Donna Hay Photo Challenge

Simone of Junglefrog Cooking has a monthly photo challenge. She picks a photo (and recipe) from Donna Hay Magazine and challenges us to replicate the photo as closely as we can. The object of this exercise is not to copy someone else's work (ew) but rather to sharpen our skills in food styling and analysing the light in a photo. Why? So that we can be better photographers and do our own work better.

I'll admit that I don't normally gravitate to food challenges. However, after the Plate to Page workshop I began to think about how to do a better job of styling and photographing my recipes, and this challenge seems to me to be the perfect way to continue the learning that I started at P2P. 

Plate to Page: A Weekend to Remember

On a recent Friday, 4 friends and 12 strangers gathered for lunch at a villa in Tuscany. Monday morning 16 fast friends hugged goodbye, promising to keep in touch. In between, there was work and laughter and photos and wine and food. Lots of food. This was Plate to Page Tuscany.

Plate to Page is a workshop that combines food writing and food photography. And food styling. All in three days. Whew! A lot to do. And we did it all.

PHOTO RESCUE: Level Adjustment

I know, I know. We’re supposed to take good photos and not have to rely on Photoshop or another photo processing software package to make them good. In my next life I’ll be able to do that. In this one, however, my photos sometimes need help. I’ve been working with a couple of friends who are photographers to improve my photos--both as I take them and as I process them. I’d like to share with you some of what I’ve learned.

When my photos don’t turn out full of light, I can sometimes rescue them. One way is to adjust the levels. Have a look at this photo:

This photo didn’t start life like this. It needed a little rescue. It started life like this:

Ew. Underexposed. Dark. Too busy. Strange perspective on the plate. Not straight. This one looked like it might need major plastic surgery! But no. In two steps it looked much better. I simply adjusted the levels and cropped it. VOILA.

I can hear you now: ok, Kate, but how do you adjust the levels? The levels of WHAT? It’s really not very hard--if I can do it you can do it. Every photo manipulation package should allow you to adjust the levels. I’ll show you how to do it, but you have to promise to keep it a secret, ok? Just between us...

Here’s how. First, find the levels dialog box. In Photoshop Elements, it’s here:

When you click on Levels, you get this dialog box:

YIKES! That looks pretty scary. I used to avoid the bit on the left and only use the little droppers that let me choose a white or a black point. The problem is that you don’t always have a white and a black point. And even if you do, that may not give you what you want. It’s better to get over your fear of the levels graph...

So now look at that graph on the left. It shows the distribution of colors from black (on the left) to white (on the right). The higher the line, the more of that color is there. Don’t worry too much about that--what’s important to know is that a good graph goes all the way across the range. This one doesn’t do that--it stops about two-thirds of the way. The whole right (white) side is zero. There are no real whites in my photo. If we look at the left-hand side (the black side) of this graph, we see that the line goes all the way to the top. There’s a lot of black in this photo. That’s because my countertop is black.

Ok, we knew that--we can SEE it. But we just need to know how to fix it. This graph is one very good way to do that. See the little pointer at the bottom right hand corner of the graph? I’ve circled it for you here.

You want to click on that and move it to the left until you get to the point where there is some black on the graph. I’ve marked that point with a red line here.

When you’re finished, the graph looks like this:

If you click on “OK”, then you'll see that some magic has happened to the photo:

If you click on 'Levels' again, here’s what the graph looks like now:

See how the graph now extends all the way across? That means that you’ve got values all the way across the range. That’s GOOD. See those white lines in the graph? They're there because you’ve stretched limited data across the value range. You don't want them to be too big, because if you stretch the graph too far, you’ll see bands of color like on the old televisions. That’s not good. Unless they’re really wide you won't see any effect of them--this amount of ‘stretch’ is ok at this resolution. Howver, I might have some problems if I tried to blow this photo up really big.

So now our photo looks better. However, it’s still not done. It needs a good crop. In order to focus on the fish cakes, I cropped it like this:

If this is the photo I’ve chosen to submit to any of the food photo sites, though, I crop it differently. I make sure it’s square, because if I don’t crop it, they will. And I want to make sure that it’s MY crop that gets seen.

Here’s another photo, before and after a levels adjustment:

Let’s look at one more. This photo wasn’t too bad to start with. It just needed a little bit of help. Look what happened when I adjusted the levels:

In a perfect world, all of my photos would be perfectly exposed. One day that will be the case. They’re getting better. Still, levels adjustment is a tool that I use often. It can add a brightness to photos and make them shine.

Now for the homework (Whaaat?) Find one of your photos that's a little dark and gray. Try this with it. Let me know how it turns out, ok?

I’d love to know what tips you have for improving photos.

EDIT: You don't need to have photoshop to do this. Any photo software should let you adjust levels. If yours doesn't, download GIMP for free: http://www.gimp.org/ GIMP looks a lot like Photoshop, and has most of the same functions. You'll find tutorials and complete documentation as well. I have a MAC and it works on that too.

UV FILTER: A cautionary tale

When I bought my new camera, the first thing that I did was to buy a UV filter for it. Yeah, I know that it makes the skies bluer and the clouds whiter, but let’s face it, I don’t really take that many photos of skies. Or clouds. No, I bought it to protect my lens.

I know that it may seem like a waste of 30 €, but for me it’s worth it. Here’s why: if your new fancy-pants camera falls off the tripod because you didn’t secure it properly, it will surely fall right on its heavy zoom lens. If you have a UV filter on it and if you’re veryvery lucky, the 30 € UV filter will be broken instead of the much-more-expensive zoom lens.

A word to the wise...

New Toy

Before I started this blog, I took a lot of photos. Most of them I took for the normal reasons, but there were a lot that I took so that I could paint them. When taking reference photos for painting, it’s the form and the colors and the light that are important; focus, depth of field, composition, etc are less important, because you can change all that when you paint the scene. Photography skills aren't very important. My camera stayed on "auto".

When I started this blog, I began to see the need for better photos. So I dusted off my old photography books and bought some new (i.e., digital) ones. I took the camera off “auto” and began to re-learn about f-stops and white balance and depth of field. I knew that one day I’d trade in my trusty 5-year-old Fuji bridge camera for a DSLR. First, though, I decided to learn all I could with the Fuji and to keep it till I had learned enough to need more than the Fuji could do.

Last week I decided that the time had come. I had done a lot of research, decided what I wanted, and VOILA!

It's a Nikon D90. I have to note that I’ve had a really hard time taking a good photo of it with the Fuji. I’m trying hard to ignore the nagging thought that the Fuji is jealous of the Nikon. My early training as a Psychologist is not serving me well here, I’m thinking.

Needless to say, I’ve spent all my free time snapping away, trying to learn how to transfer what I learned from the Fuji to the Nikon. LOL, it reminds me of when I was younger and got the chance to drive a Lambourghini from one side of town to another. I got in it, put it in gear, and popped the clutch. YOWZA! I was not prepared for that kind of power....

The Nikon is a little bit like that. It can do amazing things, if only I knew how. So I’ve been taking photos of everything in sight. I thought I’d share some of them with you. Kind of like vacation photos, but I never left home.

This is our friend Etienne. He’s a photographer who lives in Paris. He spent a day here with Dan taking photos. (Did I tell you that Dan is a sometime model? Maybe I didn’t.)

I spent some time with them, learning what I could from Etienne, who was very generous with his time and expertise. While he was taking photos of Dan, I was taking photos of him, playing with the settings on the new camera and trying to learn how to change them quickly to capture what I wanted. Needless to say, I’m having to upgrade my photoshop skills at the same time. My head is spinning. But in a good way.

Here are a few of the several hundred that I took. No, let me re-phrase that--here are the few that are presentable out of the several hundred that I took:

Here's Etienne looking at his camera--I love the expression in this one.

Here they're working on the terrace of an old chateau:

This is my favorite one of Etienne, directing a shot:

Finally, here’s my sweetie, looking pensive:

And here he is looking at me.