The Image: Well as you know I love food photography, and have had low strike rate with it. I have one blue ribbon, but the rest didn't fare so well.
I saw this image, one of only two entered by the photographer and though I would do my take on it but vary the plate and composition to make it more interesting. I am not sure if this will go doen well with the voters.
HERE IS THE ORIGINAL:
YES...I cooked the entire meal: Pork Cutlets on a bed of silverbeet with a moroccan cous cous with a balsamic reduction.
I photographed this in my usual spot using window light and a reflector. I used a 50mm 1.8 lens and decided I wanted more of the image in focus so I could decide which bits were softer in my editing.
The Edit: Levels, Curves, Colour balance, USM...a layer of Gaussian Blur with a mask to select where I wanted the softness. I cloned out some wax drops on my matte board and a tiny oil stain on the plate.
I also duplicated the layer and used Multiply and a mask to brighten the light behind the glass and add more contrast and darkness around the image.
I am still amazed at the low noise of the D300. This was shot at ISO800.
The Prediction: 6.1???? Here's hoping. I guess a lot of people could recognise this as one of mine and vote a ho-hum score. I don't think dpc likes food...
Post: As usual, another one of my food images gets a disappointing result...boo!
Statistics
Place: 69 out of 126 Avg (all users): 5.4252 Avg (commenters): 6.5000 Avg (participants): 5.5217 Avg (non-participants): 5.3704 Views since voting: 3314 Views during voting: 225 Votes: 127 Comments: 5 Favorites: 0
Enzo you know I love your food photos - I gave this a 7. I do agree with the voters though in that this one doesn't have as much impact as your usual stuff.
I love the composition and the complimentary elements (wine, cutlery etc), but I think the exposure of the meat is a bit off, and so gives the impression that the pork is undercooked. I think some ingredients do high-key well, but meat doesn't.
When I do meat photography I tend use a browning agent to make the meat look more cooked (but don't actually cook it longer, as it makes it look dried out). browning essence mixed with a bit of olive oil gives a good colour and glisten, but still leaves it edible (Angostura bitters mixed with dishwashing detergent looks better, but some people actually like to eat their food when they are finished shooting it!) I think with pork you would need to go lightly with the colour, but it still needs something.
Looks a whole lot better than what I'm expecting for diner tonight. I'm not sure whether you might have tried a different DOF, at present my eyes are pulled towards the blur around the edges as opposed to focussing on the dish.
Yup, this is completely faithful to the original, way more so than the majority of entries, and that's good in my book. And it's definitely an improvement, as well.
Unfortunately, I don't think it's particularly well done, it's just workmanlike to me in its lighting and processing. In particular, it bothers me that the white, rectangular plate is so utterly dominating the image. If this was a restaurant shot (and from the setting it looks like it probably is) then I realize you didn't have a lot of options re: dinnerware and lighting, but even so, the image just doesn't work all that well for me.
I'll give it a 6 because it is being so faithful to the challenge and it's not so bad a job either... It's just that there's so much unrealized potential here...
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