The good, the bad and the tasty

The Good…

Had a good day today.  Normally when I do the recipe shots for work it’s either a drive into Edinburgh or Glasgow and a battle to find decent parking not too far away from the restaurant.  But for this issue I had to head oop north a ways to a wee place near Aberfoyle.  Wow it’s beautiful up there and I kept taking mental notes of places to head back to on a day off.

The tasty…

This was a slow roasted venison stew that smelled fantastic.  Stupid me turned down a bowl as I was in a hurry to pack up :(

I can’t post any of the recipes here but once we have our new website up at work we’ll be posting all the recipes from previous editions so I’ll post the link when it’s up.

The bad…

Here’s a wee set-up shot of the ‘sweet’ at the top of the post…

I had the flash set up to add a bit of sparkle to the dishes.  I usually point the brolly away so as to feather the light a bit and further soften any shadows.  Tbh I found the corner of this cool table to have some really nice natural light and so the flash’s addition to the exposure was minimal at best.  I used a combo of 50 1.8 and a 150 2.8 macro which is my normal kit for food shots. 

I know proper studio food shots blow mine out of the water (soup?) but I never have that much time or space, nor can I ask for more than one dish to be made.  It’d be great to get one for getting the light right then a fresh one to shoot.  As you can imagine, when the sweet comes out I have a few mins to get the best shots.  At the very least it’s a good exercise in quickly scouting out a location for good backgrounds/tables/lighting.  You’d be surprised how many great places have crappy looking tables.  I was lucky today as this one worked well.  Still, this shoot took almost two hours in total!  Also had to get shots of the chef etc

Such a nice place with nice people, I’ll def be taking the family up there sometime soon!  Once this has been in the mag I’ll put up a wee post with the layout and links to the place etc etc.

Cheers
Ian