No justice like Web justice

corrie, illinois — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 16:40:57 GMT

I work in food marketing and photography, and our photographer would die if he read those tips. There's so much more to it.

No justice like Web justice

mark g — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 17:01:16 GMT

Will,

RFID is a glorified, expensive mess... Walmart led the way, and it hasn't quite been the solution they thought it would be to improve their supply chain. Because of their action, the DOD jumped on board and is requiring many manufacturers to bear the cost of shipping RFID, which is costly and confusing... I'd hate to see RFID become a part of identification or debit/credit cards because then someone can hack/hide a small portable reader, hide it near a check out stand, collect the data later and presto... good ole fashion ID/money theft... ugh... plus those small tags are susceptible to damage during shipping just as a paper label would be...

No justice like Web justice

Steve, Germantown MD — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 17:09:12 GMT

The picture of the "confection" actually looks like you've wounded some sort of animal.

No justice like Web justice

Michael T, Hollywood, CA — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 18:08:42 GMT

The Elephant-cam...wow. Great pictures, and I'm inclined to believe that they're real, since animals tend to be much more relaxed when the human element is taken out of the equation of observing them. Also, this isn't the first time that shots like this have been featured - I remember watching a great ocean documentary a couple of years ago (can't remember the title, sorry) where marine biologists attached very small "critter-cam"s to great white sharks & got phenomenal footage of the sharks interacting with other sharks, hunting, etc.

BTW, speaking of animals, it's obvious that no-one in Canada has seen "Caddyshack":
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23793136/

Oh, mister gopher...

No justice like Web justice

kevin, boston — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 18:15:26 GMT

Here's how to make that shot better (try it this way, and show another photo with the results!)

1) Your angle is too high. You need to be at the food's level.

2) Depth of field! Everything in the background should be out of focus. Even the back of the plate. It should look like almost the entire photo is out of focus except the very middle of the food.

3) Lighting. Your lighting is at a funky angle and too low, producing lots of shadowing on your food. In this case, three steps to the left would have helped (of course, you'd need to spin the plate to keep the same point of reference.)

4) The plate looks dirty. Clean it! (It's not actually dirty, just gummed up from when you cut the pastry. The bumpy tablecloth is distracting. Get that chair out of the background. Anything that takes the eye away from the subject should be eliminated.

5) The food is "dirty." Not really dirty, but it looks like a bloddy stump, if you get my drift. Take a knife, and recut the pastry to eliminate the red splotches on the cake part and the drolling red blood. This particular pastry needs to be cleanly cut to look good, else it looks like an arm has been severed.

5) If you happen to have a blowtorch handy ... melt the gooey sugar stuff on top that's flaking. You want that melting over the pastry and dripping down the side.

I'd love to see you try again with what you've learned.

No justice like Web justice

Chelle, Eugene Oregon — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 21:02:33 GMT

That's so strange. Last weekend our car was broken into. My laptop was one of the things taken. I had a service called "Logmein" on the laptop and today I was able to use it to log into my stolen laptop and wipe out all my information. All my passwords, all the private information and documents, all the photos and video's of family. Everything. It would have been sweeter to track the guy down like the xbox story, but if this is the only thing I have, I'm happy with that.

No justice like Web justice

Darrell, PA — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 21:08:56 GMT

Will,
I think that the secret to really cutting down on piracy (of tv shows and movies, though not songs unfortunately) is for the networks to put the broadcast on their websites free of charge. They can embed commercials that can't be skipped. I have watched many episodes of Friday Night Lights on NBC.com and if they would put up whole episodes of SNL, I would watch that too. It's cheaper than the $2-$3 these episodes would cost on iTunes, and it is legal. If there were a way to embed the commercials and make it very hard to remove them, I don't see why the shows couldn't be downloadable also.

The biggest problem I have about networks crying over piracy (on YouTube especially) is that not all tv shows are available, anywhere. If all the Daily Show episodes were available on comedycentral.com, I'd watch them, even with commercials. If Family Guy were on fox's website, I'd watch them there. I don't think the networks understand this. Unfortunately, it won't really work with songs because listeners are not used to commercials with their songs. Still, if songs were available to listen on a website with ad banners or something, that might work a little. Still have the issue of most people wanting/needing to download their music.

I do think that Napster, Firefox, OpenOffice, and GIMP (among others) have made all of us think we somehow deserve programs and media for free and that's a genie that isn't going back in the bottle.

No justice like Web justice

lisa — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 21:25:46 GMT

Oh Will...it looks like your cake has been shot and might need medical attention

No justice like Web justice

Bonnie Goren — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 12:13:50 GMT

Careful what you blog or you might start getting regular pictures of food from me!

No justice like Web justice

Will Femia — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 14:09:50 GMT

Kevin, thanks, it'll have to wait for the weekend, that's from my local shop so I need the set up time at home.

No justice like Web justice

Wed, 26 Mar 2008 16:05:22 GMT

if your food photos are too shiny, it's likely from direct flash.

try a softbox, soft front light

then soft light from all around.

general rule: the soft light should be three times as wide as the subject.

for colors, set the camera off of auto-white-balance, instead use fixed flash white-balance.