photography

JustHungry road trip report: Hello London, part 1

Max Wyss — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 00:45:40 +0100

Because Maki went under the knife last week, an understudy (yours truly) was sent to London for an interesting event. Here’s part one of my trip report.

Mobile device companies, such as Nokia, are gradually discovering the value of bloggers as a customer base. As part of a targeted event, JustHungry was invited together with other selected bloggers to spend a few days in London, where we could test the newest in mobile phone technology in practice.

Besides JustHungry, the following blogs participated:

La olla Suiza a Swiss writing from Spain; also writing in German on 1x umrühren bitte
La cuisine de Mercotte, the reine des macarons (queen of macaroons) from France
Milsabores the number 1 foodblogger from Venezuela
Cooking Diva from Panama
il Cavoletto di Bruxelles, a Belgian writing from Italy
Girl interrupted eating from the UK

The whole group stayed at the Zetter Hotel in Farringdon, a typical London boutique hotel close to some interesting restaurants and pubs.

The first day was set up as a workshop, in the private dining room of the Larder restaurant, where we first got introduced to the “tools of the trade” and their use. I use a cellphone every day, and I’m the type of geeky person who actually reads through the manual, but I still learned some interesting things. The second part of the workshop started with a (rather Brit-centric) food quiz with freelance journalist Sudi Pigott. This was followed by an hour of interesting London gastro-gossip and tips by food writer Joe Warwick, whose articles have appeared in the TimeOut restaurant guide and many other publications.

An evening at the Northbank restaurant gave us a taste of the higher end of British cuisine.

The highlight for me was on the second day, a discovery tour of the famous Borough Market with Celia Brooks Brown whose gastrotours are well known, concluded with an all-British meal at the Roast Restaurant.

The following pictures show some impressions of the event. All the photos, incidentally, were taken with a mobile phone, under a variety of lighting conditions, and I think they look surprisingly decent. For this trip I deliberately didn’t take a bigger camera with me, wanting to give the mobile phone cameras a workout. (I do take many of the photos that appear on JustHungry by the way, especially outside of the ‘studio’.)

The one snag I ran into was that on the last day both of the two cell phones I had with me ran out of battery power right in the middle of a shooting session. So, if you are relying on a mobile as a dedicated shooting device on a trip, extra batteries might be a good idea.

On with the photo report.

Everyone is very active with their mobile devices.

Fish and Chips at the Larder.

Joe Warwick in full action.

The St. John Pub and Bakery is near to the hotel; it is in a former smokehouse.

The Zetter hotel in an early spring evening light.

Celia Brooks Brown shows a giant avocado at the Borough Market. (A more in-depth look at the Borough Market will follow in a separate report.)

How to spot a mobile food blogger!

A gigantic slice of celeriac at the Roast restaurant.

Onigiri galore, and shooting them

maki — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 16:01:39 +0100

In case you don’t follow Just Bento, but read Just Hungry for the Japanese stuff, be sure to check out my onigiri magnum opus. In case you are wondering, yes I made all those onigiri and shot them over the weekend. It took 8 cups of rice! Some are stored in the freezer, but regrettably, many were consumed on the spot by the photographer and me.

Shooting white rice against a white background, especially on a cloudy day, is not easy. But the other weekend project we managed to finish finally really came in handy - the shoestring ‘studio’ box.

We followed the great instructions on Strobist. We used an old monitor box, sheets of tracing paper, plain white card stock and packing tape to stick things together. Total cost: about CHF 14 (US $12), which includes extra sheets of paper in case of stainage. Total time: about an hour.

We need to beef up the lighting situation, but even with the dull available daylight and two 50 watt halogen floor lights, we did a lot better than I thought we would. The box is going to be really handy for shooting from now on, and I don’t have to clear the kitchen table all the time or scrounge around for a suitable background. I highly recommend this setup to all food bloggers!

links for 2007-01-20

maki — Sat, 20 Jan 2007 01:27:57 +0100

French, American Foodies Chew Over Trends of 2007: John Mariani

New York is now the gastronomic capital of the world, haute cuisine is too expensive and makes no profit, sniffing at El Bulli, and other fun from the always entertaining John Mariani.

(tags: restaurants chefs critics)
news-controlled rice cooker

Dispenses rice every time there is news about GM rice, and invites people over to eat it when it's full and done...ehh

(tags: rice offbeat)
Diner’s Journal - Ought You to Be in Pictures?

While flash photography in a restaurant can be annoying, some of the elitist comments remind what I don't miss about New York.

(tags: restaurants photography)
Fuites au Michelin : la valse des étoiles (new Michelin France ratings)

Among other news, of restaurants previously mentioned on Just Hungry, Le Beurehiesel has lost one star since the son has taken over from papa as chef, and Marc Meneau of L'Esperance is declaring bankrupcy (French, Le Figaro)

(tags: restaurants france michelin)
Des hauts et débats

More news about Marc Meneau's difficulties (French, Le Figaro). Somehow, this doesn't surprise me, if one can judge a restaurant from just one visit...it was really good but there was not the air of comfortable success one senses at other restaurants.

(tags: restaurants france)

Some thoughts on food and photographs, and food photography

maki — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 16:42:25 +0200

The Observer Food Monthly, one of the best food-related publications available online, recently held a food photography competition. The results have been posted, and all the winning and runner-up photos are terrific. The winner of the "Food Glorious Food" category, a very humorous arrangement of some jelly babies, made me laugh out loud, but the one that struck me the most is the overall winner, a beautiful black and white photo by Ikuko Tsuchiya titled "The Widow in her kitchen".

It really made me re-think the nature of most of the photographs I've been posting here. I've gone mostly for the sort of "food porn" shot, especially since I got my serious SLR some months ago: part of the picture in focus, the rest blurred, everything made to look very, well, pornographic. It's disembodied food. It's the style popularized by many food magazines, and it does work well provided one has a decent camera with a macro lens, or at least some sort of good macro option. But it's not all there is to food. Food is not just there to be gazed at; it's there to be eaten, interacted with, and enjoyed.

One of the more linked-to posts here on Just Hungry is my how-to about taking photos on the road. I think that I over-emphasized the technical aspects of photo taking, which wasn't quite my intention. I do like the food-porn shot especially when it is done exceptionally well, but it is bothering me slightly that this is the only style that seems to be around these days, both online and on paper.

One reason I love taking photos at markets is because you can see people interacting with food. Whether it's the vendors lauding their wares, or the people earnestly examining it, it's a wonderful, human, scene.

I've been slowly organizing my digital photo album since it went over the 10,000 file mark. I have tons and tons of food porn pictures in there. But the ones that made me stop and smile were the ones that had people in them. People enjoying food. A lot of them aren't as beautiful as the food porn ones - the early ones in particular have various problems with red-eye and such - but they bring back all kinds of memories. Here are a couple:

This must have been taken in 2000 or so, before my mother and stepfather sold their old house. My sister, mother (in the middle) and stepfather are enjoying a lobster feast - my mom in particular! I can't remember a more delicious lobster than the one I had that day. Not the best of pictures by any means (I took it with my first digital camera ever, a clunky Agfa model) but the moment is priceless for me.

This olive seller at the market in Nyons, France was positively poetic as he described just how his hand-cured olives and handmade tapenade was superior.

While many photos here will continue to be of the "Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my" closeup variety, I think that I am going to try to incorporate a few more images here at least of food with the people who eat it or produce it. It is part of the storytelling process.

How-To: Photographing Food In A Restaurant (and Elsewhere On The Road)

maki — Sun, 18 Jun 2006 22:39:33 +0200

This article is not about the technical aspects of food photography per se: I'm certainly not the best food photographer/blogger out there. It's more about how to take decent photos of food in restaurants and other public settings, in both social and technical respects from my experiences. It should be of interest if you are a food blogger, or just like to share pictures of interesting or pretty food you encounter. I used a lot of these ideas on my recent road trips.

I take all of my food photos with one of three cameras. The bowl of peaches (and one apricot) was shot with each camera under the same daylight conditions, from the same angle, using the Auto setting on the cameras. (On the camera phone there is only an Auto setting.) Each is reduced in size to 400 pixels wide at a 72 pixels/inch resolution, but otherwise I've left each photo untouched by Photoshop or any other image editing software.

The workhorse is a 6 year old Nikon Coolpix 880. This is a small automatic camera with some manual overrides, a basic zoom lens and autoflash. It does show its age, but is still very useful. The photo is a bit oversaturated but that is something easily correctable in Photoshop.
My most recent acquisition is a digital SLR, the Nikon D70s. I use this with the basic lens that came with it, a 18-70mm zoom lens. Even with this rather mediocre lens, it still takes great shots.
The final part of my camera set is a Sony Ericsson W800i phone. This is a 2 megapixel camera phone, with a digital 4x zoom. I chose this camera out of the "free" camera lineup offered by my cell phone service provider, Orange, because of the good quality of its camera. As you can see, it takes fine if rather 'flat' pictures.

Here are some more food photos shot with the W800i, or the K750i which has similar camera capabilities, in indoor/low-light conditions:

Through the glass of a display case indoors

Taken at dinner in a restaurant (indoors, incandescent light)

Taken indoors at a market (flourescent lights)

When I'm shooting food at home, I now use the D70s exclusively. However it's a big camera that's very obvious, especially when using the zoom lens. It also has one of the loudest shutters I've ever heard.

That being said, whenever there is any doubt I ask if I may take photos, especially at a restaurant. Most of the time there hasn't been a problem, and I just pull out the chunky D70s and shoot away. In certain situations though, you want to be more discreet, out of courtesy to other diners at a quiet restaurant for example. In such cases, I go for the Coolpix or theW800i camera phone. The Coolpix still takes better pictures, but the phone is the most discreet of course (you can pretend to be looking at something on the screen while you shoot away).

When shooting discreetly, the first thing to remember to do is to turn off the auto-flash. You should never use a flash when shooting food indoors anyway for picture quality reasons, but a flash is very distracting and annoying. The sound of the shutter can be as distracting and attention-getting as a camera flash; fortunately the Coolpix has a silent shutter, though the zoom lens makes a whirring sound when it's in action. The W800i has a loud digital shutter sound, which can be turned off by activating Silent Mode. If you are in the market for a new camera, test out the shutter sound.

Sometimes an establishment will simply tell you not to take pictures, period - this happened to me in the Globus department store when I was researching my Food Destinations article. If that happens I stop taking photos and don't post them on my site either. As I've already stated, it's pretty rare that people tell me to stop shooting. (If you are Asian like me, telling the waiter you are genetically incapable of not taking photos may help. Sort of kidding, but it did actually work for me once.)

Some people, such as market stall vendors, are simply camera shy; if that's the case just focus your lens on their products. Including the people who brought you that food experience in your photos is always nice though.

Some tips for shooting "on the road":

If you're having lunch, try to have it outside, or at a brightly lit window. Daylight is your friend when taking food photos.
Never ever ever ever use flash for indoor food photos. Without adjustments, flash-lit food simply looks awful in most cases. Even if you end up with an underexposed picture, it will still be better than flash-lit, and you can probably adjust it in Photoshop or similar image editing software. (Flash can be useful in some outdoor situations but that's getting off topic.)
Put your plate a a bit away from you to get a better overview, rather than shooting it from directly above. This also helps to focus on the food better with the automatic camera options. It's most important to keep at least a portion of your plate in focus.
Use the table to steady your camera in low-light conditions for longer exposure times.
Use those pristine white napkins, and your dining partner's torso, as a handy reflector or neutral background. Have him/her tuck the napkin in his/her collar and spread out the napkin on his/her chest and belly area as flat as possible.
Don't forget to shoot the table decorations if they are exceptional!
For shooting through glass, such as through a display case or a shop window, either try to put the lens almost directly on the glass or shoot at an angle, minimizing the reflection of you the photographer.
Shoot a lot of photos, not just one or two - this increases your chances of having a good one out of the bunch.

[Update:] L at Still Life With... has posted a terrific article about how to improve those low-light photos you take at restaurants and such with Photoshop.

Technorati Tags: food photography, nikon d70s, restaurants, sony ericsson w800i