idea of the vastly different look of "heirloom" tomato varieties. Photos not taken with Pentax gear, but I wanted to include them for illustrative purposes.