1/125 sec at f/1.8, ISO 800. Nikon D200, Nikkor 50mm f/1.8D.

Ah, the coffee press strikes again. You can see how important my daily coffee is to me!

This morning, the light from my desk lamp was gorgeous against the coffee press, so I explored it quite a bit and generated a nice set of images. This is the most iconic of them. Again, you can see the reflections (this time I polished up the stainless steel top), and the narrow aperture really beautifully blurs out the background.

Since I had the time and need the practice, I hand-metered this using a Sekonics L-508 incident light meter. This consists of a white dome that measures the actual light hitting the subject. Theoretically, this generates perfect exposures; practically, it is a somewhat easy-to-mess-up process that allows for a great deal of artistic input—or error. In this case, it worked out beautifully. And the coffee tasted good too!