ThePatch :: Kitchen/Let’s Eat

This is the last of the patch themes on the kitchen and simple captioned let’s eat. I had already figured out in the ingredient challenge that there is a fair bit more to photographing food than a simple set up and snap. Perhaps I can become a food blogger after all.

In search of Colour &/or Composition

My first investigation was colour, more specifically the impact of the background colour on the richness of the food. No surprises here, the background colour has a big impact! But which smoked salmon roll looks the tastiest?
   
My next thought it I need to add something to Strengthen the composition, more dramatic positive & negative spaces or maybe just simplify the subject matter?
   

Over-cooked with HDR

   
I thought I would also try out some more HDR, the google+ autoawesome variety (above) and also even using HDR Camera (below) on my android phone (to consolidated the food blogger feel), They are snappy but I’m not convinced that the clinical sharpness and strength of HDR dynamic range stretching is how I like to see food, I think food needs to be gooier and softer, perhaps even with a warmer glow.
 

Some Pop Art Inspiration

I am still reading (and enjoying) Beyond Digital Photography. It has a chapter of using pop artist as an inspiration for a creative photo manipulation. Personally I find Andy Warhol’s Campbell Soup cans pretty boring and mundane (but I believe that was his point). I do like both Wayne Thiebaud and David Hockney’s food still-lives, but neither really considered themselves pop artists. They both use simple colour and shadows to help the form and composition so I figured I needed to get outdoors, to stronger light. My first objective was to use fewer colours and the technique usually call posterization let me limit the palette to just 7 colours. Yes that gave me an “arty” look but it was very dull (and contrived) so I just upped the saturation and contrast (ok a little harsh) so I use layered compositing and masking to add some detail and tone down selected areas with a semi translucent (lower opacity) using OnOne’s Perfect Layers. Success! I like the result it is ambiguously between a photo and something an artist might paint.
  

This technique does required a few steps and jumping between programs. I did like the shadows on the wooden table in a different photos (without the place mat) so I ran that through the method again, with a less heavy hand on the saturation on the posterized layer and more feathering of the opacity between the original photo layer and the posterized version (see below)

Its a slice of banana, nut & chocolate cake with some strawberries & greek yoghurt, was delicious!

The Moral: I’d probably rather eat the food, than delay the enjoyment while I photographed it.
However using this as an art inspired challenged was fun.But enough playing with food.

ThePatch :: Kitchen/Liquid & a Bit of Science

This weeks theme for The Patch is Kitchen/Liquids and I realised there was the perfect opportunity to combine a quintessential kitchen item (the kitchen sink) with a bit of science, specifically the Coriolis effect. The theory really applies to large scale fluid movements of the earths surface due to the rotation of the earth (ie weather and ocean currents) but it is widely held view that toilet and sinks flush anti-clockwise in the northern hemisphere and clockwise in the southern hemisphere, which they often do, (but not always, read the wiki article in the link above for more details). I first tried just water, and it was in fact clockwise but subtle and  difficult to photograph. I then added some soap bubbles, better but still under whelming and finally resorted to some burst mode images and a google+ *motion autoawesome (shown above right) Ok it is not awesome because it has combined across some burst sessions. Such is life.

So it was back to the drawing board. The idea was to have a series of almost self reference style repeated images with a slightly rotated positioning between each photo. I like the idea of letting each outer image becoming a little paler on each step.Then I wanted the innermost image to be moving, just enough to see the rotation. All sound simple enough but I’ve been down many dead ends and learnt a lot, but it all takes time and the deadline for posting is approaching, I’m happy with the outer spiral and using white borders and I am starting to get the overall design to work but I just can’t figure out how to get the inner photo to work as an animated gif.

So I’ve run out of time and I’ll have to compromise, just using a very cropped version of my burst mode photos to recreated the animated gif. At least it does show my kitchen sink is happy draining clockwise.

The Patch :: Ingredients/Kitchen

I’m not so sure taking photos in the kitchen during meal preparation is fun, but it seemed to me that ingredients should be closely connected to the cooking and eating. Not that I am one of those that photography my meals, it has always struck me as one of those subjects where it is very difficult to actually capture what you remember seeing. There are all sort so stories, possibly many are urban myths, for example that any food photographed inb magazines is inediable because of using acrylic paints, or dyes, hair spraym WD40m penetrating oil or even PVC glue in the cream. I wanted my food uncontaminated because I intended to eat it. Ok I did take a picture ot two but didn’t waste too much time before easting it.

I also took a few photos as I cooked a generous steak, trying out HDR (not such good results) as well a a more conventional tonal adjustment in lightroom, and then a bit of enhancement in perfect effect (motion bluring outside the frypan and warming the colour of the streak a fraction). Because I was using a variety of natural light getting the colour balance right was a bit of challenge across the range of the photos I took

I decided I would take a bit for practice before I could get appetising looking food.

How difficult could the ingredients for a cocktail be to photographed? My very favourite Brazilian cocktail is the caipirinha, it was hardly know outside Brasil and perhaps portulgal until very recently and there are almost as many recipes and techniques to make it as there are villages in Bahia. Traditionally it is made with lime, sugar and Cachaça (a sugar cane based spirit alcohol) but on inspection of my Tahitian lime, it is in the last throws of flowering and the fruit is just beginning as buds. the lemon tree is also still flowering but have a few ripe lemons (albiet small) so I figured any brazilian would also make the same choice, a lemon it is. I do happened to have some authentic Cachaça, although you can use vodka (or white rum) and the recipe I learnt was to place the lime/lemon segments in a glass and add two or three teaspoons of sugar then use a stick (the end of a wooden spoon is fine to mash. aka muddle, the fruit and sugar together into a paste and gradually add a little ice and muddle the mix some more. Fill the glass with ice and add the cachaça. Some net recipes suggest adding sprigs of mint but I think they are just good garish for the photo not the drink.

I did a couple of photo set up. One in front of the tulip bulbs (they gain most interest last week) and one in a glimpse of the winter sun. This send photo was on the round kitchen table and the curves and strong linear shadow and narrow vertical bottle gave me a better opportunity to look for a strong composition. The chair in the background was a little jarring so I use masking and motion blur in perfect effects to tame it. For those interested the caipirinha was delicious.

The Patch :: Tools & Kitchens

I have an undeserved reputation of being domestically incompetent, which means I’m not given free rein in the kitchen (aka “Your cooking is nice but you are way too messy”). There is one small section of the kitchen I am allowed to work and that is with my kitchen tool of choice, my beloved coffee machine. She may be showing her age, and she does not use pods but she can be coaxed into making a delicious short black (espresso) and rich and creamy cappuccino.

As usual for the patch I had a good play around with different ways of presenting a perfect portrait of my coffee machine. The winter sunshine, has been streaming in the past couple of morning and showed of her gleaming personality so I experimented with some bracketed sets and HDR. Not bad but they didn’t quiet capture her sullen reliability. Time for another coffee.  About then the water ran low and she began softly flashing the little red warning light. Setting a light bulb of in my mind, remembering the fun of .gif animation. This time I used Corel Photo Paint, and just 4 frames. Two with no red light, one with a full flash and a second with just low half red and reflection. Essentially I now have a still portrait with just a touch of action. the perfect portrait of my beloved coffee maker, the ultimate kitchen tool.