My wife and I were out over the weekend and decided to go to the Dayton Art Institute in Dayton, Ohio. While there, I found an early example of how foodies captured food images before digital cameras:

I have to say, I’m thankful for my dslr! I already have enough trouble finding time to post. If I had to use this format, I’d get 2-3 posts up a year!

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 »

Nika put together a great lesson for our first week. This is the second part of these lessons. After getting Nika’s lesson, I’m going through them, then posting the results.

Why?

I’ve seen a lot of tips on different sites where photographers listed things to do. I haven’t seen someone that’s not a photographer (like me) go through the tips and show their results. I’m not always going to get fantastic results, I’m sure. I hope to show progress, and hopefully have others taking the class see that they don’t have to be experts to get good results from their cameras. I’m also looking forward to seeing what others come up with in their blogs and in our Food Photo 101 forum and Flickr group.

On to the lesson! I can honestly say I hadn’t taken the trouble to just play around with a setting at a time; I’ve done a lot of post processing to get settings the way I wanted them. I’m not going to act like I have it all together during this all the time. The first thing I realized is that I had no idea where my camera manual was. Never fear, though… I googled the camera (it happens to be a Fuji S5000 P&S for now), and I found the manual online. I’ve printed it off so I can keep it around and looks stuff up easily.I have usually taken photos, at least lately, in Aperture Priority, which, on this camera, means that I can set the aperture, but everything else is set by the camera. For Lesson 1, I put the camera in manual mode to start. Read the rest of this entry »

With this being the first Food Photo 101 lesson (yea!), and on Tuesday, this is Nika’s lesson that I’ll be following with my results on Thursday. So keep in mind that these are Nika’s words, not mine:

Click here for a printable PDF version of this post

(Kiwano Horned Melon, shot with a 4 MP Fujifilm Finepix S3100) Welcome to all of you following along!

I would like to thank each of you for writing to us about your interest in this project. Curt and I have been overwhelmed by the response, making us feel even more inspired.

Rationale:

As I mentioned in the first post in this series (Food Photo 101: Photography for Foodies), I strongly believe that there is quite a lot of capability in your average low-cost digicam or Point & Shoot (P&S) camera.

Why?

Because I was able to get some interesting images with my P&S by doing a few very fundamental things, other than pointing and shooting. For example, I shot the photo above with my 4 MP Fujifilm Finepix S3100 (bought the camera for about $250.00 in 2005, I think). Another image from the same series and camera is shown below.

(Kiwano Horned Melon, shot with a 4 MP Fujifilm Finepix S3100) Read the rest of this entry »

Or… “How To Make Your Food Look As Good As It Tastes”.

We’re gearing up to start our online adventure in food photography. Nika of Nika’s Culinary has set up a forum for the ‘class’ here. Also, there’s a Flickr group called Food Photo 101.

We’re really hoping for participation. If you haven’t seen Nika’s work, check out her photos here. I’m really excited that she agreed to do this, and I’m looking forward to learning a lot. I stole this info from her post:

Course Objective:

To guide interested budding food photographers through the technical and creative barriers they may be experiencing with their Point and Shoot (P&S) or DSLR cameras.

We will cover:

• hardware (cameras, lighting, computers, other tech)
• software (capture and post processing tools)
• wetware (food styling)
• creative aspects (composition, lighting dynamics, etc)

Philosophy:

• We are going to do this in a way that, we hope, gives you something you can use right away.
• It’s important for people to not feel “disadvantaged” by having a P&S beause these cameras actually have quite a lot of capability that many people never really explore.
• We will cover topics in a way that hopefully makes you feel more comfortable with your P&S or DSLR.

Reading Materials:

There is ONE book to read, slowly, cover to cover. This would be the MANUAL to your camera. Read it several times and have it on hand whenever you are shooting your food or other subjects (maybe not at the theme park, but at home).  Simply reading it is a start but purposeful practice (fiddling) will pay off more than 100%, I promise you.

Methods - the logistics of the Photography for Foodies series are as follows:

• Each entry will be about one aspect of food photography, and when it makes sense, the topics will build on each other.
• We’ll explain the topic, and Nika will go into how to achieve the results for that topic.
• Once Nika goes through the topic, I will then try to go through the lesson, showing not just the how-to part, but the how-did part (or didn’t!).

Timing:

Nika will post her lessons on Tuesdays at both sites, and I will post my results late on Thursdays (Wednesay nights are full for me). If others have results, we’ll do a weekly roundup on Sundays of what we’re hearing from any of you that participate. Also, if you do your own post on your blog about the class, let one of us know so we can link to it.

If you’d like to sign up for the newsletter for the class, you can register below. Put “Food Photo 101″ as the subject, and you’ll get signed up.

Fall is in the air! Actually, it’s not in the air; in SW Ohio, we reached almost 90 degrees F today. I’m ready for 65 degree days, a touch of fog first thing in the morning, and temps that make you want to cook a pot of veggie soup all day long!

This is a tough month/year right now. Last September, I lost the Best Dog in World (a phrase I am now using when talking about Woody, thanks to Barbara at A Writer Afoot) . This year, we lost Patterson, the Best Cat in the World. One thing I have come to believe is that the first animal we adopted as adults is likely to carry the most meaning with it, the most emotion, the strongest bond. Why is this? I think it’s because it’s likely the first time we, as adults, accepted the responsibility to care for another living being. It’s something of a rite of passage into adulthood. So Woody was my dog; he was the dog God meant for me to have, the dog I would need when I was alone in other ways, the dog that would mean that I still wouldn’t be lonely. I think Patterson was that for my wife (but the cat, not the dog, that did all that for her).

Patterson was supposedly a Himalayan, but I’m not sure; he was pure Bacon Cat. Yeah, not a breed, but all I had to do was open a bacon package, and he was there telling me, very vocally, that he was glad I was fixing bacon for him, could I have it NOW(?). He loved bacon.

We miss him, a lot.

As a bit of a distraction from that, my wife and I are going to go out of town this coming weekend. We’re taking another trip to one of my favorite cities, Pittsburgh. This time, however, we’re staying out in Cranberry Township, but we’ll be heading into the Strip District, going to Vincent’s and the Dirty O, and maybe Primanti Brothers this time. I’ll try to get some shots of the Strip District to share; it’s a great place to go for foodies… You’ll see… No strippers at all, just shops and food!

Two things, among others, that I always look forward to in Ohio in October are apples and fall colors. We’re getting neither this year, though. A drought has been going on, and the fall color isn’t expected to be anything much at all, and an April freeze has taken out almost half of Ohio’s apple crop this year. The orchard I where I like to get my apples has zero, yeah, I said nada, apples this year. They’re bringing in foreign apples from Indiana and Michigan. (The photo of the tree was actually taken in their drive on the way out a couple of years ago).

The weekend of the 13th and 14th, however, is the Ohio Sauerkraut Festival, the largest festival in Ohio. Our town of less than 2500 people (Waynesville, OH) will host well over 300,000 guests for the weekend. Last year, an estimated 342,000 people attended. We sold pulled pork sandwiches last year, but, with everything else going on right now, we’re not going to do that this year. Instead, we’ll just enjoy the weekend and the festival.

The morning of the festival, I’ll be out with some friends shooting sporting clays. Not food related, no, but a lot of fun! A friend of mine has some new Citori shotguns that need to be broken in… What a friend I am to help out, huh?

The weekend of October 19-20, the Ohio Smoked Meat Festival will take place. We’re not competing this year, but my wife and I are going to see if judges are needed. This will be in Nelsonville, OH, which is a really pretty area, so it will be nice to get away and not have the stress of competing so we can just enjoy being out talking with teams and eating good barbecue!

Then the month will close with the annual McAdams Wine Party. We have to be careful as this thing is getting out of hand, with up to 22 people coming. I’m going to fix all the food, and our theme is French wines. Each couple coming will be two bottles of French wine, one red, one white. For food, I’m going to do some steak au poivre, loaves of bread, French cheeses, something vegetarian (and French), and… pan-seared, fresh foie gras on grilled brioche! I’ll be talking more about this, of course.

I’m also going to be doing a bit of research on foie gras. For any that don’t know, foie gras is goose or duck liver (I’ll be getting duck) from birds that have enlarged livers. Animal rights terrorists people have been going after foie gras production and serving, stating that the farming practices are inhumane. Before serving my guests, I’m going to do some research and get some viewpoints from a producer.

As summer peaks, start taking your food photos celebrating the best that summer has to offer!  This edition of the Carnival of Food Photography is all about summer and summer foods!

Gather up the best the season has shown you, take some photos of it, put it in your blog, and enter it here!  I know some people that are reading this are capable of not only great photos, but know how to get a shot that says ‘SUMMER’!!! (yes, I’m talking to you, Nika and Nicole, and others!)

Welcome to the June 12, 2007 edition of Carnival of Food Photography!  Remember, the focus is on the photo!

 I got a lot more entries this time… Thanks to all that submitted.  I think I’ve got all of the entries represented except one, which was in a forum, not a blog… I apologize, but the Carnival is for blogs!

The first entry is an great looking cookie photo from MC, on Shibooya… Apricot Cream Cheese Butter Cookies… What can be bad there?  You’ve got fruit (healthy), cream cheese (yum), butter (even more yum) all mixed up into a cookie!

Along the theme of fruit, Robert submitted an entry on Lauren’s Vegan Journal for Strawberry Soup (Do you think Lauren will be offended being included on a barbecue-related blog???  I hope not!   Lauren, if you are, just let me know… I’ll take care of it, but your soup sounds great!).

Suzanne submitted Uber No Knead Bread (a recipe I’m going to have to try) from Adventures in Daily Living.  I love good, homemade bread, as anyone that regularly reads this knows by now.

Next, we have the eggs to go with the bread, Shinie’s Mutant Egg on Well I Guess This Is Growing Up!  You’ll need two slices of Suzanne’s bread to mop up all that yolk!

Martin Westwood, in Great Britain, submitted some ribs then reorged, but I found this photo of his on BBQ Brit... Chris Lilly Ribs! (not actually Chris’s ribs, but his recipe :)  I’m glad to see that some Brits are making good barbecue.

And moving into some tasty looking pasta, Vishal K Bharadwaj has a great looking Lemon Pepper lingquine at AllVishal.com.  There’s a great photo of the finished product, but I thought this photo of the pepper was pretty cool.

Thanks to everyone that submitted blogs for this edition of Carnival of Food Photography!  Nicole, I know you’re going to be reading this… You better send me something next time!!!!!

In 3 weeks exactly, my barbecue competition teammate, Mark, and I will be holding our first cooking class!  (Details can be found here.)  With that in mind, later this week, we’ll be reviewing the class and deciding what we’re going to be doing.  The theme is tailgating, and, weather permitting, we’ll set up a pseudo-competition site to show the people in the class how a comp might be run.  We’ll also be cooking all the food we’ll be going over with the class.  My thoughts are to include more than recipes, though; I want to talk about the different types of outdoor cooking and how/when to use different types of outdoor cooking (direct, indirect, smoking).  I hope to have a really good packet of info for everyone, with the 2 part goal of getting more people interested in barbecue/outdoor cooking and to be asked to do a class again.

Also this week, I’m going to go over flank steak and how I like to prepare it.  It’s a great, healthy hunk o’ beef.  The only real downside is the toughness, which is negated if cut correctly against the grain.  I’m partial to coffee based rubs for flank steak, and I may try grilling it directly on the coals this time…

I am planning on doing a little bit about over-smoking.  Over-smoking can leave bitter tastes, and can really turn someone off of smoked foods.  There are easy ways to recognize over-smoking, though, and some pretty simple ways to avoid it (hint: don’t use so much wet wood!).

Next Monday is the deadline for the next Carnival of the Grill, which I’ll be hosting.  Click here to submit entries, and the Carnival of the Grill will be posted on September 5.

And the next week, on September 11, I’ll be posting the first of the Carnival of the Food Photography entries, with the topic of "Grill Marks".  Submit any blog entries you have that show great grill marks!  If you have any suggestions for food photos you’d like to see, let me know!

I have to admit I’m having fun with this blog community stuff.  There’s a huge range of approaches to food, and people are writing about it all over the world.

I’ve recently been included in 2 ‘carnivals’, which are groupings of blog entries that pertain to a topic.  One is the Carnival of the Recipes: BBQ Edition, and the other is Carnival of the Grill.  In fact, I’ll be hosting the next Carnival of the Grill.  Submissions have to be in by September 5, 2006 (the day after Labor Day in the US).  Please send stuff in to give me lots to choose from!

I also decided to start up a Carnival of my own: The Carnival of Food Photography!  Instead of concentrating on a type of cooking like grilling or barbecuing, I want to focus on great pictures of food, with varying topics.  (get the pun… focus… photos…).

The first Carnival of Food Photography will have a submission deadline of September 10th… and the topic is:

(drumroll)

Grill Marks!

So, while there’s no stipulation as to the type of cooking or what’s being cooked, I want to see some GREAT grill mark photos.  These can be from indoor cooking as well as outdoor, but, when we have grilled items, those grill marks really get a lot of oohs and aahs!  So let’s see your best!

 

Click here to submit an entry!

If you have any topics for the carnival you’d like to see, let me know.  I already have some in mind, but I’m open to suggestions!