It snowed last night and at around noon today the sun was coming through a thin layer of clouds—perfect for shooting food with available light.

That’s the view out the window and that’s my setup for this photo. I did this just to talk about using available light, white fill cards and also I just wanted to take a photo of the cool pewter antique dish I found a couple of days ago.

These two photos were both shot at ISO 100, F5.6, a 6th of a sec. shutter speed on a tripod. The first is just window light and the second has a white fill card placed to the right bouncing the light back filling in the shadows in front. You can see a big difference in the single clove’s exposure. I only used one board here but you could use 2 in front to fill in even more shadows.

Then I turned the garlic toward the light, moved the camera so that the light was now coming from behind it. First shot is just with window light, second one, I used the fill card to bounce the light back (you can see where the card is).  Less of a difference here. Front lighting is flatter and not as dramatic.

So when there’s a blanket of snow outside—open a window and think of it as your big soft box studio light. Grab some white boards and go play.

When Michael asked me to do a salt shot, I thought, “what can I photograph the salt on that’s interesting and makes sense?” Salt—mined—rock—salt of the earth—Hey, I can use my Home Depot slate floor tiles. I bought some that are 12X12 inches and some 5X5 inches.  I’m the kind of girl who likes hardware stores so I have fun looking for interesting inexpensive surfaces and props just about anywhere.

And as long as you’re taking a shot like this to illustrate a point, take some others for future use.

I love these tiles so much I’m afraid I’ll use them too much. Here they are used for a bread shot taken not so long ago.

I stood one tile up in back and blurred the crack line where they met in photoshop.

After the last shot that ran—Styled Chicken & Dumplings—I am so glad Michael asked for this roasted chicken shot that I just took on Monday. Every Monday Michael serves a roasted chicken, and when this came out of the oven, I decided we should quickly shoot it because;

1: He talks about roasted chicken a lot and we can’t keep running the same photo (even if David Lebovitz loves it). 2: It just looked so beautiful and 3: My lights were all set up.

Michael let me get two frames off before he whisked it away. You can see Michael’s hand towel on the handle because he had no intention of letting it go. Flash-flash, and away he went to carve away on his Boos cutting board.

I turned off my camera and lights and called the kids into dinner. Really. No fussing, no styling and no propping. We didn’t even need a trivet because I had a slate tile on the table already from an earlier shoot that day.

And,  most importantly, it was divine. Thanks Michael, you make a mean Monday’s roasted chicken.

Because of a few great tips I got from food stylist Adam Pearson at blogger camp, this photo probably looks a lot better. I’m a big fan of showing food in it’s natural state, but rich stews can look like ugly creatures in a dark lagoon.

First I paid a lot more attention to the props, thinking about shapes and textures. If this bowl rim was not etched with a hounds tooth pattern, it would look like a giant hot white collar.  Thomas Keller gave us these that he designed with Raynaud Limoges. Thanks TK. And the same with the napkin. Just the addition of texture can help the image be more interesting and less flat.

Then, instead of photographing the stew completely mixed, we first put the plain sauce in the bowl, then carefully added blanched vegetables, dumplings and the chicken pieces separately so they weren’t coated in brown, hiding their bright colors.

Lastly, I diluted the red wine with water. Before it looked completely black and no light, no matter how strong, would pass through it.

The down side to this kind of shooting is you wouldn’t eat it this way and,  in this case, I guess I’m OK with that because you wouldn’t find a real photo of this very appetizing either.

I love travel photography because you can shoot anything you want, especially when I go off by myself and can really observe and concentrate on the light and what it creates. Here human beings are being silly thinking they can make this beautiful palm tree more beautiful.

You have to be willing to get up early to get the light.  I made these sand abstracts early one morning, rising at 6:30 and stopping at 9am because the light gets too harsh. If anyone knows me and had been watching me take these they would surely say, “what IS she doing now?”

Had a great time at the food blogger’s camp at Club Med Ixtapa. Food bloggers are wonderful people and food/photography bloggers are super great.  Diane and Tod of whiteonricecouple.com. told us about Animoto videos—thanks guys—here’s my first attempt. And as my husband says one should never do—I hope I don’t bore anyone with my first video.

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

Hola!

Food bloggers camp rocked. The place, weather, food and free flowing booze was a spectacular break from frigid Cleveland, but it was the bloggers and their significant others that filled me with inspiration and warmth. Having been a photojournalist, it was also fun to be shooting not just food, but anything I wanted while there.

still catching up (got stuck in Houston overnight) but wanted to post something to say how excited I am to implement what I learned by finding out about  Animoto which will allow me to create a short slide show video on my page.

So stay tuned for my video and discussion on travel photography.

Adios—Donna

With the arrival of video on the internet, it has become the way to show how things are executed in motion. My son James has picked up so many Yo-yo tricks you’d think he was taking private lessons. Imagine if he had to learn from still photos. Video is much better on explaining, for instance, how to truss a chicken because there are so many small steps, the same as tying your shoe. If you were to show it using still photos, you’d need an impractical amount of them.

So, with cookbooks, magazines and other places where video is not possible (yet),  the importance of shooting in sequence becomes imperative. The cookbooks that have them may not always be as aesthetically beautiful, but ask any cook if it helps and they will say hell yeah. An important thing to remember is to keep the photos close in size, perspective and scale. Don’t take one from overhead and then switch to a closer eye level shot. Determine what angle will work best for all of the steps. Keeping things consistent will give you a film strip look, allowing you to clearly show the difference between the first and last steps. The more photos in your sequence, the more instructive. So if you want to teach a technique or show the correct texture changes, use lots of photos in sequence. And if you want to keep your techniques secret, just show one beautiful finished photo and keep em guessing.

When you think of something that’s cooked, you don’t think cold, creamy and over ice. That’s why I decided to have fire in the background of this eggnog version. The correct exposure for a good fire shot is what it is. In other words, you can’t control the light the fire is putting out— so when you’re setting up for this shot, first get a beautiful fire photo, then light your subject in front to match.

My good fire photo, with my aperture wide open (f3.5 on my 55mm macro lens),  gave me a 60th of a sec. exposure. I wanted a short depth of field so that the edge of the table and the fire would be completely out of focus. You can control your exposure, even with an automatic point and shoot by changing the ISO setting, that’s the setting that determines how sensitive your camera is to light. With a low ISO (100) setting you’ll need brighter light to make a good exposure then if you set it higher (ISO 400, 800 or even 1,000). What you sacrifice at the higher speeds though is image quality. Your photos will be much more grainy the higher ISO setting you use.

I then placed a bright spot light behind, and a much less powerful fill light in front to the left. I adjusted the strength of these lights to match my given fire exposure. With whatever lights you use, you can control how bright they are by simply moving them closer or farther away from your subject. You can see how much stronger the spot light is because you can see its shadow but no other.

Another important thing when working with fresh ingredients, such as the whipped egg whites, is to have your photograph all ready perfectly exposed with a stand in glass, then take another test shot with just the eggnog in it. Only then, when your shot is just how you want it, add the whipped egg whites and nutmeg.

The thing I like about this photo is that you don’t know how big this egg is. It could be a huge dinosaur egg because there is nothing to put into perspective. The fibers of the napkin could be of a blanket and the blue is unidentifiable. As Michael said in his blog, the egg measures 1-3/8ths inches high.

When I started to photograph these tiny little gems I thought I should put something in the photo to show it’s scale, but then felt that I was only putting something in the photo for that purpose—a contrived pairing of objects. There are times when it is necessary because it’s useful to know how big something is and you can’t, or don’t want to, saddle your photo with info. Then, when it is necessary to put a fork or a lemon wedge in your photo, hopefully it won’t feel contrived. This time to me, this egg needed its own stage—alone in all its glory.

I’ve been forcing myself to explore more creative compositions in my shots. I think we all have a first instinct as to how to frame a subject. As we approach it, our minds are deciding overhead vs. low—real tight or backed off to include other elements. With this shot I had been taking some shots when Michael said to me, “I really want to show this”,  and he pointed to the little holes at the end of the cut chives. I started getting in real tight, but was losing the length of the full chive, so I tilted the frame to get the most out of the corners. If this shot were not tilted, the rest of the chives wouldn’t be there, and if I made sure they were in with a straight frame, I wouldn’t be as close as I am here and focusing on what Michael wanted to show most.

Here is the light setup in our kitchen for that day. I shot the chives on the island cutting board by back lighting it with the center grid spot light and fill lighting with the others, then shot the pot on the stove that was cooking a Michael project with the shoot-through umbrella light,  and then the finished plate at the far end of the island with the soft box and back lighting with the grid spot. My lights were set up so that I could switch from the stove shot to the finished plate very quickly. These are Dynalite strobes with built in modeling lights so you can see what you’re getting. Since the strobes are very bright, the modeling lights are not bright enough to throw off the white balance when set to flash. Because the strobes can give off  a lot more light then bulbs, I can hand hold my camera and choose what f-stop I want by controlling the power of the light output at the power pack source.