Food Shoot #2 – California Roll Sushi

Photographs taken September 9th, 2012

For this photo shoot, my classmates Millei and Rachel brought in sushi for everyone to photograph. This time the focus was on the main dish (there were really no other food items included on the set, except for a garnish of lettuce). Millei and Rachel decided not to set up the boom light for this photo shoot (we used it with the soup photo shoot last time) in order to make the shadows softer and keep the pictures from looking so harsh. Without the main light, however, the set was rather dark, so I had to adjust my camera’s light sensitivity settings in order to get a good picture. I played around with my camera angle (I tried some shots from above this time) and depth of field as well.

WHAT WORKED:

The picture above was my favorite from the shoot. I took the picture by the window in order to see what natural lighting would do for the sushi. After reviewing all of my shots, I feel like the ones in natural lighting came out the best. I like the top photo the most because it really shows off the sushis’ form and texture. The shallow depth of field helps give the picture a soft look and adds to the calm mood of the piece. The composition is maybe a little left-heavy, but the angles of the chopsticks work to keep the viewer’s eyes moving throughout the whole photograph.

The pictures below are some other nice pictures from the photo shoot. The top two were also taken by the window, and the bottom two were taken under the artificial lighting. They all have strong compositions, but I feel that the top photo is the best.

WHAT DIDN’T WORK:

My biggest problem was that by the time it was my partner’s and my turn to take pictures, the sushi had started to fall apart due to previous teams using it. I didn’t really notice, however, until near the end of our allotted time. As I reviewed the photographs I’d taken, I saw that most of my photos show the “bad” side of the food. I’ll have to be more careful from now on to photograph the “good” side of the food so it can look as fresh and delicious as possible. The images below show what I mean – the seaweed was tearing and rice was looking messy (if you look at the bottom two photo out of the ones I liked, however, you can see that the sushi still looked good from the other side).

Towards the end of our time, I tried taking a few photos with my camera’s flash turned on in order to brighten up the pictures. Unfortunately, this also made them look really harsh and brought back the harsh shadows we had tried to avoid by not setting up the boom light. I do not think I will try using my flash again.