Food Shoot #11 – Vegetable Medley

Photos taken November 14th, 2012

This food shoot was our last one for the semester. The final group brought in peppers, onions and garlic for us to photograph. The bright, vibrant colors were really fun to work with. For lighting, we once again set up the two fill lights with diffuser umbrellas.

WHAT WORKED:

The top image was my favorite because I felt the composition was the most dynamic and interesting. The organization of the objects keeps the viewer’s eye moving throughout the photograph better than in my other images. I like that the red pepper and the white onion balance each other so neither part of the picture is more dominant. The other vegetables add interest to the composition as well.

I also really liked the following four images. I really like the composition of the picture on the top left, but I still feel the top down view doesn’t do the food justice. The picture on the lower left is one of the only vertical pictures that I liked this semester as well. As for the picture on the bottom right, I like the composition but I felt the white background detracted from the image.

WHAT DIDN’T WORK:

I tried taking some pictures that focused on just one vegetable, but I didn’t feel that any of those pictures were very interesting. The fact that only one color and/or shape appeared in those pictures made them kind of boring to look at. I also tried taking pictures of just pieces of vegetables, but those did not turn out very well either. I think that the pictures where I photographed a combination of colors (three or more) were the most interesting. The following photographs are some of the ones I did not like for the aforementioned reasons.

 

Food Shoot #10 – Biscotti and Tea

Photos taken November 7th, 2012

Last week’s group brought in homemade chocolate peanut-butter biscotti and tea. They also brought in some fancy teacups and matching plates to really portray the feeling of a nice afternoon tea party. We have not worked with liquids very much for our food shoots up to this point, so I was really happy that they brought in tea for us to photograph. Again, we used the fill lights with diffuser umbrellas to light the set.

WHAT WORKED:

I really liked the color scheme for this food shoot – not only does the cool grey background really allow the warmly-colored biscotti to pop, it gives the impression that the tea in the cups is Earl Grey. The top picture is my favorite because the composition keeps the viewer’s eye moving throughout the picture. The line of biscotti in the background draw the viewer’s eye to the teacup, then to the biscotti on the tea saucer and then to the spoon. The spoon leads the viewer’s eye up the plate in the background, which then curls their attention back to the line of biscotti. I also really liked how the shallow depth of field turned out in this photograph.

Below are some of my other favorite photographs from this shoot:

WHAT DIDN’T WORK:

I tried to take some shallow depth-of-field pictures of the biscotti on the plate in the same way that they were lined up in the top picture, but because they are all the same shape and height, the shot just did not work very well. Overhead shots did not seem to work very well either. I took some pictures of the teacup and biscotti from above, but shooting the teacup from that angle took away virtually all of its recognizability and made for a poor image.

An overhead shot involving both teacups and the plate of biscotti turned out to be a little more interesting, but I still feel that the image is lacking.

 

Food Shoot #9 – Spider Cookies and Pumpkin Snack Mix

Photos taken October 29th, 2012

This week was my group’s turn to bring in food. Halloween is my absolute favorite holiday, so I was thrilled when I found out that our food shoot would be the week of Halloween. We made some chocolate Spider Cookies and Pumpkin Snack Mix for the shoot and brought in lots of props and decorations to compliment the theme. We set up the two fill lights with diffuser umbrellas since that seems to provide the best lighting.

WHAT WORKED:

The photograph at the top of this post is my favorite of the ones I took because of the composition and color. All the little snippets of orange (in the pumpkin props, the napkin, and the candies) really work to keep the viewer’s eye moving throughout the image. I also used some shallow depth of field in this image – the snack mix is slightly blurred at the back, adding visual interest, but most of the dish is in focus so the viewer can see the food in detail. The props, being lower than the snack mix, also ended up being a bit blurry. I thought this was nice because it keeps the viewer’s focus on the food.

I’m a little sad that I didn’t get any of my spider cookies in my top image, but I think it probably would have been too many things in one photograph. To make up for this, the image below is my favorite one that I took of the spider cookies. The top down view really worked for these cookies because it hides the fact that they were so tall (because you have to stick two cookies together to make them, the spiders ended up being a bit round). I also really like how their red eyes and legs pop against the black plate. Their legs also point to each other in a circular fashion, keeping the viewer’s eyes moving from cookie to cookie. The purple cloth to the left does a good job of adding some interest to that otherwise empty space.

The following four pictures are some of my other favorites.

EXPERIMENTATION:

One thing I did for this shoot that I had never done before was play around with my camera’s white balance. Up til this point the “auto” setting has done a good job for me, but I noticed while I was taking pictures that the camera was choosing colors very inconsistently – sometimes the tablecloth looked blue, and other times it looked pink. In any case, I did not feel that it was representing the color accurately. To fix this, I tried out the different white balance settings on my camera – tungsten, cool-white fluorescent, direct sunlight, cloudy and shade. In the end, I decided that cool-white fluorescent gave me the truest color (as can be seen in the above photographs).

Below are some examples of what changing the color balance did to my photos (they’re not the best images, but they do a good job of showing the difference in color). The image on the right has the WB set to tungsten, and the image on the left has the WB set to flash.

WHAT DIDN’T WORK:

I had some problems getting both the snack mix and the spiders to fit into the pictures. The image on the top right of my “like pictures” compilation is one of the only pictures I took that included both food items on separate plates/bowls that actually seemed to work. Other than that, the pictures I took of similar compositions ended up looking too forced.

We had also brought in some orange plates and napkins to put the cookies on, but I was unhappy with how the red legs looked against the orange. They just blended together too much. The images below show this problem. (As both images were taken with the auto white balance setting, they also show how much the color of my photographs was changing before I switched to cool-white fluorescent.)

 

Food Shoot #8 – Fruit

Photos taken October 22nd, 2012

This week’s group brought in an assortment of interesting fruit for us to photograph. These included oranges, lemons, limes, melons, avocados, pomegranates, papayas, permissions and figs. The colors and shapes of all the different fruit worked really well together and gave us a lot of options when it came to composition. We used the two fill lights with diffusers again to light the set.

WHAT WORKED:

I thought that the papaya and the pomegranate were the most interesting fruit, but avocado is one of my favorite things, so I really worked hard to take a good photograph of them. Because of this, I feel that the above photograph is the best one I took. This is the first top-down photograph I have taken that I thought has worked. I think this is probably because the photograph shows the inside and the outside of an avocado, allowing the viewer to see all of its visual properties. I also really like how the shape of avocado’s seed is reflected throughout the image by the three figs. I also feel that the dynamic angle of the fruit in the composition along with the different shades of green really bring this image together.

The two images below show some other photographs that I really liked from my shoot.

WHAT DIDN’T WORK:

While the large variety of fruit was a good thing, I found it was also challenging. A lot of my photographs did not turn out well because the compositions just did not work, and I also feel like I did not have enough time to set up and try all of the compositions I wanted. Also, since the majority of the fruit were round, it was difficult to get them to sit the way I wanted for the shoot. Some of the fruits were a little bruised as well, so it was a challenge to set them up in a way that hid these spots. Because of these things, I feel like I ended up with more bad photographs than good ones.

Some of my outtakes are posted below. I do not feel that the compositions were very strong in these images.

 

Food Shoot #7 – Lemon-Lavender Cupcakes

Photos taken October 15th, 2012

The group for this week’s food shoot brought in homemade lemon-lavender cupcakes. They were very beautiful and super delicious! The group also brought in lavender lemonade, as well as lavender flowers, a lemon, lemon zest and colored sugar for props. They did a really fantastic job setting up an aesthetically pleasing set, so I did not feel the need to change the objects or props at all – I only played around with how the objects were arranged. Once again only the two fill lights with diffuser umbrellas were used, making the lighting natural and soft.

WHAT WORKED:

I really played with depth of field again this week to bring the cupcakes in the foreground into focus while keeping the lemonade and flowers in the background out of focus. I felt that the topmost picture was my best attempt at this, and it has the most pleasing arrangement of objects out of my photos. The colors of this shoot were very well thought out as well, as the purple and yellow really worked well together. I did have to edit the background cloth in Photoshop Camera Raw in order to make it blend with the main color scheme (I made it lavender instead of blue).

The four pictures below also had nice compositions, but I feel that the one at the top of this post was the strongest.

WHAT DIDN’T WORK:

I had some problems getting all of the objects to fit in the frame of my photos. One thing I tried to get everything to fit was to take a top-down photos. However, I felt that this really made the objects hard to distinguish and stripped them of their defining characteristics. Also, the table was not large enough for this shot to work properly. These points can all be seen in the image on the left below. Because of these things, I felt that my top-down photos did not work.

Also, when I took photos from the side, I had problems getting enough of the lemonade jar and glass in the picture to make them recognizable. The picture on the lower right kind of shows this, but the two images on the right in the above section are a better example of what I mean (I still like those photos though because the focus is on the cupcakes).

I also had a few photos where my depth-of-field did not turn out like I wanted, as the background was in focus instead of the foreground. The image below on the right is and example of this.

 

Food Shoot #6 – Chocolate Cake Pops

Photos taken October 8th, 2012

 

For this week’s food shoot, my classmates brought in some chocolate cake pops they made for us to photograph. They also brought in a variety of sprinkles and some ribbon to decorate them with. They did not bother to put up the boom light and instead opted to only set up the two fill lights with diffusers. Our professor asked us all to really play with shallow depth of field for this shoot, so I made sure to do just that.

WHAT WORKED:

Me and my photography partner decided to try using blue and brown cloths for our setup in attempt to match the color of the cake pops’ ribbons and chocolate, respectively. We tried using different plates as well. When we used the brown tablecloth, we experimented with laying some of the extra ribbon out on the table to add some visual interest to the background. In the end, though, my favorite photograph was the one pictured above. This is because I really liked the non-centered composition and also because the shallow depth of field turned out really nice in that photo. I also liked the simplicity of the image – the brown cake pops really stand out from the blue background and clear plate. I liked the following four images as well.

WHAT DIDN’T WORK:

We tried taking some photographs with both the brown and the blue tablecloth present, but I feel like the divide between the two is really distracting because the blue cloth seems to take dominance over the rest of the photograph. I think that the pictures in which I used either the blue cloth or the brown cloth turned out nicer because when there was just one color, it was easier to keep the viewer’s focus on the cake pops.

One thing I wish we had done during our shooting time was to try using the ribbon with the blue tablecloth. I feel like it would have looked really nice to use the two together because their colors are so similar. The ribbon does not really mesh with the brown cloth, so the end result is rather distracting. The two pictures above kind of show what the ribbon would have looked like on the blue, and in retrospect, I think that it would have looked much nicer with that than it does with the brown.

Also for this shoot, I played around with my camera’s ISO settings some more. After having success with setting my ISO at 1600 last time, I decided to put my camera’s ISO at 3200 this week to see what would happen. Unfortunately, the noise levels were a bit too high for my taste and I had a hard time trying to remove the noise. From now on, I will not go higher than 1600 on my ISO for these shoots.

 

Food Shoot #5 – Pumpkin Pie

Photos taken October 1st, 2012

This week’s group brought in pumpkin pie for us to photograph. There were not a lot of extra props to use this time, however, so the focus of the image really had to be on the pie. Fortunately, they brought enough to allow each group to be able to cut and decorate their own piece as they saw fit, so I made sure to take advantage of this. I cut a slice and dressed up the plate as I wanted. Since there was not much I could change with the props for this photo, I was really glad that I was allowed to do that.

Both fill lights were set up today with diffusers on them, as well as the boom light. The fill lights were placed really close to the set this time, so even though the was being light was being diffused, it was a lot brighter this week than it usually is.

WHAT WORKED:

The top photograph is my favorite mainly because of how nice the lighting looks. For that picture, I only used the two fill lights, leaving the boom light off. Because of this, the shadows were really soft. I also like how you can see the other objects (the fork and the cup), but because they’re cropped they appear more like abstract shapes that simply add interest to the negative space, allowing the viewer to remain focused on the pie. The red cloth in the two corners also does a nice job of framing the composition and emphasizing the strong diagonal within the image.

This time, I adjusted my ISO for my photographs. For all of my previous shoots, I tried to keep it around 400 because I did not want a lot of noise in my photographs. I would make up for the darkness by adjusting my camera’s exposure and aperture size. This always left me with a shallow depth of field though, so today I decided to try raising my ISO to 1600 instead. I was pleasantly surprised by the fact that my images did not come out grainy at all. I may try going to a higher ISO next time, just to see what happens.

I felt that the following four images had strong compositions as well.

WHAT DIDN’T WORK:

After taking a few photos with the boom turned off, I decided that I would try taking some with it turned on. Unfortunately, I forgot to turn it back off, so all of the rest of my photos used it. This was not good because, as I saw while reviewing my pictures, The shadows came in really dark and sharp. This did not look very good and proved to be rather distracting. So, while I liked some of the overall compositions in my other photos, the shadows really bothered me (all of my “other liked photos” have these strong shadows, that is partially why I did not choose any of them as my favorites).

Having the boom light on also made my images come out really warm, and I had some trouble trying to color correct for that. I think that when I photograph from now on, I will either not use the boom or I will turn on the room’s overhead lights to fill in the shadows and make them less harsh.

One of the more disappointing things about using the boom light was that the whipped cream on top of the pie melted faster with it on. This is another reason I did not choose any of those other photos as my favorite – the whipped cream had melted a lot in them and did not make the pie look very appetizing.

Below is my favorite picture, without the boom (left), compared to a similar photo, taken with the boom (right).

 

Food Shoot #4 – Pumpkin Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting

Photos taken September 24th, 2012

For this photo shoot, my classmates decided to bring in pumpkin cupcakes decorated with cream cheese frosting and cinnamon. They brought a lot of good props, such as pumpkins and a cornucopia, to give the shoot an autumn feeling. This time, I really tried to play around with the objects and organization of the scene. We used the boom light and both fill lights (with diffusers attached to them) for this shoot. This created really harsh shadows though – in order to combat that, I tried turning on the classroom’s overhead lights. That worked really well to soften the picture while still leaving distinct shadows.

WHAT WORKED:

The above image is my favorite because I feel it is the most interesting to look at of those I took. Our teacher provided some wood panels for use as props, which blended really well with the color of the cupcake paper. This really allowed the warm colors of the cupcake, frosting and cinnamon to pop out from the background. The depth of field and object placement also turned out really nice in this photograph.

I also liked the pictures below. These pictures feature props in addition to the cupcakes. I really liked the simplicity of the top image, but having the props was nice too – they gave context to the cupcakes as well as adding a burst of intense color.

WHAT DIDN’T WORK:

Although the top picture is my favorite, there are some things I’m not really happy with in it. The paper obscures the actual cupcake in the image, only allowing the frosting to be seen. So, while the viewing angle may be dynamic, it’s hard to tell what kind of cupcakes they are exactly. That is why I really liked using the pumpkin props – they clue the viewer in to the fact that these are pumpkin-flavored cupcakes.

Also, while I like the composition in the image on the top right of my “other liked” photos, the top view does not really do the cupcakes justice – you lose the depth of the frosting this way, and it makes the food look really flat. However, if the angle of photography was too shallow (like in the top image) it was hard to see the actual cupcake. My favorite cupcake shot is actually in the top left photograph from the compilation – the viewer can easily see the height and shape of the cupcake, as well as the actual cupcake itself (not just the frosting). Despite this, I felt that the topmost image had the stronger composition, so I chose it as my favorite.

Overall, while I played around with the scene and objects this time around, I wasn’t really happy with the composition results I got. I will have to practice more at setting up a pleasing scene.

 

Food Shoot #3 – Guacamole and Chips

Photos taken September 17th, 2012

Guacamole was the subject of today’s photo shoot. There were a lot of extra props we could play around with for this shoot (different kinds of chips and whole avocados and tomatoes, among other things). My partner and I used the boom light and one fill light with a light diffuser for this photo shoot. The lighting came out a little harsh, but it looked fine as long as you took your pictures on the right side of the dish.

WHAT WORKED:

The above picture is my favorite because I feel that it is simpler than the ones with all of the extra vegetables in the background, and I feel that the composition is dynamic and interesting as well. The red of the tomatoes in the guacamole is reflected in the red cloth, and the brown color of the chips is repeated in the cutting board underneath the red cloth. One of my favorite things about this picture is the strength of the angles – the angles of the plate match the angles of the cutting board below it, and the darkness of the shadows complements the black color of the background. The circular shape of the guacamole bowl makes for a strong focus point, yet the angles keep your eyes moving around the picture.

I also really liked the pictures below and thought their compositions were strong as well. However, when my partner and I came to photograph the food, we didn’t play around with the last group’s setup very much at first (visible in the top two photographs). The photos came out well, but I think would like to try playing around with the setup of the food some more the next week in order to personalize our photos.

WHAT DIDN’T WORK:

I played around with my composition a lot. The square plate made it difficult to frame the picture well, so some of my composition attempts came out rather poorly. The two pictures below are some of my worst examples. In the picture on the left, the food feels like it’s being squished into the corner. On the right, the top half of the plate was cut off. I was trying to focus on the chips on the front of the plate, but the composition wasn’t tight enough to make this work.

I also had some problems getting the depth of field/focus of my picture correct. My camera was having problems picking up light, so I had to use a pretty big aperture. Because of this, my depth of field was pretty narrow, and sometimes items on the plate would be out of focus. In the picture on the left, the bowl of guacamole is out of focus, which is not what I wanted at all. In the picture on the right, the location of the lime pulls the viewer’s focus away from the guacamole.

 

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.