Plums, anyone?
This past week, a few of us gathered over at Tea Junction in Dubai to dabble in photography. The goal was to have an informal setting for people interested in photography/food photography (without necessarily being photographers) take a picture of a mystery food item – told to us at the venue – and use the settings around us to come up with 2-3 core shots that we’d share with the group. This could then lead to some feedback, suggestions and a general sharing of ideas. We also worked on a couple of concepts in pairs.
If, for some insane reason, you missed the title, then well, the mystery item was a plum. Well, okay, plums.
I went with three different colored plums so that I’d have contrast – a dark one, a mixed one, and a fairly light one. Unfortunately I couldn’t get the whole ‘journey of the plum’ idea done well, although others were more successful [links will be posted soon]. My idea was to go with one very traditional food shot, one random one, and one hopefully somewhere in between.
To start with – and knowing my love for iced tea – I picked up a Boston Iced Tea (ie, Iced Tea with cranberry juice) since I knew the color symmetry would help. So the opening shots were very cookbook-like-traditional.
Interestingly I had 2 thoughts almost simultaneously – to take a bite, and to use ice. Perhaps I should have disjointed the ideas a bit, but I mostly landed up incorporating both elements together.
I didn’t factor these shots in during the day, but after a bit of post-processing and looking at it on a bigger monitor, I actually liked how they turned out.
Then I did the expected – I broke the glass with ice just after taking the shot above. My apologies to Tea Junction, again 0:)
The result however was a splash of water on the table, which I figured would be worth a shot as well.
Finally, I tried to factor in some elements at the cafe – and chanced about this. I call this series, “Cult of the Plum”.
And finally, ‘eye on the prize’.
Did you know once can spend upwards of two hours photographing plums? I sure didn’t.
