This is the review post of the third week of our Food Photography 101 series, in Nika’s words.
As was previously the case, several people contributed their results to the Food Photo 101 flickr pool.
This week’s contributors were:
- Curt
- LaRecetteDuJour
- NJYar
- Big Mill BB
As you remember from this last Tuesday’s post “FP101-3: Depth of Field”, we have been exploring Depth of Field (DOF).
Once you get the hang of it, playing with the focal plane and DOF can be fun and it can lend a whole new dimension to your images, literally.
It is used quite a lot in food photography, especially in cookbooks where food shots can be especially pornalicious and artistic. The shallow DOF can be used to focus the viewer’s attention on a particularly delicious morsel, boosting the appeal.
It can also be used excessively in some cases and some people just plain do not like it. My mom, who is an artist herself, doesn’t respond well to those photos of mine which have a shallow DOF. When asked, she can’t really articulate why she doesn’t like it but she knows that its not a style she likes. This is fine, there are many ways to communicate your vision.
If you do not like this shallow DOF style, leave a comment explaining why.
I look forward to hearing your feelings on this subject!
Lets take a look first at what Curt offered this last Thursday and then the other contributors.
Curt’s Christmas images
I have a feeling that if Curt came to visit our house around Christmas he would feel that our place is barren of holiday cheer! It sounds like he and his go enthusiastically whole hog and make it a big do :-). We have a 1 year and a 4 year old who both would love to pull it all down (not to mention the 5 cats) so we are thinking of a mini-tree or the time honored festivus pole (winks).
Leaving all THAT aside, Curt has shared a whole panel of photos of one of his Christmas, um, critters (?) – elves, yeah.


LaRecetteDuJou
This time LaRecetteDuJour sent us several shots of a bowl of pears lit from behind by a window.

Big Mill BB
Chloe from the Big Mill B&B offers several shots of sliced lemons with varying f-number.

njyar
These images of an interesting tea pot and glass are rich in color and texture.

A few more from this weekend from me
These days, my husband’s work is taking him into Manhattan on the weekends so we are car-less and a bit cabin-crazy. I had this hankering for saltines but didn’t have any so I found a recipe for them and spent two days making homemade saltine crackers. I will blog in more detail about it later but I wanted to share a couple of shots that I made with my Canon 30D (50mm 1.4) and my fujifilm camera that use a shallow DOF.





Thanks to everyone for their contributions!
Clearly it is possible to get a shallow DOF with the P&S, as we have seen with all of the above photos. I think everyone did an excellent job of experimenting with their cameras.
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I will add a link to the top of this post soon that will give you access to a PDF version of this post. Will be doing the same for 101-2 and 101-3 lessons.
Related Posts:
- FP101-3: Depth of Field – Curt’s Results
- FP101-3: Depth of Field
- Food Photo 101-2: Week 2 in review
- Food Photo 101-2: Photonic Inspirations
- Food Photo 101-2: Curts Results
- Food Photo 101-2: Harnessing Photons
- FP101-1: Week 1 in review
- Food Photo 101: Photography for Foodies
- Food Photo 101-1
- Food Photography 101: Lesson 1 results
Class Resources
- My Food Photo 101 page
- Nika’s Food Photo 101 page
- Food Photo 101 Class Forum
- Food Photo 101 Glossary
- Food Photo 101 Flickr Group
- Food Photo 101 Newsletters
To register for the newsletter that reviews each week’s topic, fill out the contact form at the bottom of this post (or on the Food Photo 101 page) and type “Food Photo 101” in the subject field.