Assignment 2 - Product on Location - Final Report & Image

Light set-up for final image

I thought Friday night went really well. Already having the composition and ideas from the workshop helped us to be relaxed, as well as efficient in our time use, and we were able to set up our lights well before we received our dummy pizza. We decided on using the ambient as the main light, in order to maintain the ambiance, and used the modeling lights from 2 Profotos as a kicker (w/ 20º grid) and fill light (w/ softbox). This decision helped us to keep it simple as it was a matter of turning on the lights, seeing their effect, and then increasing/decreasing the power and changing the angle until we got the look we wanted. We also used a reflector dish with a gold cover to bounce some more light into the rim of the plate as the overhanging pizza crust was casting a harsh shadow, as we had placed the plate on a book to angle it slightly toward the camera for a more dynamic feel. Once we had done some test shots with the dummy pizza, we took a look at it with the layout and decided that there was too much of an empty space in the composition; however, this was easily remedied by asking the kitchen for a pizza cutter, which we added to the image. We also decided to decrease the aperture to F/8 and shot at 1/4^th @ ISO200, as we had originally shot at F/5.6 and parts of the pizza were out of focus.

Some things:

·         We had no polarizing filter as there wasn't one available from the equipment room. We had blotting papers in case, but our pizza wasn't as greasy as we expected so this wasn't a problem. This was probably due to asking the chef to undercook the pizza slightly, as the sundried tomatoes on our dummy pizza had turned black and we wanted them to look like tomatoes, not cockroaches, and this resulted in the cheese not melting as much so it wasn’t too greasy. 

·         Originally, with our dummy pizza, we thought the cheese was too burnt, but adding the lights changed its look – it had a nice texture and went well with the color of the table in our background. One thing I think could be improved in our final image is that the final pizza came out with the crust entirely clean – it would have been better to have some cheese on it for added texture, as being slightly undercooked made the crust a bit too white when the added lights were used. As it was, I tried to add in some more texture to the crust in post. 

·         Our dummy pizza was cut up so we requested that it not be for the final one. Instead we had a pizza cutter brought down, which also came in handy to fill in an empty space in the composition. I personally prefer the shot we took of the pizza uncut, without the cutter, as I found it distracting as a magazine cover and the “the magazine of good living” was difficult to read. I think that if we had had a different set-up and had been able to throw the table & cutter more out of focus, I would have liked it more. It would also have been useful to have scissors on hand when we cut the pizza, as the cutter we had was a bit dull and it was difficult to make clean cuts. We took some shots with only one slice cut and then Georgina requested that we try some shots with the entire pizza cut up…but the dull cutter made it way too mangled for a magazine cover! A problem with the shot I used of the full pizza is that we only realized after we sliced the pizza that the book we used to prop it up wasn’t at the right spot, so the angle is off. I rotated the image in post in order to compensate as much as possible.

·         In retrospect, I think our shot could have been improved by having an additional accessory, like a mat or a cloth, to have under the plate, to add more dimension to the image.

·         This experience made me further realize that it is extremely important to shoot tethered when shooting to a layout. For future shoots, I will make sure the necessary equipment to do so is available, as it would be more efficient to immediately see the image w/ layout in order to make any necessary changes. 

·         Another thing I think would have been helpful would be to have a bit more knowledge about how to edit a food picture. I wasn’t too sure exactly how to go about it properly and I felt there is more to do but I'm not sure what.