This dish was a little more challenging to shoot. There are so many small ingredients to the plate. Rice, parsley, shrimp, etc. I knew I wanted to show the texture of the rice and shrimp so of course I chose to shoot it closeup. The lighting setup was the same as how I shot the batons.
Using the strobes helps to bring out more of the detail of the plate. Had I just shot it using available light, I don’t think it would have shown the details.
Here is the first shot. It’s alright but I don’t care for the wood on the table showing and I had a glass of wine by the plate. Not needed at all. The camera settings were 3.2 seconds at f16. ISO 200. I used my 100mm macro lens. White balance was also tricky on this shot too. I had the camera set to Auto WB and adjusted it using Capture One Pro 7. I’ve been trying this program out and I really like it. More on that some other time. If you look closely at the carrot on the upper left, there is a piece of something on it. Don’t like that. Also the shrimp in the lower right has something too. Little things that you can fix before you shoot helps a lot.
The second shot, I got even closer but it just looks like a pile of food with nothing interesting. Just a very dull shot. The camera settings were the same as above.
The third shot is closer to what I was after but that darn wine glass is still there. The camera was set at 10 seconds at f29. I used f29 because I wanted the depth of field to be able to show the whole plate. Composition wise, I like it. The blue plate breaks up the image a bit and adds just enough pop to it.
This is the one. No stray bits showing on the food and I really like the reflection in the plate. You can see just a bit of the wood table in the upper right corner but that’s easily fixed in Photoshop. Camera settings were 10 seconds at f29.
Just as important as the food is, so is the plate and all the other elements of the shot. I love fabric textures so that’s why I put the plate on the white placemat. I chose the blue plate to accent the colors of the shrimp and carrots. What’s the complimentary color of orange? The shot works well but there are so many other ways of shooting this type of dish. I just like getting in a little bit closer. Kind of like you are sitting there looking at the food, getting ready to dig in.