First shooting with new flash

[Kodiak]

I hate that …hardly finish my morning coffee that the phone rings:

This local winegrower has a restaurant and wanted a picture for a magazine
and, of course, it a matter of life and death… should be ready for yesterday…
do as you want but it must be perfect… price is no issue (they all say that
until they see the invoice!) and "Please, please, please, arrange that with
the chef… and send the "pdf to print" to this address!"

Picked up some flashes and some modifiers… this should be enough to
improvise a solution once I'm there I thought.

Once there, the chef was already taking care of the mid-day's menu and
had no time to discuss anything: "Do as you want… but it must be perfect!"
Some 5 or 6 minutes later, rushing out of the kitchen, he hands me this
plate and repeated: "Do as you want… but it must be perfect!" he was gone!

He cooked the plate and I cooked this shot:


C&C welcomed.

[ST1]

It looks good to me Kodiak, did it taste as good as it looks

[Loose Canon]

So how "perfect" does "perfect" need to be in this case?

[Kodiak]

It looks good to me Kodiak, did it taste as good as it looks

Well, guilty as charged! …he did not get the plate back the way it was.
This young guy (+/-25) is really good and his speciality is cooking with
wine! Even deserts! I was not going to miss an opportunity like this… for free!

[Kodiak]

So how "perfect" does "perfect" need to be in this case?

You tell me, Terry… that's why I posted the shot here.
My client was very happy… that was perfect enough for him. Clients often do not know
what they want, but they know what they don't want.

Do you see something I should/could have done differently? Tell me maybe about another
approach YOU would have taken.

In this case? …its too late, the picture is delivered and paid already (plus a free meal ;-)!)
I might just learn something if I ask…

[HaseebM]

The space between the bottle and the red flower seems 'dirty' and not in tune with the whole picture, sort of distracting. But the image in itself is absolutely gorgeous and you should share the details with us too.

[Kodiak]

The space between the bottle and the red flower seems 'dirty' and not in tune with the whole picture, sort of distracting…

This "dirty" area is a wanted shadow casted by the bottle since the shot is slightly backlit.

Tech details:
85 PC lens… always do food shootings with that glass.
D3X… my favourite workhorse, in manual mode.
Profoto B1… used with light metre and in manual mode.

[Manfred M]

Daniel - I wish you had posted a warning. I looked at the shot just before noon and somehow got incredibly hungry...

Nicely done shot. The specular highlights on the one piece of meat just draw our eyes straight into the image (which is of course where they need to be to branch out and see the rest of the image). It works perfectly.

[Mike Buckley]

I like the overall look a lot. I especially like the reflection of the dinner and wine label in the wine. Well done!

If you had been given the luxury of more time, you could have gotten more separation between the background and the wine glass and bottle. Personally, I don't like that the tabletop and dinner plate meet tangentially, but some people might actually like that.

I'm looking forward to having you hanging out around here so I can learn from you.

[Kodiak]

I like the overall look a lot. I especially like the reflection of the dinner and wine label in the wine. Well done!

If you had been given the luxury of more time, you could have gotten more separation between the background and the wine glass and bottle. Personally, I don't like that the tabletop and dinner plate meet tangentially, but some people might actually like that.

I'm looking forward to having you hanging out around here so I can learn from you.

The final point is:
How much does a women have to say to get one to bed?
Or, how much skin does it take to turn you on? …or
How much obscenity is required?

At a given level, less is more… being able to make an educated guess would indeed
be very pertinent. I had little time (thank you for granting me this excuse!) but more
I did not need. This is a shot of a meal. A plate cooked with a very special wine… from
this very winegrower. So, the star is the plate. The sidekick is the wine with the logo and
kind of wine. The corporate colours are gold on black on gold, and the winegrower's wife
is a very "I like flowers" kind of person. Seeing more of anything else would drag your eyes
away from the "star" and would have failed to pass the exercise …and the sale.

How much bottle needs to be seen?
How much glass should be shown?
For short: This shot wants (and this is a style I developed over the years) to be more
inspiration than description. (Ask Manfred… it works!)

This is the kind of commercial photography I like, WYSIWYG. Look at that plate and look
at what they will serve you, there will be no difference. Just compare to the menu pictures
at a local hamburger joint like M or BK and you will see that what's on the wall is far from
what they put in from of you.

You say: "I don't like that the tabletop and dinner plate meet tangentially" Maybe this is a
caprice due to the low perspective. Had I moved the plate, many could argue that the plate
appears too far from a usual sitting position…

A picture is a thousand words so I have to choose the right ones to convey the message.

[Loose Canon]

I might just learn something if I ask…

Well, its very unlikely that you’ll learn anything from me Kodiak! Unless its that you learn that I'm mostly clueless! I think it’s a great shot all around.

But just for discussion?

I assume the wine is the Client’s. I might wonder about the shadow on the label and the fact that the embossing on the bottle is lost and appears as only specular points for the most part. Barring fiddling with lighting the embossing I think I might have at least liked to eliminate the shadow on the label. I don’t think eliminating that would detract from the “star”. In fact my eye was drawn to it. Hard telling because its hard for me to see around that whoppin’ watermark!

Seems to be some smudges on the camera right side of the glass and some very small strange reflections in the surface of the wine itself. Maybe not enough so's anyone would notice!

At the stem of the center cherry tomato is a light-ish streak extending into the black background and up toward the upper right corner of the frame are some more streaks in the BG. I don’t know if these might show up in print or not.

There is a hair (or a piece of thread maybe?) on the near corner of the napkin next to the plate. It looked like a hair when I first saw it and not something I’d want next to a plate of food if I were eating it.

No idea about the highlights on the left side piece of meat. I’m not a big food shooter but I would have probably steered away from them showing my inexperience.

I realize you were on location and dinner was getting cold! The food isn’t going to last forever.

Thank you for sharing Kodiak and giving us the opportunity to see how it’s done and what your thought processes were at the time.

[IzzieK]

I assumed that when the chef said "Do what you want..." he did not have anyone to style his plating. But then this is not perhaps your fault that the plate is sort of crowded looking. The flower near the plate doesn't not contribute to the photo of the food. And then there is the rule of food shot positioning that meat should be positioned at 2 o'clock and vegies at 6 o'clock...but then, here I am getting picky at your shot while I am just in the midst of my food photography course...so you did what you want and took the shot and your client was happy and you got a free meal, congratulations! I am not there yet and here I am critiquing already. Pardon me.

[Kodiak]

I am not there yet and here I am critiquing already. Pardon me.

…with that smile, I could forgive you almost anything! :-)

— "And then there is the rule of food shot positioning that meat should be positioned at 2 o'clock and vegies at 6 o'clock…

Rules? Long live tasteful anarchy!