Fall is the favorite time of year for apple aficionados. The SweeTango apple has earned that devotion.

With zero photography budget, I did what any resourceful art director would do: styled the shoot myself, developed the recipes, and drove an hour into the countryside to pick up a chippy painted door I found on Craigslist—because the perfect backdrop doesn’t always come from a prop house.

The result was a series of warm, beautiful recipe and glamour shots that captured the SweeTango apple at peak season—shared with the brand’s thousands of Facebook fans, food bloggers, and media.