My amazing new mobile island at work in its first photo shoot! The lights overhead are covered with that semi-opaque floating floor stuff, and the $2 special knocked out shadows from the side.
Don't think I need to explain the bowl of potatoes, the dish of margarine (oops not butter), salt, pepper, parsley and old fashioned masher.
The hardest part wasn't the lighting, as it normally is with my stuff, but getting everything in focus. Started with ol' faithful 18-55 mm, then even tried the macro lens, finally got the shot with the 18-200mm. Camera on tripod.
pp: exposure, levels, curves, saturation, contrast, crop, resize, usm, sharpen edges, save for web
Statistics
Place: 82 out of 143 Avg (all users): 5.2514 Avg (commenters): 5.5455 Avg (participants): 5.2245 Avg (non-participants): 5.2612 Views since voting: 1164 Views during voting: 290 Votes: 183 Comments: 15 Favorites: 0
Hello, thanks for submitting your image. First, off I think the subject clearly meets the challenge topic, and it is easily understood. In your details you mentioned difficulty getting "everything" in to focus. The main dish is clearly the focal point, and there is a subtle blurring of the surrounding dishes in the back but not in the right third. I happen to like this, but if the goal was to have everything sharp, then a smaller aperture would have helped. Areas of improvement...lighting. As mentioned below, I agree that the white balance is off, as it appears to have a heavy yellow cast which is easily fixed in post. Overall, I like the composition and perspective. Looks delicious!
Beautifully set up, Susan, and really, really makes me want to make some mashed potatoes - haven't had any good homemade ones in ages! My one suggestion would be to whiten it up a bit - seems just a tad yellowish, due to the color of the overhead lights. Easiest to do when you shoot RAW, by changing the temperature setting to more toward the blue side. Very nice job with the focus, too - interesting how the lens you finally used ended up being the one that gave you the best focus - I'd not have thought so, so good on you for experimenting! This REALLY does deserve a better score, by the way.
but, imo only, the white balance does look off. The image itself gives a yellowish hue to it. White balance with the light you use, not before.
Another thing, this is from the industry I call a career, and really hate it when the writers, or SAG, or the teamsters threaten my job.
A rule of thumb, normally, not always, is that, the darker the bg, the more drama the lighting.
If you notice in food magazines, not all, but a lot, they use white table cloths. Your wooden table is ok to use, but it is also darker than a white table cloth. Hence forth, more dramatic lighting.
Think of it this way. If your table was black, and you use the lighting set up presently, your lighting would look way more flat than it is. If you used a white cloth, the natural ambiance, bouncing off the white cloth may of given more natural drama, depending on where you place the lights that is.
I don't know about a haze perse on your image, but, I personally think with a bit of tweaking, a few more shots doing different things, paying attention to the light and to details, this could of been a winner.
This image is too busy for me. Feels like I need to use all the ingredients to figure out the final recipe. I think it might have worked with just the potatoes and masher. Also, I wish the image was a bit crisper.
I quite like this photo - the colours give a rustic feel. I can see the front edge of the plate and the bowl to the right is in focus. I would have perhaps aimed for the parsley sprig to be in focus and extended the depth of field a little.
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