foto feedback

Britt says …

College taught me that when photographing products you need to use really expensive strobes on really expensive stands, and have 16 foot seamless paper. What happens when you’re too poor for those lights and stands, and you have the shoot the products on location? I attempted to figure it out…

For our annual food book called “Krave” I needed to shoot three photos. One for the dessert section, one for the food/wine/beer pairing, and one for cigar bars. Rather than doing the norm of chefs holding their concoctions, I tried to dramaticize the products, and give them a high-end feel with a  touch of the fun alt-weekliness.

Dessert:

Food beer pairing:

Cigar Bar:

Set up for the cigars:

A cheeseboard for the cover image:

I’m curious of your thoughts on design, the light, choice of products, and how appropriate it is for an annual book on where to eat, and features on local restaurants.

Scott says …

That cigar image is fantastic. Great light quality, depth, composition. I have never and will never smoke a cigar, but the image almost makes my mouth water. (Almost.) The only bad thing I could say is that the highlight on the cigar wrappers is a little distracting — if those were toned down a little it would help.

The food/beer pairing is nice and subtle. I think you should’ve paid more attention to the background, those blown highlights back there get pretty distracting. And the highlight on the beer glass is making some of the logo on there go away. Turn up the power on your light, then speed up that shutter and stop down and you’ll help tame both of those issues.

The dessert: It looks delicious in spite of your lighting. I think I see what you were going for here — that blown-out background and narrow depth-of-field you see in so many food mags — but it’s just not quite there. You need a more blown-out background … and it’s lacking a bit of … I don’t know … deliciousness?

The choose plate is cool and I’ll bet it worked well for a cover image. A lot of choices for placing type. But it looks a little flat. You know what would’ve made it awesome? Light-painting.

Overall, for an on-location food shoot, this stuff is quite good. Most of these pictures would leave me wanting to know more about the places that produced this stuff, and that’s an indication of a successful image.