Scroll down to see submissions from our last LON Camera Club exercise Still Life Without Woodpecker
This week’s exercise asks you to photograph something you are eating, from raw fruits and vegetables to the meal in front of you. (Send the results to us at [email protected]).
Food photography is one of the most technically challenging specialties. In addition to lighting the food so that it looks natural, many raw and prepared foods have a short shelf life under hot lights.
Two books that can help are Food Styling for Photographers by Linda Bellinghamm and Jean Ann Bybee and Digital Food Photography by Lou Manna.
Bellingham and Bybee are meticulous about giving you every detail on how to recreate the tricks their tricks. (I love the recipes that turn shortening into ice cream that looks creamier than anything Ben & Jerry ever made. And their stuff doesn’t melt under the lights.)
Manna offers tips (use a charcoal starter to put realistic-looking grill marks on steaks), but he offers more inspiration. The book includes images he created for various magazines and just looking at them sparks your creativity.
The shot below is our Sunday Gluten-Free Dinner. Those Stuffed Roasted Red Peppers topped with shredded cheese are a personal creation. The filling is brown rice with walnuts, grilled onion and zucchini held together with egg.
That’s Kabli Channe (White Chickpea Curry) next to or on top of that jasmine rice. In the Okemos Meijer the other day, I spotted a bag of white chickpeas in the Middle Eastern section. I had neer seen them before and couldn’t figure out what to do with them, so I chose this recipe (and it was great). One tip - take the big spices like the cinnamon stick and the whole cloves and cardamom and buzz them up in a coffee grinder before adding them to the recipe.
The raita contains plain yogurt, mint, honey, red grapes, and shredded cucumber. Those parsnip chips are a variation on a recipe on Aarti’s Party today on the Food Network. (I mixed the raw chips with canola oil, chipotle spices, and a little salt, then baked them for 40 minutes at 425, turning them twice.)
Previous Exercise: Still Life Without Woodpecker - The challenge was to deal with depth of field. You were also asked to submit two images and chose the one you preferred, telling us why.
From Caron Creighton: “I think I prefer the first photo although I’m not sure why. Perhaps because it shows more than just the benches, which make a rather dull focus.”
From Bill Castanier: “I like the one of just the upper portion since it leaves something to the imagination and it seems to have more interest than the entire chair.”
