Time for another food photo feedback. Help a fellow reader improve their photography. How would you improve this photo.
If you’d like to get feedback or critique on your food photos, please email me at neel[at]learnfoodphotography[dot]com
Vegetable Cutlet Photos
This week’s feedback request comes from Ayeesha Riaz from Taste of Pearl city. Here are more details about the photo:
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Background
Recently just one month back I got a Nikon D3100, with which I’m struggling a bit now. I have attached two pictures of vegetable cutlets.
The Goal
The main aim of my picture is to make my food appealing and show the right colour and texture of the food, which almost every food blogger would aim for.
Technical Details
I took the picture according to the user manual instructions for close up shots.
| White Balance | Auto |
| Flash | Off |
| ISO | 100 |
| Aperture | 5.6 |
| Exposure Compensation | +0.1 |
Also the picture was taken in a bright day light, near my open glass window. I didn’t use any white board to diffuse the light.
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What do you think?
Now that you know more about the photo, tell us how you would improve this photo? What would you change? Also tell us what you like about it or what are the strengths that you are seeing? Share your thoughts.
The biggest thing I would change in the above image is the composition. I would either adjust the angle of the camera slightly or crop the image to remove the horizontal line across the top of the image. That line distracts me – I keep looking at it and wondering what it is instead of looking at the vegetable cutlet. Also, moving the focus of the image off center would make it more interesting. Maybe you could move the cutlet lower and to the right in the frame and move the wine glass closer so that it appears in the upper left of the frame and more of it is visible. The logical/traditional arrangement of dishes on a table is not always the most pleasing balance in a photograph.
Ayeesha, I feel the colors in the image are working against your food presentation. Everything is extremely vibrant…the linens,lettuce,lemon, and bright white of the plate overpower the cutlet. I copied & cropped it, showing just a hint of the salad in the back, and cutting just under the lemon wedge so that you loose all the empty plate in the foreground. Right away the vegetable cutlets become the hero of the shot. I would love to see the interior of the recipe, and see you try this shot with a less formal presentation. Maybe one leaning on the other, with a break to see the textures inside. A couple of things to look for when out selecting props: short wine glasses that will let you see part of the bowl when next to your plate, and white plates that have a little tone and warmth to them. Bright whites tend to blow out with open light and can sometimes look cold, slightly warmer whites will still appear white, but hold more definition in your image.
Thanks for sharing your work with us!
Paula
http://www.chicagophotostylist.com
blogging at http://www.stilllifestyle.com
Hello, I like the photo and the dish looks really appetizing. I think you did great job on the front two thirds of the image. The one thing that bothers me a lot is the background. The white balance is OK on the plate, but the background falls into shadow, I suppose, and renders it unpleasantly yellowish. Also, judging by the end of the table, your horizont is tilted a little bit- easy fix in Lightroom or Photoshop. And I can see the end of your napkin or whatever you placed on the table, I find it really distracting. I think this particular setup could use more overhead angle to hide those distracting elements- or tighter crop?
Neel, I admire your enterprise going to the trouble of taking this food photos and if you keep going you may get there. Unfortunately if I being asked to judge this as a food photo it has just about everything wrong.
1. Food photography is primarily about taking photos of food that make people hungry. This fails completely in this photo. You have chosen a difficult subject. I used to photograph all the breaded Birdseye breaded products for years. The one thing it should not look is tired and soaked in oil like yours does unfortunately. Breaded food needs to look light and textured. Black bits in the crumb are out because this indicates the oil it was cooked in was contaminated, if they are bits of herb then they should look like bits of herb. Pips in lemon are usually avoided because who like to eat pips. We remove them and refill the gap or use photoshop to remove them.
The food arrangement is bizarre. Who on earth would cut a round of bread, I think it is, arrange a skirt of lettuce, add a slice of tomato then 2 heavy looking breaded objects on top. Again who would put a blob of ketchup and 2 tiny slices of radish unless its for kids in which case at least make the ketchup blob have nice appetising swirls. The use of 2 different extremes of curly lettuce is also very strange and my eye goes straight to the large curly lettuce on the left.
2. Composition. To have a food shot which has 1/3 of the image taken up with a white heavily lit plate is vey odd unless it has been taken for a magazine page which requires a white foreground for type to go over. This is meant to be a food shot not a plate shot. In food photography it is normal practice to bring food forward on the plate to avoid this problem. There is no point putting reddish breaded food against red napkins. This stops any form of separation at all of the food. Why is there a knife & fork sticking out of the back of the food. I know its not but the diagonal shape of the cutlery is very off putting. What is the piece of fly away lettuce doing in the bowl behind. Is that yellow pepper in the middle. A bowl of salad should look light with different shapes mixing together. Why is there an empty plate in the background. Has this person been let down? If you are going to see the edge of the table don’t make it a black line as it is at the moment. Taking that there is absolutely nothing going on in the background which is helping the photo it would be much better to take it right out of focus and bring the attention back onto the food
3. Lighting. Nobody lights food from the from front 3/4 and the reason is that food require texture. If you light from the front-ish you loose texture which is why older female celebrities like this type of lighting. Move the light more sideways and use card reflectors to fill in. You also need a small amount of back light to reflect through and shine off food to give it appetite appeal.
So here are my tips. If you are going to do a stack of food take a lower angle. This will add drama and reduce the amount of plate seen. Make the arrangement of the food more real. The hero at the moment is the lemon and curly lettuce. Make the pile less regimented. This is not pretty food as it stands so you will have to work harder to make it appetising. Have one leaning again the other at an angle. Cut one so we can see inside. I have no idea what this food is so its unlikely to make me hungry. Bring the food forward on the plate and put the lettuce and lemon around the back.
Move the light lower and more around the side, you can then block the light off the foreground which will put the focus back onto the food and take it off the foreground. Arrange the food in a natural way. If you are going to have ketchup make it appetising. Every element of the photo should scream eat me and o achieve this you really need to look at food photos more closely and work out what attracts you to them. Quite often it will be crumbs, a piece of herb at a fun angle, a drip of mayonnaise or ketchup, a fork cutting through food. Every element of a food photo has to have a meaning and scream eat me. Unfortunately this takes time to learn and usually requires a very good food stylist to work with, but its not impossible to get close on your own. Look at Jamie Oliver’s cookery books for example they are all about food and food values. Food photography is a very precise business with thousands of switches that need to turned on and off to make photos that connect with our ever so perceptive brains. Also if you are shooting food for yourself choose attractive food top start with, thats half the battle. Its only us professionals that have to make a silk purse out of a pigs ear.
Anyway keep plugging away, you will get there. Good Luck Paul
@Paul: Neel didn’t take this pic.
I thought it would be better to use a white seamless background to avoid the harsh shadow. Also, red is a color that grabs your attention so you might want to use other colors for the secondary elements like napkins.
I am by no means an expert – I come to Neel’s site to in hopes of improving my own photos. There is a lot of great advice in the previous comments. Two things I would do to improve this photo: Zoom in so the vegetable cutlets fill more of the frame, and use the custom white balance on the camera. There is a pinkish hue to the photo (more prominent in the background) – probably the napkins reflecting off the white surfaces.
My comment is not related to the content of the blog, but I had to share. I had the hardest time reading Paul’s comment since the page kept switching on me to show me a smiley on the top only. It even did it to me once as I was typing my comment and all was lost. I dunno if it is just me but I thought I would tell anyway.
Thank you everyone for your feedbacks. I sent this photograph to Neel to get some feedbacks and I think I have got it. I’m just a learner and I really wanted to improve my photography. This picture was probably the second or third shot with my newly bought Nikon D3100. So I wasn’t that familiar with the settings and everything.
@ Paul Williams, Thank you for your comments and feedback. As I already mentioned I was just an amateur photographer and still I’m learning. I’m still practising on angle, food composition, choosing the right background and props and most of the time I fail. I’m confident that I’ll succeed one day.
Regarding the oil contamination, I don’t cook just to photograph, but to feed my family. I have two little kids so I never ever use contaminated oil. Since I have used breadcrumbs for coating, it might have turned black at few edges. These cutlets are nothing but something like veggie burger filling so I thought it’s ok to serve with bread. Also before serving we might serve it with lots of ketchup, but since I was taking a picture, I don’t want to soak them with ketchup so added a tiny blob and yes of course I served this for my kids. Finally I’ll end up with this lemon pith, in India when we serve a slice of lemon with any food we don’t remove the pith, we just serve it as it is. Also there are people who eat the whole lemon along with skin and pith since it cures severe cold. Believe me this is true.
Thank you once again for your feedback , comments and tips,it helps me a lot. I’ll consider each and every single thing which you have mentioned in my next food shot and will try to improve my skills.
Thank you.
Ayeesha