Posts Tagged ‘indoor’

4th April 2008

Friday, April 4th, 2008


Oak Smoked Garlic, hand-fired pots.

This smoked garlic smells like those carefree days from childhood, where a box of matches borrowed from the kitchen draw led to secret bonfires in the woods, sheepishly returning home trying to hide the smell of smokey clothing from prying noses. I have no idea how to cook with garlic that smells like post-bonfire clothing.

3rd April 2008

Thursday, April 3rd, 2008


Sue’s new haircut, moody lighting

30th March

Sunday, March 30th, 2008


Poor man’s crème brûlée.

An ever changing combination of raspberries, blackberries, vanilla pod, crème fraîche, natural yogurt, maple syrup and sugar. This was the best one yet and only took about 5 minutes to put together. I won’t be trying to hold a blowtorch in one hand with a camera in the other again though.

All of these shots following the contemporary style for in-progress, close-up food photography. The informal presentation of the food is enhanced with the very shallow depth of field, perhaps slightly too shallow in some cases here. This style seems to be a good shortcut to the desired result of making the food look good enough to eat. I think it is probably much more challenging to get satisfactory results shooting product type food shots where everything in the shot needs to be perfectly presented and in sharp focus.

29th March

Saturday, March 29th, 2008


Dough balls and herb baked tomatos, pretty much straight from the oven.

These shots both using natural light, diffused with cloud, worked fine without any additional diffusion.

28th March 2008

Friday, March 28th, 2008


This shot breaks the best practice [guidelines] I just learned for food photography – mainly as the light here is overhead tungsten lighting, which really shows in the flat look of the photo. The preferred diffused natural light was in short supply at 9pm though, plus our guests were looking at their withheld food threateningly. The [recipe] thankfully, was a real show stopper and also really quite easy to put together if you happen to have some Scottish flaky hot-smoked salmon handy.

27th March

Thursday, March 27th, 2008


I read an [article] on food photography earlier this week. The condensed version of the articles goes something like this; most food wants to be eaten, not photographed, and therefore looks rubbish when photographed. The advice was firstly to undercook the food, let it go cold, photograph low and close up on a non-fussy background, use natural diffused light, custom colour balance and finally to use a shallow depth of field. This shot uses most of those techniques, and although I can see I will be able to improve on this, it is my first attempt at food photography. The final point of the article is to know when not to shoot food at all, and with anemic looking cheese as a subject, this is probably one of them. More to follow this weekend with folk to cook for.

25th March

Tuesday, March 25th, 2008


Beer glass and water, glass ‘borrowed’ from Pizza Express

This backlit shot uses only a household lamp as the light source, but custom colour balancing before shooting makes all the difference. A flash, from the side of the glass, would no-doubt finish off the shot, adding more glass reflection.

13th March

Thursday, March 13th, 2008


Hamish – feeling very sorry for himself – he had a wound on his paw and was stuck inside for days.

21st Febuary 2008

Thursday, February 21st, 2008


Mother and week born child, Greenfields Children’s Centre, Winsford. Thank you for letting me take your picture.

I spent a rewarding day assisting a professional industrial and architectural photographer at the Children’s centre. This shot is from a series of semi-candid portrait shots of friendly young mums and their new born children, taken after the main architectural photography work was done.

12th Febuary

Tuesday, February 12th, 2008


Francis Black (x-singer with band The Pixies), Manchester Academy.



Stranger watching the band. These shots are my first attempt at low-light indoor photography. There is no flash used, allowing less invasive shots.