Skip to main content

Impromptu food shoot


My wife and I decided to have diner at our local Ruby Tuesdays. We love the food, love the atmosphere, and we had a coupon. So after a hectic day of shopping, we headed to the restaurant.

One of the great things about Ruby Tuesdays is that the chefs there pay as much attention to presentation of their food as the taste. Considering it is not a high end restaurant, this is pretty impressive in itself. The other thing I like is that they have those cool looking square plates. All the makings for an impromptu photo shoot.

The first thing I have to stress is that you cannot expect to get fantastic shots by shooting with available light while sitting at the table in a busy restaurant. No way, no how. But, you can get fairly decent ones if you plan it right.

In my bag I tend to carry a bunch of stuff I may or may not need. One item I carry that I tend to use a lot is a laminated half sheet of white paper with ruled lines on one side. I use this with a dry-erase marker to write notes to myself during a shoot. I jot down whatever I want to save then take a photo of the note. In a pinch it also serves as a quick and dirty bounce card or mini light reflector.

I went up to the salad bar, grabbed one of those nice square plates and made myself a carefully styled salad. Back at the table I adjusted the blinds on the window, positioned the plate and fired off half a dozen exposures. Because I didn't have the room to stretch out I kept the lens selection to my handy 17-50 mm zoom. This is the resulting image. The shot was taken at f2.8, 1/80 sec at ISO 800.

Considering that the light was not ideal, I thought the final look was good enough to create a really useable image. A large aperture opening was used to blur out the background but consideration was taken control depth of field on the food itself.

I took a few shots of the main entree, but because the plate had so much going on and the light could not be controlled enough to get a decent shot, I forwent playing with my food to eating it.

The dessert, however, was another story. The look and presentation of it was too tempting to resist. In retrospect I wish I had moved the fork a little off to one side. As it is, the portion on the fork blends in too much with the main slice. The shadows cast on the right side is too much also. Again, working with available light and lack of proper lighting tools offers up a unique challenge.

So, next time you are planning to visit your favorite restaurant, consider taking your camera with you. With a little thought and some playing around, you just may pull off a couple of useful images. You never know.

Comments

Most Popular Posts

Don Julio - Hero Shot

For starters, a hero shot is one in which the product is showcased in all its splendor. Careful attention is placed on making the product look its very best. For this shot of Don Julio I knew I wanted to give the bottle some majesty by photographing it from a low angle. That low angle makes the bottle look tall, towering over the viewer and creating a position of dominance. Can't you hear the choir of angels singing in the background? I also knew that I wanted a rich, moody image with lots of darks. I am partial to darker images, which is surprising to most people because the majority of the work I do are images on white backgrounds. But that's another story. I also tried a lifestyle type shot with glasses and lime slices but I wasn't feeling it and ended up scrapping it. Again, that's another story.

Observations on composition - Pieter Bruegel

In this article I am reprinting a critique I published on photoMENTORIS.com regarding the painting entitled ' Census at Bethlehem ' by famed painter Pieter Bruegel , who was born in what is now the Netherlands in the 1520s. The first point I would like to say is that you first need to consider both the medium and the time frame of this painting. Being a painting, the artist has a certain advantage of being able to carefully direct the large amount of content presented to the viewer, unlike, say, a photo of opportunity of the street photographer (I strongly believe Pieter would have been the 'street photographer' of his time). Even a studio photographer, with the luxury of space and time, would have a hard time justifying creating such a complex composition. Where you would see this type of visual composition today would be in modern cinema. In particular, period pieces that rely on background elements to "sell the era" .  Secondly, the era in which thi

Who Cares About Your Business

October marks the beginning of the holiday season with Halloween at the end of the month. Seasonal items are being shuffled around and soon Thanksgiving, Christmas and Hanukkah will be upon us. Personally, I have been busy preparing for the cold weather and analyzing how to move forward into the new year. This got me thinking about many things; rescaling my marketing, updating my prices, expanding my services… you know, all the regular business stuff. It also got me thinking about my customers... actually, the customers I don’t have. What can I do to help them find me? Then it hit me, if they did find me, why would they care?  This month’s newsletter is about ways of connecting to customers in today’s age of information.

What is the new normal after COVID?

A very large oak was uprooted by the wind and thrown across a stream. It fell among some Reeds, which it thus addressed: “I wonder how you, who are so light and weak, are not entirely crushed by these strong winds.” They replied, “You fight and contend with the wind, and consequently you are destroyed; while we on the contrary bend before the least breath of air, and therefore remain unbroken, and escape.” - Aesop's Fable