First, I set up a coffee table near a northern-facing window here at Studio W. It was late morning and the sky was still clear at the time so I had tons of soft light coming in. I decided to use my DIY tri-fold silver bounce (3/8" foam core with crinkled up aluminum foil duct taped to it) to fill the shadows. I normally use this for headshots but it's perfect for this kind of project, throwing a nice, bright light.
Before cooking anything, I wanted to play around with some placement. I was hungry and this wasn't a full-out food shoot (I studied to be a chef back in the day so I can cook, but I'm not a pro food stylist) so once I got something close I went with it.
I took yesterday's Sun-Times, glued the last couple pages together so they didn't flop over and then secured everything with a paper clip to keep it folded. I don't have alot of kitchen and dining props but I do stop by Goodwill occasionally to see if they have any interesting dishes or cutting boards. That's where I got the plate. I took an old dish towel to fill in as a placemat.
Well, that looks cheezy. Let's make it a napkin instead.
That's better. A little more geometric and better contrast with the dark table. How about a different napkin? A dark one...
Naaah...go with white. Let's go cook something up!
On the menu today is sausage gravy and biscuits, sunny-side up eggs, pork-n-beans and coffee. I was distracted by the gravy and the yolks got a little over-cooked. The overall color palette is pretty neutral so losing that pop from the yolks detracts, I think. They were my last two eggs, though, so I couldn't redo them to get the more orange color for better contrast.
So, except for having my foot in the shot, I like the composition - squares, circles and diagonals... Let's see what it looks like without my shoe...
Much better. The tighter crop not only eliminated the extraneous crap, but it puts the viewer's focus right on the food where it belongs. I like cutting things off in food photos - breaking up the literal-ness (is that a word?) of the circles and squares is less distracting from the main subject, I think. But on closer inspection zooming in this frame looked a little soft. I was leaning over the table with a fairly long shutter speed and probably had some camera shake, even with the IS turned on.
So after playing around with various angles and comps, I went with this one:
It was a bit cold when I finally got around to eating it but it was delicious even so. I make really tasty gravy, if I do say so myself....
Comments and critiques are welcome and appreciated...
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