181. Food - November 27-December 3, 2016
Don-
Don is taking a sabbatical, a break, a much needed respite from the pressures of the WPOTM. Or possibly he was so captivated by his FOOD theme that he is too busy stuffing his face to snap the shutter. Who knows? But we do know he will be watching the rest of us and we hope he may occasionally contribute again. - The WPOTM team.
Don is taking a sabbatical, a break, a much needed respite from the pressures of the WPOTM. Or possibly he was so captivated by his FOOD theme that he is too busy stuffing his face to snap the shutter. Who knows? But we do know he will be watching the rest of us and we hope he may occasionally contribute again. - The WPOTM team.
Byron,
I decided to shoot tiny food. This is a single wheat chex. It is addorned with milk & honey. I felt that gave it some legitimacy. Very Biblical. I used my bellows with an enlarging lens attached. The lighting consisted of 2 strobes. the top one fitted with a Byro-snoot. The second one was diffused from the side.
F11, 1/100 sec, both strobes at 1/4 power.
I decided to shoot tiny food. This is a single wheat chex. It is addorned with milk & honey. I felt that gave it some legitimacy. Very Biblical. I used my bellows with an enlarging lens attached. The lighting consisted of 2 strobes. the top one fitted with a Byro-snoot. The second one was diffused from the side.
F11, 1/100 sec, both strobes at 1/4 power.
Kevin-
Can a Martini be considered to be a food?
Okay, here is the story. A terrific Iowa-based, employee-owned grocery store chain called HyVee entered the Twin Cities market this year. Personally I haven’t caught much of their television advertising, though I understand there is a lot of it on the air. But last weekend when I was in Iowa for Thanksgiving I finally saw one of their spots. This commercial was for HyVee's wine, beer and liquor and all of the products and accessories where shot against pure black. Very graphic!. When I saw the images I immediately thought that style (but with food) could make a terrific WPOTM theme. Then Don decided to make this week’s theme FOOD. Oh well.
So I decided that I will have to delay that theme until another time, but I also decided that at least I would try photographing a Martini in that HyVee style that I saw. Wait you might wonder, a Martini is a drink, not a food! What I say is that with a little piece of lemon on the rim of the glass, and with an olive being dropped into that glass (creating a nice splash) there is stuff to eat, so it’s a food. I should also note that rather than making a real Martini with vermouth and gin, which I would never drink, I simply used water.
Of course I am such a master at lighting glassware (the preceding line is an obvious lie), I thought "Why not make things even more difficult?” So I positioned the Martini glass on a sheet of clear plexi, and shot it from below.
I placed a couple of sawhorses on a table to get the set-up to a height where I could at least position my noggin near the floor below the camera to frame and focus. Two Nikon SB-900 flash units were bounced off of two 8’x8’ V-flats The Nikon flash units have much shorter flash durations than studio strobes, especially when set to 1/8th power. That short flash duration was needed to capture the splash from the dropping olive. I climbed a ladder again and again, dropping the olive with my right hand, and triggering the camera with my left hand via wireless remote.
Nikon D4s on a Manfrotto 055CXPRO4 tripod with a Acratech GP ballhead. 105mm f/2.8 Micro Nikkor lens. ISO 400, f/22 @ 1/250th of a second (flash sync).
Can a Martini be considered to be a food?
Okay, here is the story. A terrific Iowa-based, employee-owned grocery store chain called HyVee entered the Twin Cities market this year. Personally I haven’t caught much of their television advertising, though I understand there is a lot of it on the air. But last weekend when I was in Iowa for Thanksgiving I finally saw one of their spots. This commercial was for HyVee's wine, beer and liquor and all of the products and accessories where shot against pure black. Very graphic!. When I saw the images I immediately thought that style (but with food) could make a terrific WPOTM theme. Then Don decided to make this week’s theme FOOD. Oh well.
So I decided that I will have to delay that theme until another time, but I also decided that at least I would try photographing a Martini in that HyVee style that I saw. Wait you might wonder, a Martini is a drink, not a food! What I say is that with a little piece of lemon on the rim of the glass, and with an olive being dropped into that glass (creating a nice splash) there is stuff to eat, so it’s a food. I should also note that rather than making a real Martini with vermouth and gin, which I would never drink, I simply used water.
Of course I am such a master at lighting glassware (the preceding line is an obvious lie), I thought "Why not make things even more difficult?” So I positioned the Martini glass on a sheet of clear plexi, and shot it from below.
I placed a couple of sawhorses on a table to get the set-up to a height where I could at least position my noggin near the floor below the camera to frame and focus. Two Nikon SB-900 flash units were bounced off of two 8’x8’ V-flats The Nikon flash units have much shorter flash durations than studio strobes, especially when set to 1/8th power. That short flash duration was needed to capture the splash from the dropping olive. I climbed a ladder again and again, dropping the olive with my right hand, and triggering the camera with my left hand via wireless remote.
Nikon D4s on a Manfrotto 055CXPRO4 tripod with a Acratech GP ballhead. 105mm f/2.8 Micro Nikkor lens. ISO 400, f/22 @ 1/250th of a second (flash sync).
Paul-
Great googly moogly, Don! This is one of those themes that you would allow you to send 364 days—heck, maybe even a year—in planning, setting up and taking terrific photographs. Like all of you, I’m guessing, I ran all sorts of fun and creative ideas by and got a little frustrated at the thought of only being allowed to submit one. So, as is my wont, I decided to do with something whimsical and take a path a little different (I hope) from what everyone else might choose.
Based on WPOTM year 1, no. 24 theme (“Bird”), you guys probably know I’m fascinated with Origami. I started teaching it to myself in junior high while hiding out in the school library—the super-secret haven from bullies everywhere. (Well, I guess it’s not a secret now...)
I folded three types of birds (and not terribly well) out of different color paper, and then got some sunflower seeds for the “food” theme. Some shells I crushed, some I didn’t. I was going to shoot this in my nano-studio but, duh, I realized an outdoor shot would be more fun with and obviously appropriate.
Something to chew on: Nikon D5200. 3:13 afternoon sun. 18-55mm lens set at 42mm; ISO 400; 1/250sec. at f/11; aperture priority; Auto WB; matrix metering. The camera was set on a little table-top tripod so the front-most part of the lens was about 7” off the ground.
Note: As much for experimentation than desired effect, I set the Active-D lighting to AUTO. I wasn’t sure if the sunlight was excessive and would blow out detail between highlight and shadow. (The paper is bright/slightly reflective and I was wondering if I’d lose some of the detail in the shadowed area of the tree trunk.) Frankly, I have no idea if it was necessary, or if I lost a stop as a result of the setting. I also read that a program like Lightroom won’t recognize Active-D data when working on a RAW file. You need to use a Nikon-specific editor (e.g. Capture NX 2), or work on a JPEG file as a fall back. Man, do I still have a lot to learn.
Great googly moogly, Don! This is one of those themes that you would allow you to send 364 days—heck, maybe even a year—in planning, setting up and taking terrific photographs. Like all of you, I’m guessing, I ran all sorts of fun and creative ideas by and got a little frustrated at the thought of only being allowed to submit one. So, as is my wont, I decided to do with something whimsical and take a path a little different (I hope) from what everyone else might choose.
Based on WPOTM year 1, no. 24 theme (“Bird”), you guys probably know I’m fascinated with Origami. I started teaching it to myself in junior high while hiding out in the school library—the super-secret haven from bullies everywhere. (Well, I guess it’s not a secret now...)
I folded three types of birds (and not terribly well) out of different color paper, and then got some sunflower seeds for the “food” theme. Some shells I crushed, some I didn’t. I was going to shoot this in my nano-studio but, duh, I realized an outdoor shot would be more fun with and obviously appropriate.
Something to chew on: Nikon D5200. 3:13 afternoon sun. 18-55mm lens set at 42mm; ISO 400; 1/250sec. at f/11; aperture priority; Auto WB; matrix metering. The camera was set on a little table-top tripod so the front-most part of the lens was about 7” off the ground.
Note: As much for experimentation than desired effect, I set the Active-D lighting to AUTO. I wasn’t sure if the sunlight was excessive and would blow out detail between highlight and shadow. (The paper is bright/slightly reflective and I was wondering if I’d lose some of the detail in the shadowed area of the tree trunk.) Frankly, I have no idea if it was necessary, or if I lost a stop as a result of the setting. I also read that a program like Lightroom won’t recognize Active-D data when working on a RAW file. You need to use a Nikon-specific editor (e.g. Capture NX 2), or work on a JPEG file as a fall back. Man, do I still have a lot to learn.
Jerry-
A fridge full of food and none of it particularly exciting to me. Hmm, how about dog food? So I chose to torture our Sam with a handful of his favorite things. If he got close enough to my hand to be in good focus, I was in danger of getting a good nip. So I kept the dog in the distance and focused on the food. This was in my north light studio (kitchen with sliding doors facing north onto the deck) and I was using the A6300 with 16-50 zoomed to 50mm, 1/60 @ f11, ISO 12,800. Food was held with the left hand, camera with the right.
A fridge full of food and none of it particularly exciting to me. Hmm, how about dog food? So I chose to torture our Sam with a handful of his favorite things. If he got close enough to my hand to be in good focus, I was in danger of getting a good nip. So I kept the dog in the distance and focused on the food. This was in my north light studio (kitchen with sliding doors facing north onto the deck) and I was using the A6300 with 16-50 zoomed to 50mm, 1/60 @ f11, ISO 12,800. Food was held with the left hand, camera with the right.