The Flickr Conundrum

[emf]

I often eat pizza with a knife and fork – I think it depends on the pizza 🙂

@JLiu, can I just ask a question, you’re talking about luck of having good skies etc. do you just go back if it’s not, or do you ever do composites? I.e. add a good sky in post. I get that it’s better to go back, get it right in the camera etc. but sometimes it’s not an option, eg if you’re on holiday etc. My dad loved landscape photography, but in this country, the sky is often rather dull, so he had some back up negs just of good skies that he would use to make composites with negs where the sky was lacking but were good otherwise.

I’ve done the same in digital with places I’ve been on holiday and unable to return to etc.

So, just wondered if you did this/how you felt about it etc?

@ Ebi, it was very interesting to see your work, the drinks one looks completely wonderful!

[iliketag]

Wow Ebi, I’m very impressed. Not to say I thought you were just spouting jargon or anything, but I just like how simple yet elegant all of it is. Food photography has always been such a confusing subject for me; how do you nail that much color variety? how do you make something look that delicious? All these hangups kind of scared me away from it, for now. Til I can figure out off camera lighting at least! Some day I’ll get at least one good’un so I can tell myself I did :p

[ebi]

Jlui – Tuscans. they never cut their pizza. Most places do. But i like to think of a personal pizza as a meal that you eat with a fork and a knife. And also, sometimes those thin crust pizza’s don’t hold up under the weight of all those ingredients.

iliketag – It’s not always me. It has a lot to do with whomever is styling the food. I’ve come to trust a lot of restaurants that have the right aesthetic to do a great job. Sometimes they miss it though. You can really tell by the detail of the restaurant if it’s going to be styled well. Other than that it’s finding the best angle to shoot it at and, of course, the light. It’s usually indirect and often diffused. I then put black cards around the table to kind of channel the light and make it more directional. If the shadows get too deep on the shadow side, I flip the black to white. To give you an idea of the kind of light I work with this is the light that produced this image.

[Katie]

😉 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukdoK3l4aM4

lol

 

[cameraclicker]

Great movie, Katie!

[Sharra]

Thank you, ebi. You certainly know how to shoot. I hope you’ll share more.

I’ll think about putting up some shots to a throw-away Flickr page, but it may take a few days to get there.

[JLiu]

@emf – I’ve always thought about having some “stock” images of perfect skies in case the weather isn’t cooperating. You’d have to take a bunch of shots from various angles to make sure the light is correct, so that threw that idea out the window for me. I’ve been really, really lucky with the places that I visit, but I also plan with a lunar calendar for the times we travel – perhaps that has helped? I dunno.

As far as how I feel about composites – I’m honestly fenced. On one hand, you can recreate what you think the shot would look like with perfect skies. On the other hand, the shot means so much more if you’re experiencing firsthand what it actually does look like with what you’ve got. Tough choice. If I can, I just come back to the same spot later in the day and hope for the best. If it’s not there, then I’ll try to leave sky out…”Play with the hand you’re dealt” approach.

@ebi – I know…I still refuse cutlery regardless of the size of the pizza. I suppose I’m the savage. Do you get to eat any of that or do they tend to substitute a lot in the food photography you do?

[ebi]

99% of the time it’s real food and I eat it! One time I was shooting this beautiful chocolate cake and my finger got a little too close and I got chocolate on it. Instinctually I licked it off my finger and it was glue. The only reason the food stylist used glue was that we were doing and action shot with a pour and the chocolate was too thin to get the ribbonny effect we were after. The food stylists are geniuses and realize that most of the time it’s easier to simplify and try real things before getting too complicated.

[Author]

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