Pizza Friday and Tips on Food Photography

Pizza Friday was excellent. By the skin of its teeth. We almost  stopped at the Pizza Bianca.  ‘Good with beer’ was the response from the peanut gallery.  High praise actually.

Now we know that pizza bianca is not really an appetiser for pizza but there you are. I hate rules. Don’t you hate rules?

So I used the same dough to make a  regular pizza. If you can call mozzerella and  beetroot drizzled with  a balsamic and strawberry glaze, that  Eva  gave me last time I saw her, a regular pizza.

Cooked and topped with fresh greens from the garden.

So simple and so beautiful, because the dough took days and the cheese took time and the beetroot, well the beetroot grew all by itself actually. But I did use good Californian olive oil.  We will be making pizzas more often now that I have discovered this dough. The September Home Grown Challenge has certainly pushed me into previously unmined areas of culinary delight.

And these pickled eggs were just great. Though they scared the tasters with their Brightness! (ok, I laughed!)

And now that we have reached the end of the Food Photography Week and I have to say at this juncture that no-one can learn much in a week –  but we had a good time and that is the most important thing SURELY! Imagine getting run over by a bus if you were miserable. That would be rubbish don’t you think? Not that I see too many buses out here! Well, there is the school bus, that goes past a mile or two away ,but she knows me and I am sure she would not run me over or at the very least she would ask me if my underwear was presentable first.  My mother used to say that to me. “You can’t go out looking like that. What if you are run over by a bus!” And I would laugh, tripping over my flares in her (borrowed?) chunky heels! Well we don’t want to get into a discussion about knickers, do we, we are talking about taking photographs of food.

OK.

This is what I have learnt in my ‘shortest of the short’ study of food photography. 

What kind of camera you have is not the most important thing – how you use that camera is. So get to know it. I have learnt a lot about my camera this week. I just googled my questions, made notes, practiced and practiced.  Know your camera.

Use a tripod. Get a really heavy one. I am now saving to buy a video camera tripod, this sminky dinky one I have now would make a better bobble headed owl  in the grape vines than a tripod. My image needs to be sharp. Clarity is critical. Not all images Have to be in focus but as a viewer we hang our understanding of a shot on that area that is in focus so clarity is not negotiable with food.

Bracket your exposures.  Shoot one stop above and one below your correct aperture.  This gives you some wonderful choices. Or if you have little pictures on your dial, shoot using them all, one after the other, you will be surprised! Who drew all those little pictures anyway? They should be ashamed.

Ignore everything I said about light. If you have light, any natural light, you will find a shot. And  reflected natural light is your friend. Flash is not your friend! Neither is the overhead dining room light. Find a window with a little light and put your food there then see above.

When I was in art school (yes, I know I was the life drawing model but I was still  in EVERY single bloody drawing class, just .. well.. wearing no clothes.. but no need to dwell, my ears were not closed!)  –  they talked a lot about negative space. The space around the image. The resting space.  Look at that shot of the eggs, everything but the eggs is what they called negative space. I think I have this right, I may have fallen asleep and missed some bits but I try to use the negative space as I understand it.  OK. If you want a dramatic analogy -‘ Negative space is the straight guy.’ He is there to make the funny guy look funnier. Yes, that was me as well,  sigh,  always the straight guy, but I was wearing clothes when I was on the stage.  Stop laughing. Negative space is powerful. 

And lastly your image needs to tell a story.  It needs to have weight. You have the story, it is with you, now share it with me. Your story is incredibly individual.

And last-er but not least-er. By NO means the least actually. Once you have learnt all the rules  – BREAK THEM!

Daisy’s dinner. Pumpkin time is her favourite time of year. Have a lovely day.

Your friend on the farm, celi

P.S.  Senior Son has issued a challenge. An October Challenge. I shall tell you about it tomorrow as I am still trying to work it out.