Food Photo 101 is back! Here is Nika’s next lesson, near and dear to my stomach…

(Dark and delicious BBQ’d and smoked pork butt)
I am sorry that the next class in this series has taken so long to produce.Today I am going to step away form technical and aesthetic foci and be a bit less formal and try to tackle some of the challenges of shooting BBQ’d foods and scenes for your blog.Some of you, like Curt, may have a preference (or obsession) for BBQ so many of your images are going to have similar BBQ related needs.

(Whole trout with asparagus, key limes, and grapefruit)
When I think of BBQ I think of my backyard and mostly grilling, which is not BBQing at all.
(Charcoal for grilled fish)
Grilling is, I think, much easier to shoot because the grill can be better lit and you are not trying to capture the unctuous depths of a pit smoker.Compare:Grilling

(Mozzarella stuffed blue cheese and basil hamburgers)

(Whole trout on the grill with asparagus)
Pit Smoker
(B.T.’s BBQ: Boston Butt Pork Slow roasted pit BBQ)
Both cooking methods can give you similar problems - mainly dark, lumpy chunks of delicious meat that is mostly not photogenic or not nearly photogenic enough to equal the beauty of it’s flavor.
(BBQ pork butt)
It is also hard to “food style” away the essential darkness of a perfectly smoked BBQ’d pork butt because that, in person, is what is so arresting in its beauty. In a photo, the pork butt looks like it has been burned and dried to inedibility (when, in fact, its smoked and moist).
(BBQ Pork Ribs)
Another problem with BBQ and grilling is that its a shame to lose the context by focusing too closely. If you show just the BBQ’d rib you miss the dramatic smoky grill, pit, or smoker. This means you might want to shoot outside and then lighting becomes less predictable (but exciting too). To do any sort of ambient outdoor shooting you need to master your manual settings, shoot lots of shots from many angles, and be patient!
B.T.’s Smokehouse: Slow roasted pit BBQ beef ribs
Go for detail, interesting point of view, drama, and emphasize context whenever possible.
(B.T.’s Smokehouse: Slow roasted pit BBQ beef brisket, pork butt, chicken)
Did I mention that you should be patient? Be patient with yourself mostly because you need to take the time to capture many alternative shots but you need to also take the time to go through all of those shots and asses which ones work, how they happened and also identify those that didn’t work. Those that didn’t work can be helpful teaching tools for you so that the next time you will know what to avoid (not that you would take any fewer shots, just that the ones you do take will likely not repeat too many of the previous mistakes).
(Slow roasted pork butt)
I have been including various shots above from my own grilling and BBQ. Next I am going to show some images from a shoot a couple of weeks ago that I did at Brian Trietman’s B.T.’s Smokehouse (see these two blog posts: An improbable meat nirvana in a BBQ wasteland, Criminally Good Smoked Salmon and Bacon - B.T.’s Smokehouse). I was shooting inside of his mini-restaurant and I had no special plates because I wanted the location and the non-fussy nature of the BBQ to show through.I took a flash head but did not end up using it. Below you can see a shot of the set up - a table by some windows and a fluorescent light overhead. The light coming in from the windows was super-bright bluish light bouncing off of the snow outside. By far, the most dominant light was from the windows.

When I got in close to shoot that side of salmon, I got this (with a bit of white balance correction after shooting in RAW)
(B.T.’s Smokehouse: insanely delicious smoked salmon)
I wasn’t that happy with the light in that location and my attempts to bounce didn’t give me much sparkle as you can see below.
(B.T.’s Smokehouse: insane smoked bacon)I did some other shooting in the mini-restaurant/service window but didn’t do much outside because the snow was just too much for getting much of a shot. I used my Canon 30D kit lens for the general shots below.
(B.T.’s Smokehouse: smoked beef jerky)

(B.T.’s Smokehouse: bacon for smoking - seasoning)

(B.T.’s Smokehouse: ribs for smoking - seasoning)
Your TaskUsing everything you have learned in the past Food Photo 101 classes, go out and either shoot your own BBQ (I am sure Curt will because he has quite the set up and I am looking forward to seeing it!) or perhaps find an event where some real pit BBQers are doing their thing.Post it to your blog and send us your link or post it to the Food Photo 101 group on Flickr.

Thats it! I am looking forward to seeing what you all submit.

Class Resources

• My Food Photo 101 page
• Nika’s Food Photo 101 page
• Food Photo 101 Class Forum
• Food Photo 101 Glossary
• Food Photo 101 Flickr Group
• Food Photo 101 Newsletters

To register for the newsletter that reviews each week’s topic, fill out the contact form at the bottom of this post (or on the Food Photo 101 page) and type “Food Photo 101” in the subject field.

Finally, I have my results from Lesson 5 of Food Photo 101!

I have to first say that having weekend time makes a big difference, and I hope others following along took advantage of having natural light. This time of year means I leave either in the dark or just after dark, and I get home after dark, so the only light I get is the good old plug-it-in kind. I have a window that gets great afternoon light right onto my dining room table, and I really liked how it worked out.

Just a note about a bit of a difference I had with this lesson… I looked through a lot of my old photos along with the shots for this lesson, and I found that, even when I thought I was taking shots using the thirds, I’m off a bit. Of course, a bit here and there isn’t noticeable unless the grid is overlaid. But I found that with my stuff, I was using a slightly different ratio, I think, called the Golden Section. I’m not going to go into it too much, but the rule of thirds is a bit of a simplification of the Golden Section. It’s a ratio used since ancient Greece, and is supposed to be pleasing to the eye naturally. I think the reason is that it’s something I remember from school, and I just got used to using it then. There’s nothing wrong with the Rule of Thirds; I just found I missed it by more than a bit, but found I was hitting the Golden Section instead. Some of my photos I pushed to the Rule of Thirds, but also included examples of the Golden Section.

So what did I use for my photo subject? I went back to pears. Is this because I think pears look great? They are kind of nice looking, I suppose, but it’s mostly because it’s the fruit I most often have around, especially in quantities of more than 1 or 2.

Without further rambling, here are my Lesson 5 shots:

The first shot is a bit different, in that it’s not so much the intersections of the grid that I used, but the proportions within the grid as sections:

And the Golden Section grid overlaid:

The far left is all in shadow, with pretty much the whole section being empty space, with some shadow lines I found interesting. I also really lucked out with this glass slab; the light was hitting it ust right to have it refract along the back corner of the slab. Not planned, but I’ll take it!

Also, I did highlight some parts of intersections that lend themselves to showing off the intersections just a bit: the back corner and the part where the refracted light starts. Also, the axis for the right side of the grid goes along the shadow on the front pear, so the middle section ends up being in shadow, but with the fruit in the shadow instead of being empty.

The right side is then mostly the first pear in natural light.

Maybe not the best example, but I was happy with the shot.

My next shot, I did the “not Rule of Thirds” intentionally, to see if I could get things to look better by playing with the cropping. The first shot ends up looking just not balanced well, I think:

And it’s overlaid grid:

Nothing really fits well in the grid or on the interections, and it just looks like some pears on a table.

Now with some cropping, I think it gets a bit more interesting:

Showing the grid shows that the Rule of Thirds is more in effect now:

The main point is a blemish on the pear in the lower right intersection, with the edge of the pear in the upper right, and a shadow between two of the pears in the background is in the intersection of the upper left. Light and shadow both can be used for proportion, I think.

I also like that the background pears are mostly in the top third of the photo for some reason.

And for good measure, here’s a final shot I also liked, with the Golden Section showing the main focus in the middle section, but that’s about all it really showed me, so I didn’t include it:

I’m the first to admit I may be completely off base with this proportion stuff; for those of you in the class or just browsing, I’d appreciate any feedback, before Nika tells me how far off I am!

Class Resources

• Curt’s Food Photo 101 page
• Nika’s Photo 101 page
• Food Photo 101 Class Forum
• Food Photo 101 Glossary
• Food Photo 101 Flickr Group
• Food Photo 101 Newsletters

To register for the newsletter that reviews each week’s topic, fill out the contact form at the bottom of this post (or on the Food Photo 101 page) and type “Food Photo 101” in the subject field.

We’re back, now that the holidays are over. And here’s the lesson, from Nika…

Before I get into the core of this lesson, I wanted to let you all know about a change to this course.

To allow people more time to do these lessons, the timing has been changed (some of us do not have any light when we get home from work during the week!).

I will publish a lesson on the Tuesday and then Curt will publish his results (which I mirror here) two weeks later, on a day of his choosing. We will then send out the newsletter for that lesson that next Sunday. The next lesson will then be on that next Tuesday.

Thus, I am publishing this lesson on Tuesday January 15th. Curt will publish his results and you all will send me your links and/or you will upload your images sometime in the week of January 28th - February 1st. We will send out that lesson’s newsletter on February 3rd.

I mentioned on the previous composition post, in swift passing, something called the thirds rule. I am going to talk in greater length about this handy concept today and then I want you to chose several shots of your own to analyze.

What is the Rule of Thirds

The term “rule” is not meant to hem you into thinking that this is a hard and fast rule. This is more of a suggestion but an important one to help you develop your aesthetic “palate”.

Without getting excessively technical, a composition that has it’s focal points near the intersections of a tic-tac-toe box (shown below) will be perceived as more aesthetically pleasing.

A Few Examples

As with almost anything having to do with composition, its easier to show than it is to tell. I will simply show you some images that I shot this last weekend that have been marked up to show the grid.

Winter’s tulips

The grid overlay

Focal points show with blue circles

Further illustration of composition in terms of movement, notice all sorts of circular movement.

Here is another example of a photo that conforms to some extent with the rule of thirds

Cayenne Rosemary Cornish Game Hens - before roasting (I know, thats not rosemary)

The grid overlay

Grid with focal points outlined with circles

Your HomeworkFind an image (or take a new one) that demonstrates the rule of thirds. If you know how to, add the lines like I did in the examples above to show how your photo conforms to the rule.

Now find a photo that doesn’t seem to be very pleasing in terms of composition and then do the same, add the lines. See how this photo may not be maximizing the rule.

Go a step further and see if you can modify that image by cropping to bring the various focal points closer in alignment with the grid intersections and see if that has a positive effect.

When you have done these things (or selected two images, one that uses the rule and one that doesn’t), upload it onto flickr, add the tag “fp101 rule of thirds” and then add those photos to the Flickr Food Photo 101 photo pool!

If you blog, please blog with your words and photos to describe how this exercise went for you. When you have done this, please send the link to me by filing out the contact form below, making sure to put “FP101-5 blog link” in the subject line.

Thats it! I am looking forward to seeing what you all submit.

Class Resources

• Curt’s Food Photo 101 page
• Nika’s Photo 101 page
• Food Photo 101 Class Forum
• Food Photo 101 Glossary
• Food Photo 101 Flickr Group
• Food Photo 101 Newsletters

To register for the newsletter that reviews each week’s topic, fill out the contact form at the bottom of this post (or on the Food Photo 101 page) and type “Food Photo 101” in the subject field.

The holidays are over, and Food Photo 101 is starting up again. First thing up… Results from the Holiday Contest!!!

I hope everyone had a great holiday and that you’re looking forward to a great 2008.As mentioned previously (FP101 Holiday Contest Prize Announcement and Food Photo 101 Holiday Contest and Food Photo 101 Holiday Contest: Finalized Prizes), we have three prizes for the top spots.

A list of all the entrants’ great photos are found at the bottom.

Decision Process

Nika and I reviewed the entries, keeping in mind that the contest was about the first four lessons, not just the best photo. And we appreciate everyone that entered… Thank you all! For those that did enter, you’ll receive some ‘critique’ on your entries privately. We wanted to have everyone win, so it was a tough decision.

Everyone did a great job.

The Winning Entries

We awarded an honorable mention to YVONNE829 for the following photo:

Third Place

SummerTX submitted a delicious image of white chocolate raspberry cake. This image has got some great geometrics, neat stylistic details, and definitely delicious subject matter.  I personally liked the curve of the plate along with the loopy icing for the spiral energy.

Second Place

Little-Rattle submitted this interesting image of a panettone pudding. We felt it did a good job of using different geometric shapes to guide the eye in a spiral into a central focus.

First Place

Nika adds, “Tommy Williams submitted this delicious and dynamic image full of spirals, enticing lighting, delicious subject matter and serendipity (was taken on-location in a restaurant).” The paper’s curves really add to this photo, I think.

We think that these and the others submitted were all fantastic.

We will be running at least one more contest in the near future so if you didnt get a chance to submit your image this time around, make sure to do so next time!

Class Resources

• My’s Food Photo 101 page
• Nika’s Food Photo 101 page
• Food Photo 101 Class Forum
• Food Photo 101 Glossary
• Food Photo 101 Flickr Group
• Food Photo 101 Newsletters

To register for the newsletter that reviews each week’s topic, fill out the contact form at the bottom of this post (or on the Food Photo 101 page) and type “Food Photo 101” in the subject field.

Lesson 4 starts pushing us down the path of thinking about the subject of our photos instead of how we’ve set up our things around the subject. Previous lessons were about settings on the camera and lighting, but this time I had to actually think about what was in front of the camera.

Nika had us thinking about energy spirals. Here’s my first one, in light of the holiday coming up…

I call this one my “Spiral o’ Bumbles”. Ok, maybe not a lot of energy, but it is the holiday season, and I’m willing to bet that anyone reading these posts will be subjected to at least one Rudolph related shot per week for the next couple of weeks, and no “Bah! Humbugs!” from the blogosphere!

Ok, back the lesson…

I have something of a confession to make; the reason I think I’m drawn to learn how to take better photos is that I have something of a background in fine arts and visual presentation. I started out in life thinking I was going to be an architect, and I went to Carnegie-Mellon University to study architecture. I also worked several years as a landscape designer, where visual presentation meant a lot in getting clients to visualize designs. So I have some history in thinking about this kind of stuff, though it’s been a LONG time!

What does this have to do with the lesson this week? Not much, but it kind of sets a level of my own expectations. And I think I’m realizing that, for the past couple of years, I haven’t always thought of what was in the photo so much as what the food was, if that makes sense. If I made ribs, I took a photo of ribs. Sure, I tried to make it look decent usually, but I somehow forgot all that stuff I had once done in art classes and for project presentations. Nika’s lessons are helping me remember some of that, so I am expecting my photos to start improving.

Read the rest of this entry »

This is getting to be a lot of fun. Nika’s lessons are building on each other, and I already notice improvements in my photos. This week’s topic is Composition, which should start helping those of us that don’t quite put the right stuff together (I know I’ve been guilty of that). So, again in Nika’s words:

As we have been talking about technical and practical details in the first three lessons, I thought I would take us in an artistic direction with this week’s lesson on Composition.What is Composition?This is a fantastically huge topic that can not really be discussed in one post (how ever long). It is about nothing less than everything that fits inside your frame and all that is implied outside of the frame.

The human sensibility for composition springs from various physiological modes of experiencing our world which have evolved across the eons. For example, we perceive “edge” very strongly and we subconsciously infer a continuation of that edge outside of our viewable world. This would have conferred the ability to infer that a lion sat behind a bush from the small outlined silhouette of an ear at sunset. Those of us with that talent survived to have babies that did the same. Repeat this for just about everything about who we are (except for relatively modern activities like web surfing or making crème brûlée or encapsulated mango juice egg yolks).

As a consequence, a lot of how we consume and react to in a photo or other composition is deeply rooted in our subconscious and can be hard to articulate or to even grasp.

I think this is why many of us have a hard time understanding and manipulating composition. This is also why it will take a bit of practice at developing an “aware” or “open” eye to the world around us and the compositions others have made to begin to direct our own intentional compositions.

This might take some work on your part but if you are interested in studio and food photography this is a must.

Talking and writing about composition is OK but DOING good composition requires DOING. It is like zen; reading a 1000 learned books on zen gets you exactly nowhere while sitting and doing nothing gets you, well, nowhere, but in a zen way.

Right, so that might not make sense to you if you are not on the zen path but my point is that one can go much further by learning a few bullet points or First Principles of Composition and then DOING art that shows your hands and eyes how to do it instead of your thinking brain. Read the rest of this entry »

This is the review post of the third week of our Food Photography 101 series, in Nika’s words.

As was previously the case, several people contributed their results to the Food Photo 101 flickr pool.

This week’s contributors were:

• Curt
• LaRecetteDuJour
• NJYar
• Big Mill BB

As you remember from this last Tuesday’s post “FP101-3: Depth of Field”, we have been exploring Depth of Field (DOF).

Once you get the hang of it, playing with the focal plane and DOF can be fun and it can lend a whole new dimension to your images, literally.

It is used quite a lot in food photography, especially in cookbooks where food shots can be especially pornalicious and artistic. The shallow DOF can be used to focus the viewer’s attention on a particularly delicious morsel, boosting the appeal.

It can also be used excessively in some cases and some people just plain do not like it. My mom, who is an artist herself, doesn’t respond well to those photos of mine which have a shallow DOF. When asked, she can’t really articulate why she doesn’t like it but she knows that its not a style she likes. This is fine, there are many ways to communicate your vision.

If you do not like this shallow DOF style, leave a comment explaining why.

I look forward to hearing your feelings on this subject!

Lets take a look first at what Curt offered this last Thursday and then the other contributors. Read the rest of this entry »

Lesson 3 is all about depth of field (DOF). One thing I’ve noticed in looking at food photos is that really shallow DOF is used a LOT with food (sometimes too much, I think). However, it can be used to really good effect to highlight the details desired while blurring those not desired.

 

I don’t have a stovetop that’s usable right now, thanks to my ex-propane company taking my tank instead of billing me rental for it. Of course, they did that the day before Thanksgiving! So I don’t really have any food for photo subjects. Not to worry! Christmas season is starting, and what I do have plenty of is Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer stuff. And those reading this will be seeing a lot more of our decorations over the next few weeks.

 

My main subject this week is Charlie-In-The-Box (CITB). Due to time, on Thursday, I’ll have only aperture settings of f/2.8, but what I varied instead of aperture was distance from the subject. Later, I’ll be updating this with a smaller aperture, also, as well as diagrams showing my focal plane. But first, here are just my basic photos:

 

Aperture f/2.8, background perpendicular to the lens.

16″ from subject:

Read the rest of this entry »

After a well deserved holiday break, here were are at Lesson 3 of Food Photo 101!

I peeked at Nika’s photos for this and had a good idea that we were going to do one of the topics I’ve really been looking forward to doing, Depth of Field. Here’s the lesson, in Nika’s words…

Depth of Field

This week’s topic will be Depth of Field (DOF) . Remember that I am putting together a food photo glossary for those terms that may not be as commonly known. I will also try to link as many of them in the text to the wikipedia entries.

What is this Depth of Field I speak of?

“The depth of field is the distance in front of and beyond the subject that appears to be in focus.” (*)

The wikipedia has a very extensive discussion of DOF and I would recommend your slogging through the non-math parts, maybe twice.

I like to visualize the DOF as a slice of paper (representing the focal plane) that floats in front of my camera. It can have different thicknesses and positions in my photo depending on the setting in the camera, the setting in the lens, the tilt of the camera, and the position of the camera relative to the subject.

If one has a shallow DOF, that piece of paper or focal plane (or plane of focus, POF) floating in front of my camera is very thin and will capture only a small slice of the subject in sharp focus.

If the DOF is deep then the focal plane is very wide (the piece of paper gets thicker) and thus a much thicker slice of the subject will be in sharp focus.

One of the settings on your camera that has a direct impact on DOF is the aperture or f-number.

“For a given subject framing, the DOF is controlled by the lens f-number. Increasing the f-number (reducing the aperture diameter) increases the DOF; however, it also reduces the amount of light transmitted, and increases diffraction, placing a practical limit on the extent to which the aperture size may be reduced. … Aperture settings are adjusted more frequently in still photography, where variations in depth of field are used to produce a variety of special effects.” (*)

There are ways of modifying the usual formula of DOF for one’s camera. Special types of lenses called “tilt-shift” lenses modify the angle of incidence of the photons traveling through the lens and impacting the sensor. Instead of hitting the sensor on a 100% perpendicular (90 degree angle), the light hits the sensor at an angle.

The wiki says:

“When tilt is applied, the film or image sensor is not at a right angle to the optical axis of the lens, causing a gradient of focus.” (*).

This technique can give some interesting effects in food photography and also in other photography that yields a “toy” like sense to an otherwise normal landscape (called “miniature faking”). In this case, by modifying the DOF and the gradient of focus drop off, one can make a scene seem like it is very close in and being shot with a small f-number (as you would for macro shooting).

Here are a few links to examples of that.

• hame.ca
• Flicker t/s group

Tilt-shift lenses are obviously for SLR lenses and they can be expensive.

For example, the Canon Normal Tilt Shift TS-E 45mm f/2.8 Manual Focus Lens for EOS - A mere $1,069.95 Read the rest of this entry »

One thing I realized I don’t think I’ve emphasized for Food Photo 101 is that this is an evolving instructional series. Nika and I talked about topics, but she’s coming up with the lesson organically and as she’s inspired.

Because of this, we realized this week that life needed to take priority over the class. With Thanksgiving this week, we’re both really busy, and Nika has kids that rely on her, too. We plan on keeping up a weekly lesson whenever possible, but not to the detriment of our families and lives, which I’m sure everyone understands.

So this week won’t have a lesson. I think it’s a great opportunity to practice the first 2 lessons or to get caught up, and Thanksgiving dinner has lots of chances to do so.

I want to wish everyone a fantastic Thanksgiving; I hope you’re all spending time with loved ones and have the chance to reflect on things for which you’re thankful.