September 10, 2011

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.

(Yes I'm aware the straw is supremely distracting). Moving on. I then worked with the plums by themselves. In hindsight, a lighter colored table would have worked so much better..but we'll all imperfect, right? Anyway. These are some macro and otherwise shots of a plum close up and others at a distance. I added some easily available sugar to add some texture/balance. Hmm, not so bad.

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.