Photo of the Week: Nov. 18, 2007

HOW I GOT THE SHOT: Shooting this image was rather simple. The task lay in its discovery. For the past eight years, I have been admiring the growth cycle of the pomegranate tree in my garden, but until I shot this image, I never realized the number of points on the crown varies from fruit to fruit. And by the time the fruit reaches this stage of maturity, the crown usually closes up. This photo was taken in an orchard near Shlomi, on Israel's northern border. There were hundreds of trees and thousands of individual fruits. I was looking to photograph pairs or groups of fruit when I was lucky to spy this one, hanging from a branch above my head. I used a macro or close-up lens to capture the crown's detail in sharp focus. The height of the fruit forced me to hand-hold my camera instead of using a tripod. Because even the slightest hand motion can blur an image, I pressed the camera hard to my face and held my breath to minimize camera movement during exposure.