Showcasing One Ingredient -An Exercise in Food Photography

                                     Lens18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 at 95mm, f/5.3, 1/3s ISO 200

Many times we cook and click pictures of dishes we want to share and pay much attention to setting up the dish in order to make it appealing in the photograph. We do not think of the ingredients that have made the dish as good as it looks while tasting even better.


Though I am not very obsessed with cutting the vegetables in uniform sizes or measuring out every grain, I do have the patience not to mess the kitchen counter as I work there. I tend to keep them arranged in some orderly manner as I work. this is not an obsession but training.
So when this month's photography exercise was announced by Aparna, I thought that I will have many options to show, and thus kept taking pictures of whatever my eye suggested as the ingredient. I might have clicked and discarded many just for this one exercise.The few i have selected that I can put them in this post are which I thought were good, though they are not the best. I need more practice with the setting up and angles and many more aspects.
The area at home which receives abundant natural light is just outside the kitchen where the South East side is a glass door. There is no other window to let light in from any other direction. And many times it is not direct or harsh light which may be an advantage.

 

 Focal length 120mm, f/6.3, 1/40s, ISO 100

As young children it was compulsory that we had fruits and my mother would meticulously peel the oranges, make us sit and share it among us sometimes sprinkling some sugar on the top. She would peel them thus and remove the seeds before we consumed them. Till date she peels her oranges for the juice and does not use the citrus juicer. I had some oranges from the festival season at home and wanted to make juice. As I was placing them back on the tray, they looked neat enough to be in a picture.                                                                    
Just back from the market and putting them away, the garlic wholes fell out of the bag and I pulled out one pod and shot  two pictures. While my husband liked one, my daughter approved the other.

   In both the pictures the settings are the same  with just a slight difference in the shutter speed.
They were both shot at 90mm, f/5.3 and ISO 100 while one was at 1/13 seconds the other was at 1/15 seconds.




                 









                                                                            

Though we get locally grown tomatoes, the one in the picture below is good for soups and making stuffed tomatoes. I buy them occasionally as they are expensive to pick them on a whim. And so are the peppers as compared to the regular green capsicums that are very small. While I use these too for stuffing, I do use them in other dishes.










The green gram in this picture has been measured (in those jars) for making maalaadu, a very famous South Indian sweet which I am aiming to post soon.

 Lens 18-55mm  f/3.5 - 5.6, Focal length 55mm,f/4.8, 1/8s, ISO 200

Hope you have enjoyed the pictures. Stay tuned for some recipes with these right here.