Notable Photographs: December 19th - 25th

This week's photos start and end with non-food items (although, to be fair, the first photo was taken in a restaurant) and have some delicious looking items strewn throughout the middle. I acquired an external flash this week and while flash is generally useless for photographing food (especially close up like I tend to do), I've been working to figure out the ins and outs of proper exposures with this new variable in the equation.

Our first stop this week was at Chowder House Cafe in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio. I've eaten there several times for dinner and it has always been, um, "challenging" because of the low levels of light. There are always a couple of tables that are decently lit, but fortunately for me, I didn't get one of those.

Here was a picture of the candle holder and salt and pepper shaker at my table:


I actually really like this photograph because I managed to capture the lit candle without the photograph being blown out. Are there some other surface reflections that I could've tried to tame during my visit or during post-production? Sure, but I like the organic feeling of this. This was shot on a tripod, no flash, custom white balanced against a white napkin, ISO of 100 (heeding last week's lesson on high ISO introducing too much noise), aperture of f/2.8 and a shutter speed of 8/10 of a second.

For my appetizer that evening, I decided to start with a plate of the crispy wings with scallion jalapeño chimmichurri:


Tabletop tripod, no flash, custom white balanced, ISO of 100, aperture of f/2.8, but the exposure time lengthened considerably from the first photograph to 3.2 seconds ... most probably because this picture did not contain a direct light source. I like the subtle use of narrow (but not too narrow) depth of field (DOF). The first wing is perfectly in focus and you can see light dots of light bouncing off the fatty crispy skin.

Next up we go from crispy chicken wings to juicy fried chicken at Whitehouse Chicken in Barberton, Ohio (one of the four major chicken houses):


This was shot using a tabletop tripod, no flash, custom white balance against the napkin, an ISO of 100, an aperture of f/3.5 (I had zoomed in slightly), and a shutter speed of 1.0 second. This was the first of two different meals I ate where I started to wonder that even though the pictures were well exposed and reflected the actual lighting levels in the restaurants whether it would make sense to adjust the brightness slightly in order to make it more appealing to web readers. The photos from this visit I left alone.

But the photos from the next day at Beijing Garden in Twinsburg, Ohio, I definitely lightened slightly. Here was a large soup bowl of steamed tofu, shrimp, bok choi and noodles in broth:


I like how the noodles and other ingredients break the surface of the soup, thus giving it some three dimensionality. This was done with an ISO of 100, shutter speed of 1/2 second and an aperture of f/2.8. While I personally didn't mind the original, the lightened version does give the picture slightly better depth.

One of the other appetizers we had during this meal was a plate of Dan Dan Noodles:


This was done with an ISO of 100, aperture of f/2.8, and a shutter speed of 1.0 second. I'm not sure why this one took twice as long as the previous, but my guess is that there is less white in this picture. Either way, I think the picture came out quite well.

The final meal of this week was at Taste of Bangkok in Akron, Ohio. Oddly, when I went to custom white balance against my napkin, it looked like it had worked, but when I took my first two photographs of the menu, they came out surprisingly yellow. Re-balancing seemed to fix the yellow problem, but every other photo I took that evening had an annoying "blue" tint to it. Here was my bowl of Tom Kha Gai (chicken coconut soup):


The only thing I did in post-processing was to add a little more warmth to the photograph in order to try and minimize the "iciness" of its look. This was actually shot free-hand using an ISO of 100, an aperture of f/2.8, and a shutter speed of 1/5 of a second. Of course, I was able to brace both arms up against my table to steady my shot, which is why it came out as well as it did. I would've tried re-balancing a third time to minimize the blue, but my food was coming out fast and furious out of the kitchen and I wanted to make sure I tried it while it was still hot.

The final two pictures are not of food, but a study in lighting using natural light and my new flash (the Canon 430EX II for those of you who care). On Christmas Eve, I attended the evening services at my mother's church. Fortunately, when I arrived, the candles had been lit and the lights dimmed.

I took two pictures of the decked-out altar. First, natural light only:


This was hand-held, using an ISO of 800 (!), an aperture of f/3.5, and a shutter speed of 1/10 of a second. I had started out at an ISO of 100, but the shutter speed would've been way too long for a hand-held shot. Since I don't have a floor-standing tripod yet, I had to "wing" it. While decently sharp, I know that a tripod, longer exposure time and lower ISO would've given me an even better resulting image. I also realize (and I realized it at the time I took it) that I could probably crop out the darkened poinsettias at the bottom of the photograph and tighten it up a bit.

Which is why I decided to attempt some fill flash to bring out the detail in the forefront:


I dropped the ISO back down to 100, opened up the aperture to f/2.8, and initially set the flash to fire at 1/4 of its full strength. I initially started off with a very fast shutter speed (1/125 of a second), but it kept being underexposed. As I slowed down the shutter speed, it did get brighter. I eventually took the flash to 1/2 full strength, set the shutter speed to 1/5 of a second and changed the flash so that it did 2nd curtain instead of 1st (the flash went off just before the shutter closed instead of right after it opened). I also used the wide panel on the flash to diffuse the light slightly. Even with that, there is a reflection on the altar that I don't particularly care for.

I succeeded in lighting the front of the image, but much of the richness from the lights and the stained glass is reduced. I actually like the first picture a little better. It feels more "Christmas Night" waiting for Santa Claus (or the celebration of the birth of Jesus, I suppose given the setting) to arrive. Which do you like better? Any suggestions for improvements?

I just wanted to wish anyone reading this entry a happy holiday season and a wonderful new year!

Notable Photographs: December 12th - 18th

This week's photos were a mixed bag. I am finding myself becoming more consistent with my technique as I learn how each feature of the camera either adds or detracts from the final picture. Prior to this week, were I to be indoors or especially in a situation with low lighting, I would've immediately cranked the ISO setting on my camera to 400 or 800, even with the tabletop tripod. I was sad to discover (because it wasn't until after I got home and started looking more closely at the pictures in the GIMP) that several of the food photos I took at Happy Dog in Cleveland, while in-focus, had a lot of noise because of the high ISO. The thing is, I could've cut the ISO by a quarter and compensated by lengthening my shutter speed by four and I would've gotten much nicer photos. Lesson learned.

But let's start off with two photos I took last weekend during "Snowmageddon." I had the opportunity to be holed up with my grandmother at her condo, so the first photo is of a dinner I made for us, sliced and fanned pork chops over green cabbage and caramelized onions and salted buttered noodles:


I took this picture using the tripod, no flash, an aperture of f/2.8, shutter speed of 1/10 of a second, and an ISO of 400. I also applied a custom white balance because if I hadn't, the photograph would've taken on an unnatural blue tint from the overhead lighting. I like the fact that you can see the juiciness of the pork slice. I probably should've used a smaller aperture to keep the noodles on the back of the plate in focus, too.

During that snowstorm, I also made a huge pot of roasted butternut squash soup:


This was in the exact same lighting as the pork dish above, with tripod, no flash, aperture of f/2.8, shutter speed of 1/15 of a second, and an ISO of 400. This, too, was custom white balanced off of a white napkin. Overall, I like this picture. The front of the bowl is slightly out of focus, but the main part, the soup, along with the sprig of chervil in the middle, are nicely focused. Were I doing this professionally, I probably wouldn't have used the white Corelle dishes my grandmother owned, instead picking something a little more warm to match the mood of the soup.

Next up we move to a mid-week dinner at Happy Dog in Cleveland. I was almost giddy with excitement when I walked through the door to discover a VERY dimly lit bar. After seating myself at the counter and getting my pint of stout, I spent a considerable amount of time trying to get the best shot:


This was taken using manual focus (it was too dark for the autofocus to work properly), no flash, tripod, an ISO of 800, an aperture of f/2.8, and a shutter speed of 1.3 seconds. I had nothing to use for a custom white balance (no napkins), so I used one of the presets that seemed to be the most natural. For being as dark as it was in the bar, I think the picture actually came out really well, if not a bit too overexposed at the top. This was the first picture where I realized later on that I could've gone from ISO 800 -> ISO 200 and made the shutter speed 5 seconds instead of 1.3 to help reduce the noise.

This next photo was also from Happy Dog and was my vegetarian Italian sausage sandwich:


This was done using the tripod, custom white balanced off of my napkin, an aperture of f/3.2 (I had zoomed in slightly to fill the frame), an ISO of 800 and a shutter speed of 0.6 seconds. When I got home and looked at the photo, the noise became quite apparent. Again, had I dropped the ISO from 800 -> 200 and taken the shutter speed from 0.6 -> 2.5 seconds ... or even better, dropped the ISO from 800 -> 100 and cranked up the shutter speed to a whopping 5 seconds, I could've eliminated a lot of the noise I had to attempt to remove in the GIMP during post-processing. I am digging the amount of detail I am now getting, but my technique needs to be more fine tuned.

Towards the end of the week, I decided to have dinner at another notoriously dimly lit restaurant, Chowder House Cafe. After being seated and doing a custom white balance off of my napkin, I started by taking a snapshot of the menu:


Now, 0ne thing I have kind of figured out is that because I am holding the camera for menu photographs (instead of using the tripod) and because I'm not trying to capture the richness of actual food, it doesn't really matter too much if there is noise in the photo. In order to keep the blur low, I have to use much shorter shutter speeds. To compensate in this case, I jacked up the ISO to a whopping 1600, set the aperture to f/5.6 and the shutter speed to a 1/4 second (with anti-shake turned on). I would've taken the aperture to the smallest setting (f/8.0), but I didn't really want to jack the ISO up to the camera's highest setting of 3200.

Part of learning my lesson from Happy Dog was to see if I could actually take the photos at an ISO setting of 100 given that I would be using a tripod and long shutter speeds. First up was a picture of my table setting tonight:


One of the things that has always challenged me is taking a photograph when there is a light source in it (as opposed to reflected light). This small candle sitting in front of the salt and pepper shaker made a nice study in capturing the likeness without allowing the flame to blow out the picture. This was done on a tripod, custom white balanced against my napkin, ISO of 100, aperture of f/2.8, and a shutter speed of 8/10 of a second. I also took one with a slightly shorter shutter speed which yielded a darker photograph, but this was the one I thought better represented what I actually experienced tonight.

For my appetizer, I selected the chicken wings with jalapeño scallion chimichurri:


Again, no tripod, custom white balance, an aperture of f/2.8, ISO of 100 and a shutter speed of 3.2 seconds (much higher than the last photo because this photograph contained no light sources, just light reflections). I took just this one shot from this angle and I think it came out beautifully. The skin appears crispy, you can see the sauce underneath and the chimichurri on top of each wing. I am quite happy with the results of this photograph. Clearly, the pitfalls of the Happy Dog were noted, learned from, and applied to the next time I came across the situation.

That's all for this week. What do you think? Suggestions for improvement?

Notable Photographs: December 5th - 11th

For this week's photographs, I decided to include some successes and some misses. I feel its important to highlight both as a way to learn what is working for me and focusing on how I can improve the shots that need it.

I recently discovered a local Akron cupcakery (is that a word?) that is making lower calorie treats using organic ingredients and whole wheat pastry flour. Interested, I stopped by in order to find out more.

After introducing myself and asking permission, I took a few shots around the front of the store. Here was a shot of one of the cases:


This photograph was taken with no flash, an aperture of f/8.0, 1/13 second shutter speed, and an ISO of 400. I did end up sharpening the photo one tick in Picasa. I chose an f-stop of 8.0 to maximize the depth-of-field. The only downside to the photo is the light reflections. I'm actually looking forward to receiving both a lens adapter and a polarizing light filter for a holiday gift that will hopefully do quite a bit to minimize those reflections.

I also managed to take a couple close-up snapshots of the cupcakes I bought today:


This was taken with no flash, custom white balance, aperture setting of f/8.0, shutter speed of 1/2 second, ISO of 200, and using a tripod. I actually took several shots of this at different exposure levels. I was concerned that the white swirly cream would get lost in the white background, but I think it actually came out quite well as the two colors are definitely discernible.

My other favorite was a chocolate cupcake with white frosting and rainbow jimmies (aka "sprinkles"):


This photograph used the same settings as the last one, so I won't belabor the point by writing them again. The thing I love about this photo is the clarity of the sprinkles. I really think it makes the photo "pop," if you will. Additionally, the imperfections in the piped frosting and how they catch the light also interest me.

Moving on to a different venue, I was a little surprised at how the pictures came out at a local restaurant:


This photograph was taken in a dimly lit bar with no flash using a tripod, custom white balanced against a napkin, ISO of 200 to minimize noise, shutter speed of 1/2 second, and an aperture of f/2.8 in order to emphasize a shallow depth-of-field. After being cropped and resized, the image was lightened a few ticks in Picasa. What surprised me about this image was that the light meter inside my camera indicated that this was a properly exposed photograph. At the same time though, I found the original too be too dark. Even lightened in post-production, I find the image to be a bit dark. I didn't want to lighten it beyond this for fear of introducing noise and washing out the rich colors. Any thoughts?

At another restaurant I ate at this week, I had better luck with ambient lighting and while the images aren't well-lit, they aren't nearly as dark as the previous photo. Here was a shot of my composed salad:


This was taken using the tripod and no flash, an ISO of 400, an aperture of f/5.0, and a shutter speed of 1/4 second. I wanted to keep the depth-of-field mid-range so that I captured the detail at the front of the plate as well as the rear. The photo was not lightened in Picasa at all. While I think the photo is a bit dark, it also really does capture the lighting in the restaurant as well. I think I'm beginning to get a little gun shy about lightening my photographs too much in order to make them appear brighter than they really are. One, that wasn't the experience at the restaurant. Two, too much lightening and I'll introduce noise and a washing out of the colors.

Here was a shot of my entree for the evening:


This was taken using the exact same settings as the photo above. While I think it would've looked more alluring under better lighting conditions, this was how the food appeared to me in the restaurant. I'm happy with the photo, especially the detail.

I received a shipment of pomegranate juice from POM Wonderful this week. I hope to feature them on the food blog in several recipes. Here was a deliberately composed shot featuring four of the ruby red beauties:


This was taken in my grandmother's kitchen which has a notoriously bad yellow tinge from the overhead florescent lights. After custom white balancing, I think the image came out rather well, although the area in the lower right portion of the image came out a lot whiter than I had hoped. This was shot using a tripod, ISO of 200, aperture setting of f/2.8 (for narrow depth-of-field), and a shutter speed of 1/6 of a second.

For the final photograph of the post, I thought I'd include something food-related, but not specifically a food photo, a nighttime exposure to a local Mexican restaurant:


In an attempt to capture more detail, I actually stopped down the exposure by reducing the aperture (thus increasing the f-stop) and then tried to capture additional detail by using the flash in a "fill" scenario. This was an f-stop of 4.5, shutter speed of 1/13 of a second, custom white balanced against the lit snow, and an ISO of 800. My primary goal was to take a handheld picture of a night scene, so I increased the ISO so that I could reduce the shutter speed in order to minimize blur. Interestingly, the white specks were not noise, but reflections from the falling snow. The flash definitely filled in some of the detail that would've otherwise been missed, but I'm not entirely happy with the resulting photo. Notice the washed out roadside sign at the rear/top of the photo. Any thoughts on ways to improve the shot?

Second Chances

Writing a food blog can be a time consuming task. Besides the actual visit to the restaurant where I will spend anywhere from thirty minutes to three hours experiencing and photographing my meal, I will then spend roughly another hour processing the photographs so that they are blog-worthy and then another hour writing up the copy to tell the story of my visit. Often times, I will split the task of processing my photographs and writing the copy for separate days.

If I have had a particularly busy week, the numbers of days between the two tasks can grow uncomfortably large. After about a week or two, specific details become fuzzy and I start to lose the ability to describe my meal with the accuracy it deserves other than to say, "It was good." or "I enjoyed the salad dressing." If too much time goes by, I am willing to simply discard the blog post and pictures that I had started and re-visit the restaurant for another experience.

This is exactly what happened to a local Chinese/Japanese/Thai restaurant in the Fairlawn, Ohio area. Because the initial experience was so positive, I decided to return for a second visit and re-try a number of the dishes I had eaten during my first visit. Fortunately, I still had my uploaded photographs from my first visit that I could compare with the new round. I realized that the original photographs were some of the last I had taken with my previous camera, the HTC Incredible.

Here is the original shot of the green tea pot and cup, modified heavily in Picasa to be usable:


Because of the darkness in the restaurant, I had jacked up the ISO to about 1250, the maximum my phone would allow. The noise in the photograph is obvious. To say that the cup of green tea in this photograph makes me want one for my very own would be stretching it.

Compare it to today's photograph of the same thing:


Taken using a tabletop tripod, THIS is a cup of tea that appeals to me. No flash with a light source from the tungsten bulb overhead, I used an ISO of 400, f/2.8 for my aperture, and 1/10 of a second for the shutter speed. I also did a custom white balance off of my white paper napkin. Other than cropping and resizing the image, nothing else has been done to it. I love how the aperture allowed for a lovely narrow DOF (depth of field).

For my main entrée today, I re-ordered the shredded pork and pickle noodle soup. Here was the original photo from my first visit:


I broke the cardinal rule of thumb for filming food in an actual restaurant: I used the flash in order to attempt to get a better photo. Fortunately, no one was near me, so no one was inconvenienced by the flash of light. But, while I managed to capture some of the solid items in the bowl, unfortunately, the tiny globules of fat floating on the soup's surface turned into a thousand tiny mirrors, directly reflecting the light back to the sensor. Looking at that photograph, it would appear that the broth is light and clear. Not so.

Here is the photograph I took today:


Wow! What a difference. In addition to lowering the angle at which I took the picture, it is clear that the soup is actually a rich, dark brown color. I used exactly the same camera settings as the green tea photograph above: tabletop tripod, no flash, ISO 400, f/2.8, 1/10 of a second for shutter speed. Whereas the first photo makes me not want to even taste the soup, the second one (at least I feel it does) engages me and makes me want to lift soup spoon and chopsticks.

The G12 is a pretty darn amazing camera and I'm starting to understand what my beginning photography instructor has been telling us during our time together: Visualize the shot you want to take and then use the camera to make it happen. I realize not every photograph will be a winner, but as you can see from just two of the photos I took at lunch today, apparently I've already internalized some of this concept.

Feedback is always welcome.

So What's My Story?

My story is actually fairly simple: I want to be able to take the best pictures of food possible with the photographic equipment that I have.

So what's the catch?

The catch is that I am a also a self-professed restaurant critic. Generally speaking, the pictures I take of food are part of a restaurant review that will make it up to my companion site, Exploring Food My Way. While one would think taking pictures of food in restaurants wouldn't be too difficult, when you factor in that often times the lighting inside of restaurants is more conducive to romance and intimacy rather than showing the food off in the best light, it can be quite difficult to get a usable picture with a proper exposure. Additionally, since at the very least the first review of a restaurant's food is usually anonymous, I try to keep it that way by taking quick, discreet photos. No flash photography and no food re-styling. I want to stay true to the food as it arrives at my table, but at the same time, I want to make sure I am taking the best picture I can.

While pictures have been part of my other blog since its inception, only recently have I decided to get serious about the photography as well. I started out taking pictures with the camera on my G1 Android phone. The only post-production work I did was to crop the images down to 800x600 for display on the web using the open-source tool, GIMP. In mid 2009, I discovered the Google Picasa tool. This allowed me to not only storyboard my photographs, but I also began playing around with simple adjustments to the photos, such as color correction and brightness.

In May 2010, I upgraded to the HTC Incredible phone, which not only gave me more megapixels to work with, but also a flash on the phone plus pre-set white balance and ISO selection. While this definitely made an improvement, my biggest problem was that neither the G1 nor the Incredible could automatically focus if the lighting was too dark ... even WITH the flash on the Incredible. That sowed the seed in my brain to start actually considering getting a real camera instead of relying on my cellphone to do the brunt of the work. While the cellphone was great because it was always with me, the failure to capture images in moderately dark restaurant spaces proved to be its severe limitation.

Over the course of the summer of 2010, I bought a few camera magazines hoping to find some appropriate contenders for consideration. What I found was a confusing array of choices without really knowing what criteria I should be using for making a selection. I thought that going with a DSLR was the way to go, but the high prices and the fact that pretty much every DSLR would be hard to use in a restaurant setting if anonymity was my main goal kept them from serious consideration. I focused my efforts on the "point and shoot" models, but never really found anything that really seemed worthwhile.

Finally about six months ago, I came across a listing for the new Nikon D3100 DSLR selling at Best Buy for $700. This included not only the body, but also a basic lens. Despite the size, I was fairly convinced that this was my next step forward. It was during a conversation with a college friend, Rob, that I discovered an alternative. Apparently, one of Rob's friends had been using a Canon PowerShot G11 and taking some very impressive pictures. Rob mentioned that he thought Canon had come out with a new model, the G12. Figuring it couldn't hurt to check it out, I pulled up a review on the web and discovered a powerhouse of a camera for only $500 instead of $700. The fact that it wasn't a DSLR was also a plus in my book as it could be used a bit more discreetly.

The final fact that sealed the deal for me was when I read that the G12 did very well in low light situations AND could focus on a subject as little as 0.4 inches away. Since food photography up to this point was all about taking close-ups of food in low light situations, it occurred to me that this might be the perfect camera for my needs. I went to Best Buy to check it out and walked out with a brand new camera, a SD card for storage, and a carrying case to hold both. This was on a Tuesday about six weeks ago.

Two days later, the thought occurred to me that if I was going to plop down $500+ for a camera and accessories, perhaps I should look into taking a class on photography to help me get the most out of my camera. I googled "digital photography class akron" and found a link to the Continuing Education program at the University of Akron. Apparently, my timing was perfect as a beginner photography class was scheduled to start the next Tuesday and run for six weeks. Although the six week class wasn't terribly cheap at $149, I decided that it would be worth the fee, if for no other reason than it would give me access to someone who could answer my questions.

What I found opened my eyes.

Like most people, I had been letting the camera make all of the decisions for me. "Just put it on automatic," had been my mantra for the last two years. Suddenly, I now had the ability to choose exactly how I wanted to compose and shoot my photographs. I could choose the ISO speed, the aperture setting, the shutter speed, and the white balance. And each of these affected the outcome of the photograph I took. The manual that came with my camera was 214 pages long. I poured over it on a daily basis (and still do), learning something new every day. Since my primary use of the camera was for food photography, I had to figure out what was and what was not applicable from the manual.

Combined with the twelve hours of coursework, I have gone from doing everything in "automatic" mode, to first aperture controlled, then shutter speed controlled, and finally to fully manual mode on my camera. I've learned about custom white balance, metering method, fill flash (for taking pictures of lit signs outside of restaurants), to more effectively using the post-production image software I've been employing since the start of my food blog.

I now realize that there is so much to learn about taking effective photographs given my self-imposed limitations. My goal for this blog is to post every now and again about information that I learn along the way. I intend to post photos for analysis and judgment, and I hope to pass along some tips to those who might be just now be realizing that their camera might not be making the best settings decisions for them. I invite you to join me on this interesting journey.