I was asked by my boss to do some food pics for our website and catering menu's. how do these look for a start? 1 2 3 4 5
VERY nice i really like them!! the one with teh egg teh white balance seems off to me HOWEVER i am on a NON calibrated monitor so i could be wrong! i REALLY liek teh rest 1, 2 & 5 are my favs YUMM now im hungry!!
Good food stylist and a good eye, but underexposed & colour casts/wb issues on all of them. The 1st is the weakest of the bunch - the composition doesn't work, and there isn't enough light sources on the salad. Really excellent work on the other images though.
2, 4 & 5 are well composed, but RoryTate is right. Also, the salad shot doesn't capture what's going to be served, it appears to show a rack of salads, which isn't really what you want to go for, it also seems a little dull. I want to see a bright fresh salad, not a shelf full of them that have been there for a while... The egg one, although a potential stock shot perhaps, can't possibly be on the menu, is it?
thanks for the feed back. I'm the chef at The Cunard Center, and some of what they are looking for is stock, close up menu items and industrial type shots. The racked salad makes a little more sence if you understand that we serve up to 1500 people. You guys are correct though, it's not an interesting or colorful salad at all. These were my first real food shots, and just need some tips as to where I need to go. thanks again. gary On a side note can anyone tell me how to add a water mark to these in lightroom 2. I see how to do it for a slide show, but not just on a pic.
look under photography discussion i think it was that or school i started a topic on watermarks someone posted how to do it in lightroom in there!!
I really like them but as someone who knows nothing about photography, I didn't look at the food in the first one, I looked at it and tried to figure out how the plates were placed. It was too distracting for me to focus on the food itself.
wb still looks off....exposure looks a lot better...but i'm not sure about some of the comps. check out kcline's portfolio on istock..her food photography is the absolute best I've seen.
she's the best at what she does. i've linked to her stuff here before. i've also linked to a podcast featuring her talking on the art of food photography
How do you know what to set for white balance? I was taking these in the kitchen with floresent lights, a work shop light behind a piece of bristol board, and a home made soft box. Oh and thanks for your feed back guys, it is really appreciated. This is still just a hobby but I really am looking to improve.
i suspected that might be a workshop light. i would reccomend using a grey card for most accurate WB. alternatively try to sample a white or neutral grey area with the WB tool during raw conversion. grey card is quick and easy. place it where your subjects will be...take a picture of it, then when you're in post you can sample the grey card and apply that wb setting to all things shot with the same light.
also it's little things...like using the line of the plate in that last one to directly exit the corner of the frame, it's a good leading line into the subject
A grey card won't help when you're using disparaging light sources - you'll get multiple colour casts like in the 1st new image. Mixing florescent and tungsten is a bad idea if you don't compensate with gels (for example). You're better off sticking to one light source (like the tungsten work lights) and set your white balance to it (with a grey card).
