Birthday Tea photo

For my birthday, I was given a large box of tea! (Yes, my friends and family know me well enough that I happily get tea, cooking paraphernalia, camera lenses, nightlights that reference They Might Be Giants songs and books on the history of math and computer science.)

I thought about how I wanted to stage the photo. I knew that the big difference between these teas is the color of the tea bag envelope. I decided to make the composition look more like an explosion of colors rather than perfectly lining up the teas in either a gradient or colorful chaos. It would also take less time to set up. I decided I didn't want to capture every tea envelope but focus on most of them, and have no table or background showing. I also loosely made sure that the composition didn't have similar colors next to each other, the writing on the envelopes were positioned to make the composition looked as if the envelopes were expanding outward from the bottom center, and that the most interestingly named teas were in the foreground, like Lapsang Souchong and Oolong. I did do a little bit of editing, slightly changing the saturation and vibrancy of the photo, but not by much. I was very pleased with how this one turned out!