Today is the last day to submit images for the DMBLGIT March 2009 food photography contest! I will accept them until midnight eastern daylight savings time.

You can see all of the latest submissions at this flickr group. You will see that we judges will have our job cut out for us!

Speaking of judges, I would like to present the 5 judges for this month’s contest. I am one of them, obviously!

Curt, at the Bucky’s BBQ and Bread blog, has been my co-conspirator in the Food Photo 101 series. Curt is a fantastic photographer who is passionate about learning food photography (and very methodical). I feel very fortunate to have his eye for this contest.

Bee, at the jugalbandi blog, is one half of a team who are prolific writers and photographers that span 6 different broad topics (Jai is the other half). I got to know them when they invited me to help judge one of their photography contests – Click.

Vera at the Baking Obsession blog is the very deserving winner from DMBLGIT February! I am glad to have her participate.

Ilva, at the Lucullian Delights blog, is a dear friend and a fantastic professional photographer who lives a charmed and beautiful life as a Swede in dreamy Italy! Her food has the luminous quality that comes from her context, in a land where the light is divine.

Once the deadline arrives tonight at midnight the judges will begin to deliberate. Their deadline will be towards the end of the month.

Winners will be announced on the last day of this month, Tuesday March 31st!

If you have not submitted yours yet, don’t delay! Read the details on the contest at this post.

And just let me say – Wow, you people are simply amazing photographers! You can see the images you have sent me in the slideshow above!

The judging for this contest is going to be VERY hard and it will require frequent breaks for snacks!

Tomorrow I will post a listing of our distinguished panel of judges.

Today I am rushing off to spend the day at the International Boston Seafood Show where I will be watching Iron Chef Morimoto give the keynote address (and will I get to meet him? Who knows! Stay tuned)

Its that time again for me to participate in the Does My Blog Look Good In This (DMBLGIT) contest!

The last time I ran it, wow, the world was a simpler place: we all walked 10 miles to and from school, up hill both ways, through 5 feet of snow, there was world peace, and the atom had not been split yet.

Ok, well, it feels that way at least.

What is this DMBLGIT contest, you may be asking. Good question! I will let Andrew Barrow, meta-adminitrator of this contest, explain in his own words:

Does My Blog Look Good In This (DMBLGIT) is a monthly food photography event, called by some as “the grandest foodporn event available” on the web. It is open to all bloggers who have posted a photograph with a food or drink connection. Each monthly round is hosted by a different blogger. Food bloggers submit their best photos from posts they completed during the previous month which are then judged and scored. Winners are made covering three categories (edibility, aesthetics, and originality) plus three overall winners.

Each month, a new contest starts, hosted on a different food blogger’s site.

The delicious image you see below is the winner for the February edition of DMBLGIT! Doesn’t it look simply fantastic?! You can read all about it at Sefa’s “Food is Love” blog where she announces the winners in the three categories.

I will announce thee judges a bit later this month.

Da Rulz

The Rules to participate the contest:
1. Send a photo that has appeared on your blog during February 2009. The photo should be food and/or drink related. No diptychs allowed.
2. Only one entry per person.
3. The photograph must have been taken by you and must be text free (copyright is allowed).
4. Deadline for submissions : March 20, 2009.

Send your entry to nika dot boyce at gmail dot com with DMBLGIT in the subject line with the following details:
- Your name.
- Your location.
- Your blog’s name and URL.
- The photograph that you wish to enter, of no more than 500 pixels wide.
- Your photograph’s title.
- URL of the post containing the photograph.
- Type of camera used, lens if you wish.

By submitting a photo, you agree to your picture being redisplayed and altered in size on the host’s page and on DMBLGIT page.

Judging
The judges will review your entries on the basis of:
- Aesthetics: composition, food styling, lighting, focus, etc.
- Edibility: “Does the photo make us want to dive in and eat the food?”
- Originality: the photograph that catches our attention and makes us want to say wow!, displaying something we might not have seen before.

From these categories, the judges will come up with:
- Overall Winner: top overall scores in all three categories combined.
- There are three overall winners for photographs with the highest point totals in all three categories combined, and one winner in each of the three individual categories.

Gallery
All submissions can be viewed in this flickr gallery that will be updated as I receive the entries.

I look forward to seeing your images!

What better way to start off the New Year than to strut your food photography stuff for Lou Manna!

Lou is running a fantastic contest he is calling the “Best Looking Food of 2009 contest” that offers the winning entry the following most fantastic swag!

• Olympus E-520 camera kit
• Kingston memory cards
• Calumet lighting kit
• complimentary admission to a Digital Food Photography for Food Bloggers Workshop held by Lou
• dinner for two at a restaurant courtesy of Citysearch
• exclusive opportunity to attend the photo shoot with Lou Manna at his studio in NYC to watch his vision for the cover of More Digital Food Photography be created

Follow this link for more particular details and to submit!

Enter to win!

You can see a message from Lou in his latest YouTube video below

He says in the “liner notes” to this video that

“the winning dish will be used as the subject for the cover of his forthcoming second book, More Digital Food Photography (to be published in the fall of 2009).

In conjunction with Citysearch, Olympus, Kingston, and Calumet, the search begins on January 1st and ends on February 16th, with the winner announced on February 23rd.”

If your into food photography and had been wanting to take your art to the next level I don’t have to tell you how amazing this opportunity is.

We win from the moment we enter (even if not everyone can win first place) because we get to have Lou consider our work!

Needless to say, the Olympus E-520 camera is an amazing addition to your growing camera collection. Olympus cameras are MUCH lighter than the Canon 30D that I use and the quality is out of this world. The Olympus E-520 has 4:3 sensor with 10 megapixels, a 2.7 inch LCD display, more tech details here. As this is the kit, a kit lens will be included. I am not certain which one it is as of this writing though.

Please see below for contest rules and details:

Submission Criteria: The winner will be based on the best looking food concept, innovation of presentation and not the quality of the photograph. Cellphone photos are acceptable. The subject can be a dish that you were served at a restaurant (please provide the restaurant name, chef name and description) or something that you’ve created in your very own kitchen (please provide a recipe and description). The image must be submitted in jpeg format, with dimensions of approximately 6” x 8” at a resolution of 72 dpi.

Cost: There will be a $10 processing fee for each submission.

Upon receipt of payment you will be sent instructions on how to sign into the contest page on Flickr.com where contestants can submit their photos for consideration and see the other entries.

Follow this link to contest page and submission buttons at bottom of the page

Judges: A panel of industry professionals ranging from food photographers, chefs, photo editors, restaurant reviewers, and food stylists will judge all submissions. Slated so far are Clark Wolf, Delores Custer, Chef Momo Attoui, as well as associates from the New York Times and the Culinary Institute of America.

Blue Eggs and Yellow Tomatoes: Recipes from a Modern Kitchen Garden

Eating homegrown food is not only good for you and your bank account but it can be fantastically tasty and quite photogenic.

I recently received a review copy of “Blue Eggs and Yellow Tomatoes: Recipes from a Modern Kitchen Garden” by Jeanne Kelley (published in April 2008 by Running Press Books). Kelley has decades of experience writing for Bon Appetit, Cooking Light magazine and many of her recipes have been published in LA Times Magazine, Natural Health, Islands and Spa Magazines.

Her professional life and her home life come together in Blue Eggs Yellow Tomatoes as she writes about how she raises some of her own food (chickens, vegetables) at her suburban home in Los Angeles and shares recipes that yield simply delicious concoctions that should satisfy anyone, whether you are growing your own food or if you go to the farmer’s market.

The book includes a charming mixture of fantastic food photography and the author’s own photographic glimpses into her family and backyard. She is not a professional photographer but her images are candid and enjoyable.

She covers various topics not necessarily found in your average cookbook, from how to garden in your own backyard to growing chickens to how to compost.

Nascent gardeners are given plenty of reasons to start growing their own food – 150 delightful recipes that span the range from salads to desserts in 10 chapters.

• Appetizers and Small Plates
• Soups
• Salads
• Sandwiches and Tartines
• Pizza and Pasta
• Fish and Poultry
• Meats
• Vegetables and Sides
• Desserts and Sweets
• Breakfast and Brunch

I found her salads chapter to be particularly enticing. They are quite beautiful and diverse, many interesting ingredient ideas. My attraction to the salads is also fed by a hankering for the veggies that have not even sprouted in my garden.

I really enjoyed the craftsmanship of this book. It is a large book (3.8 pounds) with bright white pages mixed in with country-home pages featuring a sunny palette of colors. As I mentioned before, the food photography is quite enticing.

Other attractions include a guide on pantry stocking and equipment choices, a kitchen garden primer, a section on how to use a recipe, and a guide for chicken keeping.

I am obviously biased positively toward anyone making an effort to grow their own food (veggie and animal). We have our organic garden, a flock of layer chickens, and a growing herd of dairy goats.

I would recommend this lovely cookbook to anyone who loves food and who is interested in pouring love and nurturing into their cooking.

Product Details:

• Blue Eggs and Yellow Tomatoes: Recipes from a Modern Kitchen Garden
• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Running Press (March 31, 2008)
• ISBN-10: 0762431830
• Product Dimensions: 11.2 x 9.8 x 1.3 inches
• Price: $23.10

If you want to take your photography to the next level where you are using more than ambient light, where you are using strobes, then professional food photographer Lou Manna can be your gentle guide.

As I mentioned previously, you can register for this course through Workshops@Adorama. The next class, Digital Food Photography: Creating Delectable Images, is on March 2, 2008 – a Sunday, 10am to 5 pm. It is held at his studio at 126 Fifth Avenue in the Flatiron District, one block from Adorama.

Lou is simply fantastic. He is not rote in his approach, rather, he makes you feel like he really cares if you get what he is teaching you. The moment you walk in the door you immediately feel welcomed. He has teamed up with another food photographer who is also a chef, Dennis, who cooks lunch and the food for the shots later in the day.

When I walked in the door, I was shaking and strung out because I had the most horrific drive into NYC.

I had the misfortune to take a NY State garden parkway that was icy and wholly untreated. My car did donuts, floating in circles, rammed backwards up against a stone wall and came to rest facing traffic in the left lane (no breakdown lane on the left, just me and on coming traffic and an icy frictionless road). Two other vans swerved to miss me and flew into the guard rail, totaling them both. No one was hurt and my car started up so I was able to get out of the left lane and keep the pile up from continuing.

Even though it had some $2,100 worth of damage, I was able to limp further on into NYC for the class and then get home.

Anyways, I was hell bent on going to that class and was determined to enjoy it because I had been dreaming about it for years.

I thought I had come a long way but there were attendees who came from Chicago and even Istanbul, Turkey specifically for this class. Talk about commitment to learning food photography!

The first thing we did was pop our CD roms with our sample photos into one of the seemingly endless number of computers in Lou’s loft. In fact, we were surrounded by this fantastic mixture of technology, photographic studio equipment, food styling supplies, and century old NYC loft architecture. It was a bit dizzying!

It was great to see what other people were doing, such a great breadth of experience. We then took a break to grab some of the delicious lunch that Dennis had made for us (and which made the loft smell amazing all day).

We then got to see some of Lou’s huge body of work that spans all of the sorts of food photography that you can imagine. He does the most luminous, cheerful, bright, vibrant work. Toward the end of this we began to talk about the mechanics of how various images were shot. This was the segway to the next activity, setting up the lighting and related studio stuff to take great food photography!

We started with some of the hardest subjects you could shoot, wine and beverage bottles.

The image above shows some wine bottles that he was shooting. When working with liquid filled glass, you have to work really hard to make sure that the reflections and internal refractions and shapes all turn out pleasing in your photo. He would put up mirrors, meter light, put up dark forms, vellums, adjust lights, all the while taking test shots which we would see on a tethered giant HD flat screen TV.

The set up for any one shot can grow into an amazing array of all sorts of light modifiers. Its sort of neat to watch it grow and change to meet the needs of the subject.

Here you can see how complex it can get.

Lou does some amazing shots for Partida Tequila. Below you see a diagram he shared with us mapping out how he shot some of those tequila bottles.

After the bottles, we moved on to food shots.

I have to say that I loved the entire day and I learned many things, one of which is that I need to get a light meter to cure some of my strobe issues.

When it came time for us to do some food shots, I did a tiny bit of styling and then shot a bit but my hands were still shaking from the accident (adrenalin can really kill your dexterity) so it was sort of hard, much harder than I usually find when at home.

I would recommend this class wholeheartedly.

If you are not interested in the use of strobe, some of this may not be for you. If you want to master food photography and bring consistency to your work, the hallmark of professional photography, then use this workshop to enter the path to harnessing those pesky photons!

Lesson 4 starts pushing us down the path of thinking about the subject of our photos instead of how we’ve set up our things around the subject. Previous lessons were about settings on the camera and lighting, but this time I had to actually think about what was in front of the camera.

Nika had us thinking about energy spirals. Here’s my first one, in light of the holiday coming up…

I call this one my “Spiral o’ Bumbles”. Ok, maybe not a lot of energy, but it is the holiday season, and I’m willing to bet that anyone reading these posts will be subjected to at least one Rudolph related shot per week for the next couple of weeks, and no “Bah! Humbugs!” from the blogosphere!

Ok, back the lesson…

I have something of a confession to make; the reason I think I’m drawn to learn how to take better photos is that I have something of a background in fine arts and visual presentation. I started out in life thinking I was going to be an architect, and I went to Carnegie-Mellon University to study architecture. I also worked several years as a landscape designer, where visual presentation meant a lot in getting clients to visualize designs. So I have some history in thinking about this kind of stuff, though it’s been a LONG time!

What does this have to do with the lesson this week? Not much, but it kind of sets a level of my own expectations. And I think I’m realizing that, for the past couple of years, I haven’t always thought of what was in the photo so much as what the food was, if that makes sense. If I made ribs, I took a photo of ribs. Sure, I tried to make it look decent usually, but I somehow forgot all that stuff I had once done in art classes and for project presentations. Nika’s lessons are helping me remember some of that, so I am expecting my photos to start improving.

I wanted some food shots for this week, but due to things going on around the house, I don’t have much here, so I picked on a banana that was on the counter staring at me. Natural light wasn’t great, as we’d had our first real snow of the season and the sky was pretty grey. I remembered lesson 1, though, and upped the exposure so more light would come into the camera. White balance was set at ‘Shady’ and aperture was set at f/2.8.

My handy utility knife made quick work of the banana. I don’t know if this is a great shot, but it’s one of the first shots in a while I’ve taken that isn’t just a close up of the food. Here’s what I thought the spiral was in the shot:

I used Nika’s arrow (thanks, Nika!) to mark what I thought the Spiral Of Energy (SOE) might be. I’d be happy to hear from anyone that disagrees.

I didn’t particularly like this shot, soI kept going. I found in this next shot one of the things I hate about my camera… The viewfinder doesn’t show me nearly enough of the shot, so I ended up getting a corner of white board in the shot, but I still liked it for the purpose of this exercise.

This is the same banana and the same configuration, but a different angle and closer shot. The lighting is a bit better, too, I think, but I haven’t decided if the light coming in behind from the window is distracting or interesting. I’m going with distracting for this shot; I should have covered the window with a screen of some sort. I do think the shot is more interesting due to the angle partly, giving the shot a bit of perspective with the knife coming out to the left corner, and the closeness of the shot allowed the knife to blur a bit toward the front of the shot, too. I also like the reflection off the knife. The white board helped soften the shadows a bit, but I think the shadow under the banana helps the shot. In effect, even though the banana is cut through, the shadow gives is a look of continuity.

Another thing I like about this shot is that there are three slices of the banana. Groupings work better and are usually more pleasing to the eye in odd numbers, especially in informal compositions. Even numbers feel off a bit, though even numbers work well in a formal setting because we expect that balance in that setting. I also like that the peel kind of disrupts the other stuff without clashing; in fact, the curve of the peel kind of starts off the SOE.

Things that don’t work in this shot are the white board, of course, the reflection behind the banana on the table, and the chair behind the table. Better depth of field use would have negated the chair, but not the reflection.

Here’s the SOE for this shot, in my opinion:

I decided to look through some of my old photos to see if I could pick out any SOE that I might have used, too. One shot I actually thought did a decide job was some scotch I photographed at something like 5:00 AM one day.

And here’s the SOE, as I see it:

I think that, in this shot, the vertical labels on both the bottle and box helped set up a flow, ending in the glass of scotch in the front. The lighting wasn’t all that great in this shot as I should have softened by turning off the overhead incandescent light, moving the other light to the left and bouncing that light off of something on the right. I do, however, like the shadows on the cloth napkins.

Conclusion

This is, to me, getting to the crux of a lot of shots I’ve seen and taken myself. Lighting can be worked on in Photoshop. White Balance is pretty easy to change in PS, too, and you can even fake some depth of field in post processing. What you can’t fake, though, is what’s in the photo. You can crop out stuff here and there, or mask it off, but the photo subject is what it is, and the only way to change it is to take another shot. This is where I know I need to work more.

Related Posts:

• Food Photo 101-4: Composition 1.0
• Food Photo 101-3: Week 3 in review
• FP101-3: Depth of Field – Curt’s Results
• FP101-3: Depth of Field
• Food Photo 101-2: Week 2 in review
• Food Photo 101-2: Photonic Inspirations
• Food Photo 101-2: Curts Results
• Food Photo 101-2: Harnessing Photons
• FP101-1: Week 1 in review
• Food Photo 101: Photography for Foodies
• Food Photo 101-1
• Food Photography 101: Lesson 1 results

Class Resources

• Curt’s Food Photo 101 page
• My Food Photo 101 page
• Food Photo 101 Class Forum
• Food Photo 101 Glossary
• Food Photo 101 Flickr Group
• Food Photo 101 Newsletters

To register for the newsletter that reviews each week’s topic, fill out the contact form at the bottom of this post (or on the Food Photo 101 page) and type “Food Photo 101” in the subject field.

As we have been talking about technical and practical details in the first three lessons, I thought I would take us in an artistic direction with this week’s lesson on Composition.

What is Composition?

This is a fantastically huge topic that can not really be discussed in one post (however long). It is about nothing less than everything that fits inside your frame and all that is implied outside of the frame.

The human sensibility for composition springs from various physiological modes of experiencing our world which have evolved across the eons. For example, we perceive edge very strongly and we subconsciously infer a continuation of that edge outside of our viewable world. This would have conferred the ability to infer that a lion sat behind a bush from the small outlined silhouette of an ear at sunset. Those of us with that talent survived to have babies that did the same. Repeat this for just about everything about who we are (except for relatively modern activities like web surfing or making creme brulee or encapsulated mango juice egg yolks).

As a consequence, a lot of how we consume and react to in a photo or other composition is deeply rooted in our subconscious and can be hard to articulate or to even grasp.

I think this is why many of us have a hard time understanding and manipulating composition. This is also why it will take a bit of practice at developing an aware or open eye to the world around us and the compositions others have made to begin to direct our own intentional compositions.

This might take some work on your part but if you are interested in studio and food photography this is a must.

Talking and writing about composition is OK but DOING good composition requires DOING. It is like zen; reading a 1000 learned books on zen gets you exactly nowhere while sitting and doing nothing gets you, well, nowhere, but in a zen way.

Right, so that might not make sense to you if you are not on the zen path but my point is that one can go much further by learning a few bullet points or First Principles of Composition and then DOING art that shows your hands and eyes how to do it instead of your thinking brain.

Composition Mechanics

When you get a chance, please take the time to read the wikipedia entry on Composition, it will be helpful as a starting place.

You will learn that there is a toolbox of elements that you can manipulate to form your photograph (or painting, etc).

• Line – the visual path that enables the eye to move within the piece
• Shape – areas defined by edges within the piece, whether geometric or organic
• Value – the lightness and darkness throughout the piece, characterized by tint, tone, and shade
• Texture – surface qualities which translate into tactile illusions
• Color – hues with their various values and intensities
• Direction – visual routes which take vertical, horizontal or diagonal paths
• Size – the relative dimensions and proportions of images or shapes to one another
• Perspective – expression of depth: foreground, middle ground, background
• Source

The Energy Spiral

Today I am going to talk about just ONE concept that will guide you well in food photography – the energy spiral. I will hit on more composition concepts in other posts.

Things to keep in mind:

• Our eyes like to read left to right
• Your photo has energy and direction
• Our eyes will follow the flow of energy and line in a photo
• Encourage that flow to move from left to right
• Encourage that flow to move in a spiral to your compositional focal point

Below you see an image of a stack of toasted cornmeal mush with molasses being poured over it. If you do not know what cornmeal mush is, I blogged about this before in “Sweet Summer Solstice: Dribbling Night onto the Sun“. I used really cold molasses so that the dripping would go slowly, allowing me to catch some interesting details.

I have used a red arrow-circle in the image below to suggest the spiral of energy.

There are a variety of strong-line factors (blue and white cloth pointing to horizon, the edges of the stacked bowls, the horizontal edges of the cornmeal mush, the vertical drips of the molasses). There are several focal points: the dribble pattern in the butter on the top of the stack, the mid-air drip on the middle right, and the specular white highlights on the upper left part of the stack on the molasses.

The spiral energy is started by the observer with the bias to start in the left part of the field and then the energy flows from that bias across to the right by the drip and the dribble pattern, down to the mid-air drip, sweeping down across the stack bowls and then back up to review the interesting dribble.

Finally, the apparent effect of gravity seems to be important in food photography. Because of this, try not to tilt your food image too much.

Excessive tilt, like you see in ever more popular and quite mundane Wedding Photography, doesn’t make for an appealing Food Photography experience – nausea from seasickness induced by a plate or table tilted too much either way is a food turn off. If I see a tilted plate I get this mild panic that it looks like the food is going to slide off (which distracts from the image). Same thing with images of beverages that are tilted a bit much.

Take home message

Open your eyes to the composition in all the art and photography around you and you will be rewarded with more striking photos.

Your Tasks

• Notice the energy in well made photos and seek to emulate it. Start with the energy spiral we have discussed today!
• To do this, take some time to cruise the portfolios of working food photographers. I have put a list of just a few at the bottom of this lesson.
• Really dive into the photos and look for spirals. Notice how it makes you feel.
• Now, using what you have learned with light and setting, compose a simple food related scene. It could even just be silverware and plates and linens.
• Create a spiral, shoot the spiral. You may have to move things, you may have to shoot from a variety of different angles!
• Post your photos to the Food Photo 101 Flickr Group.
• Blog about it and drop me a comment here about where to find your blog post.

Small list of interesting food photographers:

• Jim Scherer (Boston based)
• Lou Manna (NYC based)
• Matt Armendariz (LA based and a very modest sweetheart of a guy)

Related Posts:

• Sweet Summer Solstice: Dribbling Night onto the Sun
• Food Photo 101-3: Week 3 in review
• FP101-3: Depth of Field – Curt’s Results
• FP101-3: Depth of Field
• Food Photo 101-2: Week 2 in review
• Food Photo 101-2: Photonic Inspirations
• Food Photo 101-2: Curts Results
• Food Photo 101-2: Harnessing Photons
• FP101-1: Week 1 in review
• Food Photo 101: Photography for Foodies
• Food Photo 101-1
• Food Photography 101: Lesson 1 results

Class Resources

• Curt’s Food Photo 101 page
• My Food Photo 101 page
• Food Photo 101 Class Forum
• Food Photo 101 Glossary
• Food Photo 101 Flickr Group
• Food Photo 101 Newsletters

This is the review post of the third week of our Food Photography 101 series.

As was previously the case, several people contributed their results to the Food Photo 101 flickr pool.

This week’s contributors were:

• Curt
• LaRecetteDuJour
• NJYar
• Big Mill BB

As you remember from this last Tuesday’s post “FP101-3: Depth of Field”, we have been exploring Depth of Field (DOF).

Once you get the hang of it, playing with the focal plane and DOF can be fun and it can lend a whole new dimension to your images, literally.

It is used quite a lot in food photography, especially in cookbooks where food shots can be especially pornalicious and artistic. The shallow DOF can be used to focus the viewer’s attention on a particularly delicious morsel, boosting the appeal.

It can also be used excessively in some cases and some people just plain do not like it. My mom, who is an artist herself, doesn’t respond well to those photos of mine which have a shallow DOF. When asked, she can’t really articulate why she doesn’t like it but she knows that its not a style she likes. This is fine, there are many ways to communicate your vision.

If you do not like this shallow DOF style, leave a comment explaining why.

I look forward to hearing your feelings on this subject!

Lets take a look first at what Curt offered this last Thursday and then the other contributors.

Curt’s Christmas images

I have a feeling that if Curt came to visit our house around Christmas he would feel that our place is barren of holiday cheer! It sounds like he and his go enthusiastically whole hog and make it a big do . We have a 1 year and a 4 year old who both would love to pull it all down (not to mention the 5 cats) so we are thinking of a mini-tree or the time honored festivus pole (winks).

Leaving all THAT aside, Curt has shared a whole panel of photos of one of his Christmas, um, critters (?) – elves, yeah.

He also varied the angle at which he shot the elf. I have circled two images above which I have then blown up below.

One image is shot at an angle and the other is shot top down or perpendicularly.

He did a nice job of showing the change in the depth of field in his images as he moved in closer to his elven subject. This method allowed him to direct your focus to what he wanted. Can’t wait to see him apply this to food and I think he will be posting something on this very soon!

LaRecetteDuJou

This time LaRecetteDuJour sent us several shots of a bowl of pears lit from behind by a window.

I have used a red oval to point out where you can see the differences in the DOF as she varies her f-number. Obviously the f/5.6 shot has the most shallow DOF, as is evident in the blurriness of the back wall.

Big Mill BB

Chloe from the Big Mill B&B offers several shots of sliced lemons with varying f-number.

I have circled a bit of background on two of the images where I can see some change in the DOF. There is a slight variance between f/5.0 and f/4.5 but it is subtle.

njyar

These images of an interesting tea pot and glass are rich in color and texture.

There is also quite a spread cross f-number from f/5.0 to f/32! I used a red oval again to point out where in the background it is evident that the DOF has changed. These photos are interesting for the curious refraction through the glass and the focused light lines on the tabletop. The point at which it is the brightest is a focal point for the “lens” of the glass. Njyar keeps the focus on the tea leaves inside the glass. I think I like either. The problem with the f/32 image is that the cloudiness of the glass is really obvious. Might want to wash the glass with soapy water and then rinse with isopropyl alcohol before shooting.

A few more from this weekend from me

These days, my husband’s work is taking him into Manhattan on the weekends so we are car-less and a bit cabin-crazy. I had this hankering for saltines but didn’t have any so I found a recipe for them and spent two days making homemade saltine crackers. I will blog in more detail about it later but I wanted to share a couple of shots that I made with my Canon 30D (50mm 1.4) and my fujifilm camera that use a shallow DOF.

These are the finished product, shot with my Canon 30D. I wanted to really lead the eye to the black peppers so I shot in close.

Here I shot close in on some cayenne dusted crackers, again with my Canon 30D. Its a bit flat but this was my mood today.

Here you can see the set up with my fujifilm.

These two are shots with my fujifilm, annotated with black lines showing the focal plane (FP). I used my macro setting and did not modify my aperture.

Thanks to everyone for their contributions!

Clearly it is possible to get a shallow DOF with the P&S, as we have seen with all of the above photos. I think everyone did an excellent job of experimenting with their cameras.

——

I will add a link to the top of this post soon that will give you access to a PDF version of this post. Will be doing the same for 101-2 and 101-3 lessons.

Related Posts:

• FP101-3: Depth of Field – Curt’s Results
• FP101-3: Depth of Field
• Food Photo 101-2: Week 2 in review
• Food Photo 101-2: Photonic Inspirations
• Food Photo 101-2: Curts Results
• Food Photo 101-2: Harnessing Photons
• FP101-1: Week 1 in review
• Food Photo 101: Photography for Foodies
• Food Photo 101-1
• Food Photography 101: Lesson 1 results

Class Resources

• Curt’s Food Photo 101 page
• My Food Photo 101 page
• Food Photo 101 Class Forum
• Food Photo 101 Glossary
• Food Photo 101 Flickr Group
• Food Photo 101 Newsletters

To register for the newsletter that reviews each week’s topic, fill out the contact form at the bottom of this post (or on the Food Photo 101 page) and type “Food Photo 101” in the subject field.

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This post is for those of us who have DSLRs. P&Sers can not, unfortunately, take advantage of the universe of lenses.

Many thanks to Hamish of hames.ca who I featured in my previous post “FP101-3: Depth of Field“. He took the time to write to me with some information on more affordable tilt-shift lenses.

He suggests sourcing your tilt-shift lens from the lens companies emerging out of Russia and the Ukraine. Costs could be halved at least. The following lenses can be sourced at Kiev Camera (I get nothing for this mention, just info kids).

Hartblei

Hartblei MC TS-PC Super-Rotator Tilt Shift 65 mm – $559.00
Hartblei MC TS-PC Super-Rotator Tilt Shift 120 mm – $649.00
Hartblei MC TS-PC Tilt Shift 45 mm – $859.00
Hartblei Superrotator 35 mm – price not listed, call – REVIEW

Available camera mounts include: Canon EF, Canon FD, Nikon F, Sony/Minolta, Minolta MD, Pentax K, Leica R, Contax, M42, Rolleiflex.

Arsat

Arsat 2.8/35 mm shift lens – $259.00 – Arsat review

This is just a shift lens, not tilt-shift.

This lens can be used for shooting on color, black-and-white or infrared films. The lens features a high quality image and transmission of the object small details. This Multicoated glass lens is a high quality precision piece derived from the Russian defense and space technologies (*).

Available lens mounts: Nikon AI , Canon EOS, Canon FD, Pentax M42mm, Pentax K, Konica, Minolta and Contax/Yashika SLR cameras.

If you have any experience with these lenses, chime in!

If you know of other less-cost lenses in the tilt-shift category, let us know!

Related Posts:

FP101-3: Depth of Field

Technorati Tags: DSLR, P&S, lens, Hamish, hames.ca, FP101-3: Depth of Field, affordable, tilt-shift, Russia, Ukraine, Kiev Camera, Hartblei, Super-Rotator, Superrotator, camera mount, Canon, Nikon, Sony, Minolta, Pentax, Leica, Contax, M42, Rolleiflex, Arsat, 2.8/35, Russian, defense, space, technologies, EOS, Konica, Yashika