Food For Thought

Planning:

For the food for thought task I have been asked to plan and carry out my own food based photo shoot. As it is October and therefore close to Halloween, I have decided to make some Halloween themed rice crispy bites in the shape of small orange pumpkins and take photographs of them. I have chosen this to photograph as I feel that it is something a little bit different and as it is not something which is store bought, it adds some originality to the photoshoot. In addition to this, I have themed my shoot around the current time of year to add a little more interest to the photoshoot. For this photoshoot, as I plan on shooting the images not too long after I have made the food in which I will photograph, I plan on taking these photographs within the same location as where they were made so this would be in my kitchen at home. I have chosen my kitchen to take these photographs as I plan on taking them during the day and the large window in my kitchen means that a lot of natural light is allowed into the kitchen making for well lit photographs with shadowed areas also if I wish to have a slightly darker setting with softer lighting. I plan on making this photoshoot a still life shoot meaning I will gather some props for my images but I will not need and models for my shoot. As far as props go, I plan on keeping it simple and keeping the focus on the food itself. The type of props which I intend to use include general kitchen equipment such as a baking tray, chopping boards, small plates and maybe some other small pieces like this which I feel would work well. In addition to this I may use some pieces of fabric to style my shot and add a little bit of added interest to my images. For this shoot I do not think that I will need any additional equipment other than my camera itself. As this is a still life shoot, I may require some close up shots for which I may use my macro lens adapters in order to get a more close up shot but this is something I will decide at the time of shooting. As far as costs go for this shoot, there will be some initial cost as I am planning to make the food in which I am photographing so I will first need to buy the ingredients. I will be buying the ingredients from my local shop so I do not need to worry about travel expenses but I will need to buy the rice crispies, marshmallows, food colouring and some Haribos in order to pick out the green gummy bears to create the stork of the pumpkins. The cost of all of this should not be too expensive as these are quite cheap ingredients and I am guessing the price of all of this will be around the five pound mark. This is the only cost involved with this shoot making the cost of this shoot just five pounds.

Risk Assessment:

Photographs:

For this shoot I decided to photograph some rice crispy bites made to resemble small pumpkins which I made myself. I decided to do this as I felt the idea was unique, original and showed my creative side. This was something I wanted to do as I did not want the idea of my shoot being replicated so by photographing something which I had created myself, it eliminated this risk. Before shooting my images I first had to create the pumpkin rice crispy bites and this was easily done by combining rice crispies, melted marshmallows and some orange food colouring then rolling small amounts of the mixture into small balls before topping with a green gummy bear to resemble the stork of the pumpkin. I was happy with the way these rice crispy pumpkins looked however they did not look perfect but I feel that this added to their charm as it made them look home made which was the feel I was going for with this photoshoot. Once the rice crispy pumpkins had been created, it was then time to photograph them. To do this I relied on the natural lighting which was available within my kitchen and used a few props in order to style my images but relied on the food itself to be the main focus of my images as this was the most important thing to photograph. As I had quite a lot of these small rice crispy pumpkins, this meant that I was able to choose how many I included within the shot at any time. With this in mind it meant that some shots include only one or two of the treats however some of the other shots show many more to the point where they fill the entire shot. When planning this shoot, I was a little concerned that it would not go to plan as it was something I did not yet know what it looked like as I was yet to create it however I am happy with the way this shoot turned out and I am happy with the images which I gained from this photoshoot.

Here are the photographs which I took during this photoshoot:

Here is a closer look at some of my favourite photographs from this photoshoot:

This is one of the first photographs which I took during this photoshoot and it shows a selection of rice crispie pumpkin bites placed on a baking tray. I chose to take this photograph as this is what the batch of rice crispie pumpkins looked like right after I had finished making them as I had put them onto a baking try in order to let them cool and set in the fridge for a while. This photograph was taken right after taking the tray out of the fridge and I had placed the tray on the worktop by the window in my kitchen. This means that this photograph was lit using natural lighting which was let in from the window which was situated behind the rice crispie pumpkins. With this photograph I wanted to keep it simple, this is why I did not include a lot of props which could have potentially distracted from the subject of the image. In addition to this, to keep the focus on the intended point, I chose to use a shallow depth of field meaning that the focus on only of the front pumpkin while the rest drop out of focus. This means that as a viewer, your eye is not diverted to other aspects of the image. 

This photograph is very similar to the last in that it was taken within the same location at the same time and I did not move anything when setting up this shot. For this shot I left everything as it was and chose to take a close up shot of the pumpkin which was closest to the camera. As I used a shallow depth of field and this is a close up shot, it means that the front pumpkin is in focus while the rest of them drop out of focus and also fill the background of the image giving an overriding orange colour to the image which I feel fits well with the autumnal theme which I was going for with this shoot. When editing this image I put it into photoshop in order to slightly alter the levels to make the colours pop a little more. I did not feel that this image needed and additional editing as I was happy with the image as it was.

For this photograph I chose to just take one of the pumpkins and place it onto a pale golden coloured piece of fabric which I then crumpled slightly around the pumpkin in order to add a little texture and detail to the photograph. For this photograph I chose to only use one pumpkin as I didn’t want to overload the photograph with information which the viewer then has to take in, I wanted to keep it simple yet effective which I was I feel I achieved with this photograph. The lighting for this photograph is provided by natural lighting which was let in from a window located behind the pumpkin and this is evident by the way the light hits the folds of the fabric. With this photograph, I like the contrast of textures as the rice crispie pumpkin has a very uneven texture while the folds of the fabric create a smooth, silky and flowing texture which provides a nice contrast to keep the photograph interesting yet remaining simple. Once I had taken this photograph I put it into photoshop and changed the levels slightly in order to bring out the orange of the pumpkin to make it catch the eye slightly more.

For this photograph I used the same piece of fabric as the backdrop of this image but this time I smoothed it out in order to create a smooth and even background. This photograph shows two pumpkins, one placed slightly in front of the other and using a shallow depth of field I focused on the front pumpkin making the back one drop out of focus keeping the viewers eye predominantly on the pumpkin in the foreground of the photograph. As with the other photographs from this shoot, this photograph was lit using natural lighting which provides a nice even lighting for the shot however, as the lighting was quite bright. It meant that it washed out the golden colour of the fabric which I used as the backdrop. Ideally I wanted to keep this golden tone in order to add to the autumnal theme of the image however the yellow tone was lost creating a white backdrop which is crisp and clean however it does not add to the autumnal theme which I wanted. Once I had taken this photograph I put it into photoshop in order to change the levels slightly. 

For this photograph I used an orange carrier bag which I found to form the backdrop of the image. This image shows a single pumpkin in the centre of the orange carrier bag and was intended to have an autumnal look to the image, however it did not go how I thought it would have done. In theory the orange of the carrier bag was supposed to add to the autumnal theme of the shoot however it turned out that it made the image look too busy as there is quite a lot going on with one colour covering each section of the photograph. This photograph was lit by natural lighting being let in by the window behind the pumpkin and I also chose to use the flash on my camera in order to illuminate the pumpkin slightly more to make it stand out from the carrier bag. This also did not go to plan as the flash has been reflected off of the pumpkin itself making it a little too bright. After taking this photograph I put it into photoshop in order to change the levels to try make the photograph more appealing however, even after attempting to edit this photograph, I am still not happy with it and I think that the other photographs from this shoot are a lot better.

For this photograph I chose to take a selection of the pumpkins and place them onto a cake board and put them into a pile in order to resemble a pike of pumpkins which could be found at a pumpkin patch or something similar. The lighting for this photograph was provided by natural lighting which was let in from the window which was situated towards the left of this photograph. This is made evident by the left side of the pumpkin pile being well let while the right is in shadow. This shows that lighting is only coming from one side rather than from both sides. When taking this photograph I decided to use a small aperture, creating a large depth of field meaning that each of the pumpkins is in focus and the entire pile is clear and visible. After taking this photograph, I put it into photoshop in order to alter the levels slightly to make the orange of the pumpkins stand out a little more and make the photograph a little more eye catching than it was before. 

This is another shot taken immediately after the last. This photograph shows the same pile of pumpkins but this time I chose to take a close up of the pumpkin which was situated on the corner of the pile. As I wanted a close up of the one pumpkin, I chose to use a shallow depth of field so that the one pumpkin was in focus while the rest dropped out of focus keeping the focus on just the pumpkin in the foreground of the photograph. As this photograph was taken immediately after the previous one, this means that the lighting is the same as before and was provided by natural lighting let in by the window situated to the left of the photograph. I feel that the lighting for this photograph works well as it makes the orange colour of the pumpkins nice and bright and stand our from the neutral backdrop. After I had taken this photograph I put it into Photoshop and adjusted the levels very slightly in order to make the colours pop a little bit more to make the photograph a bit more eye catching than it already was.

This photograph shows a birds eye view of one of the pumpkins which has been placed onto a wooden cake board. I chose to take this photograph from this angle as I thought it would be slightly different to the other images with I have taken within this shoot and changing the angle of the photograph makes it a little more interesting than if I had kept the angle the same throughout the entire photoshoot. As with all of the other photographs within this shoot, the location of this photograph is my kitchen meaning that the lighting was provided by the large window however with this photograph I chose to use the flash on my camera as the angle which I was taking the photograph from meant that I was blocking some of the light from hitting the pumpkin so I used the flash on my camera to add a little more light to the image and brighten it up a bit which I feel works well as the orange of the pumpkin is nice and vibrant within this photograph. Once I had taken this photograph, I put it into Photoshop and changed the levels slightly in order to add a little more depth to the image. 

This is another photograph which I took using all of the rice crispie pumpkins which I created. This time I decided to place them all together in rows and took a photograph in which multiple pumpkins fall of the edge of the photograph meaning that the pumpkins fill the entire photograph and this gives the illusion that there are a lot more pumpkins here than there actually are as the photograph only shows 9 pumpkins but this photograph looks as though it is quite a close up shot of a large batch of these pumpkins which was not the case. The lighting for this photograph was once again provided by the natural lighting let in from the large window towards to left of the photograph however because of the time in which I took this photograph, I began losing light as it started to later into the evening this means that the lighting within this photograph is not as bright or vibrant as the other photographs. When taking this photograph I used quite a shallow depth of field meaning that only the pumpkins which I focused on are in focus while the rest drop out of focus however the out of focus pumpkins are not too out of focus as you can still make out what they are but they are out of focus enough so that they don’t cause a distraction to the rest of the photograph. When focusing my camera I chose to focus on the second row of pumpkins as I felt that this would add a little bit of interest to the photograph rather than always focusing on the item which is in the foreground of the image. After taking this photograph I put it into Photoshop and edited the levels slightly in order to try and brighten up the image however the lack of lighting within the image is still noticeable but I have grown to like this look as I feel that the dark sections of the photograph add warmth and depth.