Work Diary - Shoot 7

Evaluation

During today's shoot I wanted to look more at recipe photography and the layout you can create with certain ingredients. It went well, as I experimented with a variety of compositions in order to produce the most successful outcome. I took landscape photographs of the ingredients, portraits, and pictures from a birds eye view. My most successful outcome was definitely the birds eye view image, as this is how the majority of recipe photographs are captured. I also used the opacity edit in Photoshop during the editing process because I wanted the glass of orange juice to have a background related to the ingredients, which is lemon and limes. I placed the picture of the orange juice over the picture of the lemons and limes and decreased the opacity of the top layer. I also experimented with text during this shoot too, using the ingredients and the flavour of the smoothie as titles and information in part of the compositions. 

In this photograph, I wanted to use a wooden table with a white wall in the background because I felt that the appearance of wood would create the illusion of a chopping board, conforming to the food and drink theme. I sliced up a banana and stacked a few small piles of them to the left of the glass, followed by half an orange with segments of it cut to create an odd pattern. In front of the glass is cinnamon, which has been poured into a puddle and then dragged out to create yet another pattern. I wanted to make this photograph appear artistic whilst also informative. By presenting the ingredients that go into the smoothie being advertised it reduces the need for there to be any words below the image, just a photograph displaying the ingredients you need to make a tasty drink. It’s a creative way to create recipes, which I wanted to attempt. On the website BeFunky.com I added a banner at the top of the image and then inserted some text to act as the title of this drink – An “orange and banana smoothie”. I feel that this added banner is the finishing touch to this piece of advertising photography. I used a tripod for this picture as I wanted the framing to be angled correctly, and I used natural daylight which I enhanced on Photoshop by altering the levels and curves. I also reduced the level of saturation that this photo displayed as it was too bright; by making the colours more neutral means that the image is less harsh and more inviting. 

When capturing this photograph, I also used natural lighting from the sun coming through my windows. I also used a tripod, allowing me to correctly frame the image without needing to crop it during the editing process. I framed it so that the top half of the orange juice in a mason jar was visible, with a striped straw and lemon perched on the rim. These have the connotations of summer, as they are all sunny colours. Colour and pattern are two very effective formal elements in this photograph, along with shape, which are effective when overlaid with a landscape of lemon and limes. I overlapped two photographs together on Photoshop and reduced the opacity of the lemon and limes, allowing them to blend into the background and overall image. This technique of mixing two photographs together is something that I am happy to have experimented with, as I feel that it works extremely well. The lemon and limes compliment the fresh orange juice that’s been captured as it makes the drink in the image more appealing rather than having it be against just a simplistic white background. 

Progression

In order to progress from this shoot, I will most certainly be experimenting further with the image overlapping technique in my computer experiments. This was fun but also successful so it would be appropriate to develop it further. After experimenting with text over my photographs as well, I feel that it would be necessary to develop this idea some more in upcoming shoots as advertisements in magazines all featured some sort of text to inform the audience of what it is that’s being presented to them.