Hola! I finally have a chance to get back to my overdue verrine project. Things has been quite crazy since I found out that we are pregnant and having a boy!! For those who are interested, I did a couple of maternity shot of mom to be in
here,
here, and
here. But lets talk about verrine…
fresh kiwi slice with coarse crushed merengue pieces and chocolate flakes
Food creation and styling
I’m feeling green this time. Not that it has anything to do with the environment. I was looking for some bold colour for this project. I’ve done some deep red in my raspberry pudding post. Actually I’ve used quite a bit of reds in my previous posts so a change would be nice – and one of my favourite colour is green. I also wanted to have some chocolate in it. I think choc and green do go together. I was thinking mint before, but maybe not substantial enough. They may be good for garnishing but not for the main focus of the dessert (at least not this time 
).
With the traditional verrines the layers are mostly horizontal. That is, you put one layer on top of another. I’ve always wanted to create verrines that somehow have vertical layers. I tried a couple of times but it’s damn difficult to make (well.. I’m not a chef or even a cook). I mean, how do you make the layers vertical? do you tilt your verrine 90 degree before making the layers and somehow “freeze” the layers so they stay in place? Gravity is not our friend anymore.
Anyway, I came up with this idea of putting the (thin) slices of the kiwi agains the glass so that the whole cross section of the kiwi can be visible. I think it makes quite an interesting subject of focus. I then put the crushed merengue pieces in the middle so it keeps the kiwi slices stuck against the glass. I found that the thickness of the slice is quite hard to get. Too thin and the slice becomes rather translucent and you don’t get the deep green colour showing. Too thick and the slice won’t follow the curve of the glass. And because the verrine glass are typically smaller in size, the curvature of the glass surface is greater.
I also put some kiwi cuts on the background to complement the subject. A couple of choc pieces on the plate to complement the flakes.
The shooting
As usual, camera angle is about 30cm above the table set, and the focus is primarily the front slice and the big choc flake on the top. The camera is set at f5.6 at 1/60. I want to second verrine on the back to get quite blurry and hence the f5.6.
The softbox is at 2-3 o’clock and positioned at around 50-60cm above the set. A reflector was used to bounce the light back from the other end, especially to light up the details of the choc flake
Discussion
In the past, when I need to come up with and idea for the verrine project, I always start by thinking what subject should I use this so the end result looks good (photographically). While I think this is a perfectly valid approach, maybe we need to consider more other aspect, especially with the food shot.
I think what makes a food shot looks good is not only the colour (or combination of colours) in the end result. When we look at a food shot, we imagine what the food taste like. Some of the combination are just not workable no matter how beautiful the colours (or colour combinations) are. Beautiful chocolate colour details with beautiful colour seafood are just not on (or may be it is… when there is a world caliber chef who is game enough to serve them at their restaurant). I mean, heck, I was served a trout sorbet in one occassion when I went to a fine dining restaurant. Trout sorbet! and you know what? it taste FANTASTIC! I wouldn’t have begun to imagine that combination – trout, cold temperature, and sorbet texture. Sometime unlikely combination can creates sensational taste.
Having said that, the kiwi shot above may create some controversy as to whether it is created just for the look or it actually tastes good. On one hand, it has 2 strong (and maybe opposing) sensation of sourness (from the kiwi) and the sweetness (from the choc). Are they conflicting, or are they complementing each other?
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged choc, chocholate flake, chocolate, coarse, color, colour, complement, curvature, curve, dark, dessert, focus, food, glass, gravity, green, kiwi, layer, layers, light, lighting, low key, merengue, opposing, pieces, slice, slices, softbox, styling, taste, verrine, vertical, vignette | Leave a Comment »
January 24, 2010 by Suwandi
Happy New Year everyone, and this will the our first verrine project in 2010. I think I’m now due for a savoury verrine so I’ll start the year with that.
I have always wanted to to a savoury verrine with salmon. I like its vibrant and bold colour with the whitish strips (the fat). For you who don’t know what ceviche is, it is traditionally a dish of raw fish mixed with vegetables and lemon squeeze. I first had my ceviche in Peru when I was on my honeymoon. Haven’t forgotten the taste of it since then!
salmon ceviche with alfalfa sprouts and white raddish pickle
Food Creation/Preparation and Styling
The salmon is prepared fresh, and cut into cublets. The part that I hate most is separating the flesh from the skin. I think I need to take a culinary course.
First I prepare the base layer with quite a dense layer of alfalfa sprouts. The layer gives a hint of green colour that I think sort of “neutralise” the bold salmon colour a little bit.
The white raddish has a deep red colour on it’s skin which I think contrast well with the salmon when cut in cross section. I put a couple of slices of the raddish on top of the alfalfa sprouts so that the salmon pieces can have flat base to sit on. I also push the salmon pieces agains the glass so the orange salmon colour and the white fat strips can be clearly visible.
I also put a circular slice of raddish on the top of the glass to make it a bit interesting. Finally I added a toothpick with a piece of salmon cublet and a raddish slice into the verrine. You may remember I used similar setup in my previous post on tapioca verrine. Finally I squeeze a generous amount of lemon juice and vinegar mixture on the salmon cublets. The juice makes the pieces more reflective and shiny when photographed.
The Shooting
The camera is setup at quite a low angle with the soft light at 3 o’clock direction coming from quite high up. I used my usual 100mm macro lens, it hasn’t failed me since I had it. The camera settings are set at F8 1/2 ISO100.
To achieve the low key shot I used my black T-shirts to as the base, which I further darkened it in the post-editing.
Observations
I found that when the light is not high enough it produces an unpleasant highlight at the bottom left of the verrine. You can still see the highlight on the bottom left of the verrine.
I chose low key again in this project because I quite like to contrast the orange with the dark (almost black) background. Incidently, the red on the raddish works quite well on the dark background too.
There are quite a bit of diagonal elements at play in this setup. The verrine arrangement is obviously in the main diagonal of the frame. The toothpick on the verrine at the back also reinforce the main verrine arrangement. The toothpick in the front verrine are placed on the other main diagonal of the frame.
The the circular raddish are deliberately positioned so that it lies on the “diagonal plane”, ie the plane angled against the lens focus. I find this gives more interest to the whole shot compared to if the raddish slice is co-planar with the focus plane.
Finally, you can actually see the reflection of my kitchen window and the Windex that I use in this project – not that it’s important, but I thought it’s worth mentioning just for fun!
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged alfalfa, atlantic salmon, black, ceviche, circular, cublets, dark, diagonal, focus, food styling, light, low key, orange, peru, raddish, red, reflection, salmon, softbox, sprouts, toothpick, verrine, white raddish | 4 Comments »
December 21, 2009 by Suwandi
This is probably going to be my last verrine project for this year. I know this week is supposed to be a savoury week but I can’t help it when I saw these truffle that my wife made in the christmas gathering we had last weekend.
A little story behind the truffle: we have been planning (well, actually, she has been planning) to make this truffle for the christmas gathering for quite a while. But something always got in the way. The first attempt we didn’t have unsalted butter. The second attempt failed because apparently the white chocolate that she brought home did not want to melt. It was quite amazing. You would think that if you heat up any kind of chocolate it will melt. But this time we both stand in front of the bowl of white chocolate sitting on top of a pan of boiling water and it just doesn’t melt. Apparently it has to be a cooking chocolate that we have to use. Anyway, finally the third attempt the beautiful dark and white spherically shaped dessert came about my sight and I can’t wait to take a photo of them.
Dark Chocolate and Coconut Truffle Trio with French Dessert Wine
Food Creation, Preparation and Prop
Well I wasn’t involved in the actual making of the truffles so I can’t talk that much about it (it’s her secret recipe 
). One thing I know is that she use bits of orange peels so the truffles actually have a dash of citrus taste when you eat it. But I digress.
Initially I was trying to use my other verrine that I used in my previous post. However I could only fit two truffles into it and the formation didn’t look good. It’s like two chocolate balls hanging in the glass with no purpose. Anyway I did try to use different combination of truffles, use two verrines with two dark chocs and the other verrine with two coconut truffles but they just didn’t work. So I gave up using my favourite verrine and settle with this tall verrine. It turns out that fits exactly three truffles into it. Perfect!
Now that I decided on the verrine I need to decide on what combination of truffles to put it. Assuming I’m going to use one verrine, I have several choices: all three in dark choc, all three in coconut, alternate dark – white – dark, and alternate white - dark – white. I voted for the alternate colour one – it would be a waste for me not to use the available combination. And I just happen to like the dark choc more so I chose the dark – white – dark combination.
I always associate dark chocolate with elegant dessert finishing off a fine three course dinner. So again, low key setup come into mind. What else comes with dark choc? Dessert wine maybe? What? of course it’s French dessert wine! It’s also an excuse for me to use my favourite verrine in this shot.
Also notice that I create a similar copy of the main setup and put it as a background.
The shooting
Camera is rather in low angle position to accentuate the height of the verrine. Softbox is at 2-3 o’clock pointing down 45 degree from the top. I did try to lower the softbox to light the verrine from the side but the reflections are so bad that I abandon the idea straight away.
The camera is set to F3.5 1/25th at ISO100.
Observation
The dessert wine is slightly out of focus, which is delibarate. I made them both in focus at first but find them competing with other for attention so I opened up the aperture a bit to throw the dessert wine a bit off focus.
Also I angled the camera so that the bottom dark choc has the white plate as it’s background and the middle coconut truffle has the black background. Now I did have problem with the top dark choc truffle because it is dark and the background is also dark, giving a bad contrast – you can hardly see the edge of the top truffle. This is the main reason why I create a second copy of the setup and put it in the background. I positioned the second copy so that the top truffle has something bright as background.
Also noticed that the top right part of the glass have some choc powder on the glass surface. That’s deliberate otherwise I couldn’t get the edge of the glass visible enough against the background.
There you go, my last verrine project for the year. I hope you enjoy it and Merry Christmas everyone!
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged alternate, background, chocolate, chocolate powder, coconut, colours, contrast, copy, dark, dark chocolate, dessert, dessert wine, focus, food, french, glass, low key, melt, powder, recipe, reflector, softbox, spherical, tall, three, trio, truffle, verrine | 1 Comment »
December 10, 2009 by Suwandi
I finally had a chance to get back to this project after almost a week delayed. This week has been crazy and it’s really a joy being able to come back to do what I really like.
This time is my creative time again – so instead of picking ideas from the Verrine book, I decided to create a verrine myself with my own “recipe”. I have this idea in mind from last week to create something with black sticky rice topped with thick coconut cream and a dash of mint on top. Guess what – I can’t find the sticky rice. I tried local groceries and asian groceries and they just don’t have it in stock. What can you do, I just find a substitute. I found this black tapioca pearl – I am actually glad that I didn’t find the sticky rice and found this tapioca pearl instead. They are chunky round shaped and has a reflective surface , which can be pretty to be photographed (in my opinion anyway).
honey coated tapioca pearl with mini orange slices
Food Creation and Preparation
The tapioca pearl need to be hard boiled and cool down to room temperature, otherwise the inside of the verrine will become foggy. The pearls are sticky too (especially after you coated them with honey!) so I need to carefully arrange them into the verrine otherwise the honey will be everywhere.
Initially I wanted to put another layer on top of the pearls. I did try to put a layer of thick coconut cream on top but that was a bad idea. The cream just sink down into the pearls. I tried to put some gelatine powder into the cream to make it firmer but then they looked like a white blob of glue sitting on top of the pearl. I abandoned the idea.
Then I saw an orange laying around and I thought, why not use it? I’m thinking the honey coated tapioca will give quite a sweet tast so a little bit of sour taste from the orange will make it more balanced. Sometime what you pre-visualise is not what you end up with
The Prop
I decided to go trio this time. The alternate arrangement of the orange slices and the toohtpick works quite well I think. I really like the toothpick. The idea didn’t come straight away. At first I was using a red wooden spoon that I just bought from Japan City. But I just don’t think the colours work together (ie orange and deep red). I tried wooden chopstick (I know using chopstick sounds funny but I was thinking since the dessert is in pearl shapes maybe we can use chopstick to pick it up – something a bit different!). But that too didn’t seem to work well. However it leads me to the final idea. What else can I use to pick up the pearls but not using the usual boring spoon? Yeah toothpicks!! The part on the shot where the toothpicks criss-crossing each other is my favaourite part. The orange slices on the corner is coated with honey so they are more “shiny”.
- Kitchen mess
The Shooting
Camera setting was set to F5.6 1/8 ISO100. Again I’m using my usual 100mm macro since I want to get close. I set the main focus to the orange slice. I also make sure that the main subject’s toothpick is on the same focus plane as the orange slice so both the orange slice and the toothpick are in focus (if only I have a TS lens!). The camera is looking down at the subject from 25 cm elevation. Light is set at 3 o’clock this time, up high shining down at the subject. This has the advantage that the light doesn’t form a reflection on the glass itself.
lighting setup
Before the shoot as usual I was tossing between high key and low key shot. My first instict tells me that high key would be more appropriate since the pearls are black-ish and you need something to constrast it against. Black on black is always harder to do. But I really feel that this sweet verrine is a dinner dessert. So call me contrarian, I go with the low key setup. I still need something bright to constrast the pearls against, so I put them on a white serving plate. That brings out the pearls part quite well I think. I particularly like the part where the pearls are pressed on the glass wall creating a dark black circles on the glass surface. Anyway, I also frame the setup so that most of the main orange slice is against the black background, giving higher constrast.
Observation
Making the background completely dark was a challange in the kitchen. There are always something that reflects the light – the wall nearby, the windows etc. So I PS the background to make it black. As you can see, I used my black T-shirts to cover the bench to create a dark surface. It works alright, but I think perspex will work better. I’m gonna get some black perspex next time.
As usual you can see the reflection of the serving plate on the glass. I could have avoided the reflection by using a darker colour serving plate but it won’t give a high contrast between the black pearls and the background. It’s a trade-off I guess.
I’m really into this kind of setup lately where there are a repetition of the same subject coming from the background and leads the eye towards the main subject in front. You can find similar setup concept on my past work on profiteroles and zucchini puree. I has the effect that the main subject is moving from the background, following the line of repetition towards your eyes and come into focus. It’s all about psychology isn’t it.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged black, blob, coated, coconut, cream, criss cross, dark, dessert, dinner, food, food styling, fruit, geometry, glue, highlight, honey, light, line, low key, mini, orange, pearl, plate, reflection, repetition, serving plate, slice, sticky, tapioca, toothpick, trio, verrine, white | 4 Comments »
November 30, 2009 by Suwandi
I am feeling creative today. Last night was our first anniversary and I decided to make a full 3 course dinner for my lovely wife complete with pre-main and pre-dessert in betweens. I won’t bore you with the complete menu except for the pre-main dish.
Usually when we go to fancy restaurant where they serve pre-main dish, the purpose is of course to clean your palate so you can start off with a clean slate before you start the main dish. It can be something fresh, but to my recollection, a lot of the time it’s in some form of puree. So guess what, I made a zucchini puree as the pre-main thinking that it’s really special, until of course I google it for recipe and found literally hundreds of them scattered around the web. Well, there goes “something special” – but I still go ahead with my plan simply because there was no time to change.
With my highly tuned estimation skill, I used way to many zucchinis and ended up with big bowl of beautifully coloured unused zucchini puree. And this is what I end up doing.
- Zucchini Puree with Mayonnaise and Dried Coriander
Food Creation and Preparation
The cooking is easy. The zucchini is chopped into inches, boiled, then processed using food processor. To my surprise, the puree come out straight with enough consistency for easy filling into the verrine – not to runny, not to viscous. Now, since this was originally cooked as a real dish, I boiled the zucchini in chicken broth to give a bit of flavour. The consequence is that it becomes oily, and it is really a pain if it sticks on the the part of the glass that is supposed to be clean. Windex helped, but still pain.
The rest is straight forward. Put a bit of mayo and dried and finely chopped coriander on top.
Food Preparation
Composition
As I said before, I am feeling creative today. Repetition can be boring, but sometimes it reinforces ideas. That’s what I’m trying to do here. Six identical verrines in the frame and that’s it. No other prop this time, only repetition (or pattern if you like) of the six verrine in some arrangement. Now this is a classic curve that leads the eye from the background spiraling clockwise to the foreground and end up at the bottom left of the frame. It looks quite natural to me, but I am wondering if left handed people would find counter-clockwise arrangement more natural. Anyone?
The Shooting
Camera angle is normal, ie approx 25-30 cm above the surface set at F4 at 1/50 ISO100. Light is at 9 o’clock with reflector at 4 o’clock. I really need to play around with the position of the light and the reflector to make sure that the main subject – ie the glass in front - has a clearly visible edge definition. Glass is hard to be photographed in this sense. If the positioning of the lighting is not right, the glass seems to “blend” in with the backgroun (because it’s transparent). There is this technique that I read in the book “Light: Science and Magic” by Fil Hunter and Paul Fuqua. They dedicate a whole chapter detailing how to light transparent objects so that the edge definition is clearly visible. Highly recommended.
- Lighting Setup
Observation
As I mentioned before, repetition can be boring but sometime it can reinforce ideas. There is a subtle balance between them. To many of them, the repetition become boring. To few, the reinforcement of the idea just didn’t happen. What I believe also, particularly in this case, is the number of item in the repetition. In my previous post about profiteroles, I mentioned that I prefered to use an odd number of item in the repetition since it is somehow “off balance” because it’s not even and therefore makes thing interesting. I did start with 5 verrines in this setup but then when I play around with 6, I think it turned out to be ok too. So even number works as well, but I can’t really pinpoint what or when to use odd or even. Maybe the fact that it arrangement is curved has influence on it. Any takers?
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged bright, coriander, curve, dinner, dish, even, food, high key, light, lighting, mayo, mayonnaise, odd, pattern, photography, pre-main, prop, puree, reflector, repetition, restaurant, savoury, small glass, softbox, styling, vegetable, verrine, zucchini | 7 Comments »
November 23, 2009 by Suwandi
I know this week is supposed to be a savoury verine week, but I decided to put my inferiorly developed creativity up to test and see what I can come up with.
A bit of story behind this shot. I was going to this factory outlet with my other half the other day. I, as usual, wander around aimlessly waiting for her to shop. Usually when we come to this factory outlet, I have a routine schedule to visit all other stores except the fashion related shop. So I usually start with the News Agency where I can spend a good half an hour reading through magazines – until the owner ask me with irritated tone “How can I help you?” – then I know it’s time to leave. You know the rest, I visited the pet shop, hardware shop, photo frame shop, even the supermarket. Then, as if it’s destined to be, I visited the David Jones warehouse last and guess what – I found this set of verrine glasses. Not exactly high quality, but I do like the high cylindrical shape.
Caramelised banana, frozen raspberry, and white chocolate truffle
Food Preparation/Creation
The longest part of the prep is the caramelisation of the banana pieces. After cutting the banana into small pieces, I rolled them on a bowl of caster sugar and use chopstick to pick it up and put it on the open flame to burn the sugar until it caramelised. And I have to do it one by one. I wish I had a butane flame blower to do this – much much quicker. Then I let them cool before I put them into the verrine.
The rest is really easy. A couple of pieces of raspberry and then the white choc truffle. I had this white choc truffle that my wife made as part of her French Pattisserie class (how convenient). Then I top it up it a mini mint leaves from my herb pot.
That all sound easy, but I did have to assemble the verrine twice. If you’ve dealt with frozen raspberry before, you’ll know that it doesn’t stay frozen too long. Adding on top of that, I was shooting on one the hottest day in Sydney that time (the temperature peaks at 41 degree Celcius that day). So what happened was I did my first verrine fine and beautiful with the truffle pop out a little bit higher than the verrine glass. As I prepare the scene and the props, etc the truffle has sunk to half the height of the verrine glass. The raspberry layer just get squashed as the raspberries reach the room temperature and become really soft. I decided to keep going and finalise my props before I make the second version. Gotta be quick with frozen stuff. That’s one of the hard part in shooting food stuff.
The Shooting
As with the props, I choose to put a cup of black coffee on the background along with a relatively sizeable sugar container. I wanted to convey the dinner mood at the dessert time. The sugar container sort of reinforce the “sweetness” of the dessert – at the same time balanced out by a black coffee, giving a bit of that coffee-bitter taste so that the overal scene is not to “sweet”.
I also deliberately choose black coloured coffee cup so it almost “blends” in with the dark background and doesn’t become distracting. With the big sugar container, I wasn’t quite sure about it initially because I thought it could be distracting because it’s going to look like a big bright blob at the background. But it kinda turned out ok I think. Maybe the neutral colour with some blurred writings on it makes it work. It sort of draw your eye away a bit from the verrine so forcing your eyes to explore the entire frame a bit more instead of just fixated on the verrine glass.
Camera is really at low angle this time to accentuate the height of the verrine. Also, with low angle, the layer is more visible as is, ie not “squashed” because of the high angle perspective. I did play a bit with exposure to make sure that the frozen ice layer on the raspberry is correctly exposed.
I covered the surface with black cloth to create the low key shot. Soft light is positioned at the usual 10 o’clock direction. Big reflector from 4 o’clock direction elevated quite high so it doesn’t produce a reflection on the glass. I also choose to use portrait orientation because I thought it goes better with the shape of the verrine.
Camera settings are 100mm at F5.6 1/4 second at ISO100.
Observation
A bit of reflection of coffee cup on the glass – again I left it as is. A spot highlight appears on the bottom right of the glass, casting a bright spotlight on the dark surface. I find it quite interesting. Obviously it comes from the softbox and get refracted that way. I’m still trying to get my feel on the type of the verrine glass that’s suitable for dessert or savoury. Some says tall verrines are good for savoury whereas low wide verrines are good for dessert. I deliberately make it the otherway around this time. What’s your take?
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged banana, black, caramel, carameliazed, caramelised, chocolate, coffee, contorni, cup, dark, dessert, food, frozen, fruit, glass, highlight, leaves, light, low key, mint, postres, raspberries, raspberry, reflection, reflector, sugar, sweet, truffle, verrine, white, white chocolate truffle | 6 Comments »
November 15, 2009 by Suwandi
I like strawberries. They give such a rich red colour in the photograph. Red is bold, red gets attention. That’s why I like it
.
This week is sweet verrine week, and I chose this one because of the rich red colour. Ok, ok, I also chose this because it seems easy to do, as I always did in my past verrine projects. Well, this one does indeed turn out to be quite easy to prepare. What’s more, the ingredient is quite easy to get – for me anyway because the strawberries are still in season.
Strawberries with basil and limoncello
Food Preparation
The preparation was relatively easy. I just diced up the strawberries and fill the verrine glass until approximately half full. Now since the strawberries that I got are not really ripe, the inside of the strawberries are still quite pale in colour. So I make sure that the diced up pieces are facing the right way so most of the pale colour side are facing away from the glass surface. But don’t overdo it though because it would look unnatural (that’s what I did first and the result looks a bit to engineered).
Once the glass is half full, I built a small “hill” using a couple of more pieces of diced strawberries to build the height into the assembly. Height is really important here because the camera is positioned really high in this setup. The hill is actually quite high (relatively speaking), it almost reached the height of the glass, but doesn’t appear like that in the final shot because the camera angle actually has a diminishing effect on height. That’s why I need to exagerate the height of th hill a little.
The basil slices are then put on top of the strawberries hill. I have to repeat this step several time before I find out that when the slice curve up (ie with both edge of the slice sticking upwards) will give a more appealing image.
Finally the diluted and sweetened limoncello was poured until it reaches the height where you can see the reasonable line of liquid from outside the glass wall.
If you’ve been reading my past entries on the verrine project, I always do my food shot on my kitchen bench. Well it’s convenient. But it also has a plain white reflective surface. It’s great for a clean high key shot. And if I need a low key shot I usually cover the surface up with black cloth like in this post. But this time I wanted to try something different. I want a patterned surface, like my dining table, to create a different mood. I wanted to create a feeling that people are just finishing up their main dessert during dinner and are about to wrap the fiesta up with this verrine. Well dinner is at night so I though low key will be more appropriate. And my dining table is dark colour too so I think it fits into the scheme.
I put a small dessert plate on the top left to convey the “just finished my main dessert” message. I just put some crumble so make the plate a bit messy, just like when we just finish our piece of cake on the plate. I think it works pretty well, what do you think?
I also put a verrine glass of whole strawberry at the background to support the scene. As I said in my last post, I quite like this style at the moment. I think adding the raw ingredient as part of the prop just make sense.
The glass of limoncello actually comes as the second thought. I mean I could have used a lemon slice into the scene as a prop because limoncello is supposed to be made of lemon right? But I thought maybe a glass of limoncello may go better, afterall, what could be more perfect than a glass of limoncello to wrap up the dinner with this verrine
The shoot
A couple of days ago one of my fellow in Flickr whose nick name is Asta (you can visit his work here) wrote a comment on my chocolate mouse with orange shot that explain something that I didn’t even realise (consciously anyway). He said that the composition in the shot has a classic X composition structure. What he meant was that in that composition, you can typically find two main lines on the composition that intersect each other (forming an X – hence the name) where the main subject along with other important object (such as props) are positioned. Or put it simply, the important objects are places along the diagonal lines of the frame. This is closely related to the diagonal compositional rule that every photographers learns the first time they learn about composition.
Anyway, here I am using this composition structure again. I quite like it now that I’m concious about it. Here you can see the dessert plate, the limoncello glass and the main subject, the strawberries limoncello are aligned in one diagonal line. For the second diagonal I actually position the spoon along the line to make the line stronger. The glass containing the whole strawberries also lie along this line. By the way, the pattern on the table are also along the second diagonal line.
With the lighting, I need to position the softbox at around 8-9 o’clock this time instead of my usual 10 o’clock position. The reason is that the table surface is semi reflective. If I put the light on the 10 o’clock position there will be a bright spot on showing on the frame which I think will kill the night dinner mood. A big reflector are placed at around 4 o’clock, also elevated quite high to fill the light from above. Otherwise you’ll see the reflector’s reflection on the glass.
The camera is elevated quite high as mentioned before – almost 40-50cm above the main subject. I did this so that I can accentuate the basil leaves on top. The price you pay is that it make the strawberry “hill” much lower than it actually is.
As usual I used my 100mm macro set at F4 at 1/10 ISO100.
lighting setup
Observation
There is a little reflection “problem” here. First you can see that there is a small reflection of the spoon on the limoncello glass. I don’t mind this one, since it gives some dimension to the otherwise pretty flat looking glass. If you don’t like the reflection you may need to reposition the light a bit or use gobo to block the light falling onto the spoon. Otherwise you can use spoon made of other non-reflective material as substitute.
Second reflection is the reflection of the limoncello glass on the left side of the main strawberry glass. Again it’s quite subtle and I didn’t bother to get rid of it. I’m not even sure how to do it apart of photoshop it out.
NOW COMES THE TWISTS
I actually lied about two things in the food preparation section. Can you spot what they are?
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November 9, 2009 by Suwandi
Welcome back. We are back to savoury verrine this time. I seem to fall again and again into the same trap. I chose this from the Verrine book by Jose Marecal because it seems easy. To add to that the ingredients look easy to procure. How wrong I was. I usually start the project by blindly following the recipe. I mean don’t get me wrong – that’s exactly what you should do if you want to make the verrine to be consumed. But sometimes, well, most of the time, to make a food fit to be photographed, you need to be ready to “bend” the recipe.
Now, I know I’m touching a very sensitive issue here. What I mean is this: There are two types of food photographer. The first type is what I called the “purists”. They insist shooting the food “as is”, made without any modification to the recipe. This is sort of an equivalent of a “candid” shot in the world of portrait photography.
The other type is the what I called the “fashionist”. Their goal is to make the food look best in the final image, and are prepared to do whatever modification needed in the process of the food preparation – and more often than not will render to food inedible. They do things like spraying glycerin on top of pancakes so that the honey on the top doesn’t get absorbed into the pancake and therefore make it “saggy”. Yes, things like that.
Which one is better? None, really. Each has their own good and bad. But I find that I need to be able to switch back and forth between this type to really produce an acceptable food shot – like in this project, as we shall see. But here is the final shot.
Butterfly pasta (farfalle) with vegetables
Food creation/preparation
As mentioned before, initially I followed th recipe to make the verrine – ala the “purist”. I pan fried the eggplant with some olive oil that serves as the bottom layer. I also pan fried some slices of zucchini for the second layer – again with some olive oil. Finally, I boiled the butterfly pasta - until al dente of course – in some salt and olive oil – as it’s supposed to be.
You can see that I mentioned olive oil a lot of time, because – as you may already guess it – that’s the thing that causes me grieve when assembling the verrine. They just make the glass so smudgy. I spend litterally hours to make a reasonable arrangement for shooting. And even after that, I have to spend hours in post processing to remove the little oil drops that sticks on the inner glass wall. And worse, at the end, I just don’t think it’s good enough. So I decided to remake it again – with the “fashionist” approach.
The second time around, I went pretty radical. The eggplant base layer is raw, and also the zucchini slices. Being raw make the assembling so much easier and they don’t seem to leave nasty oily marks on the glass wall. Also, the raw eggplant is more “solid” compared to the pan-fried-with-olive-oil version which is much softer much like a saggy sofa for the layer above. The solid raw version proof to provide a good base for the second layer of zucchini. It sort of prevent the zucchini slices to sink into the eggplant layer.
The same thing applies for the zucchini slices. Raw slices are much more solid, ie not as soft – this in turn provide a good base for the pasta and tomato halves on the top layer.
For a bit more decoration I put a couple of pine nuts under the grill of few minutes to bring out the dark orangish colour. And for the final steps, I poured the olive oil so it soaks down into the base layer. The eggplant will just absorbs the oil, giving the appearance that it’s just been cooked.
Props
I decided to go high key this time and in portrait orientation. This leaves me with quite a lot of empty spaces on the top of the frame, so I scatter some of the raw ingredients that makes up the verrine arround the empty space. I think it works quite well. I’m really warming up to this approach now – ie prop with the raw ingredients. We’ll see how well it work in the next project.
The shooting
Camera is set to F4 at 1/20 ISO200. As usual, I use my 100mm macro to shoot this. I decided to set the angle a bit higher so that the top part is a little bit more visible. Lighting is placed at 10 o’clock direction, but quite elevated – it’s pointing down approximately 45 degree to the subject. I am trying to get the top ring of the glass to lit up. Well it does, but the effect is not as visible because the high key setup. Maybe I’ll try again in the next low key project. A big reflector at 4 o’clock direction, also held quite high so it doesn’t form a reflection on the surface of the glass.
I didn’t take a shot of the setup this time – I didn’t remember until I almost finish clean up! I’ll try to remember next time.
Observation
I actually change the glass between my first (failed) attempt to the second. In the first attempt the glass that I used has quite a thick wall. I found this to be a disadvantage. When the glass is thick, and say you put a haf-tomato facing the glass wall, the tomato appear to “float” in the glass. In the final shot above I used a glass with thin wall. I think it works quite well.
Going back to the “purist” vs “fashionist” discussion, I really think being able to switch back and forth is a great advantage. To say the purists are wrong is like saying that shooting candid shot of people are non-sense. Equivalently, to say the fashionists are wrong is like saying people cannot put on make up to be photographed. I probably put myself more on the fashionist side – which side are you on?
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged aubergine, basil, butterfly pasta, eggplant, farfalle, fashionist, food, food photography, garlic, high key, light, pasta, pesto, pine nuts, prop, purist, reflection, reflector, softbox, spatula, stick, styling, vegetables, verrine, zucchini | 2 Comments »
November 2, 2009 by Suwandi
Alright, I finally found a set of 6 small glasses that I think might work with this project. They are actually being sold as a dessert wine glass but hey, does it really matter? and the good thing is they are stemless. This helps a lot in terms of avoiding reflection (as I had a lot of difficulty getting rid of in
my previous post). I’ll talk more about this later.
This week’s verrine will be a sweet one (I plan to alternate between savoury and sweet). I chose this one because it *seems* to be easy to make, but it turns out that I spent more time preparing the food than shooting it.
Rice Pudding, Raspberry, and Speculaas
Food Preparation
First layer is the rice pudding layer. Simple ingredients (milk, cream and sugar. Well, rice of course). But it takes quite a while to get the rice softened and cooled. I’m not sure where I went wrong but the pudding becomes really sticky – kind of a glue sticky. Which is alright, I found it easier to “control” when I need to put them in the verrine glass. Again, you really need to wait until the pudding is cooled otherwise the verrine glass turn really foggy. Now, even though I said it’s easier to control, since the glass opening is so small, the puddings are sticking everywhere on the inside of the glass. Here WINDEX proofs to be my friend in need (apart from rendering the food inedible). I also found that I need to use chopstick to “press” the pudding against the inner glass surface to avoid any air bubble appearing from outside.
Second layer is the raspberry. In the recipe the raspberry is semi-crushed and jelly-fied (new word?). Same challange here when stuffing the raspberry layer, you just need to keep cleaning the glass inner surface after each layer. Also, I found that maintaining a clear separation between the rice pudding layer and the raspberry layer quite hard. Lucky the rice pudding is quite sticky so the jelly doesn’t “sink” into it. Again I need to “press” the jelly to the inner glass wall otherwise air bubbles will be visible from outside.
Top part is easy. Crushed speculaas carefully poured on top. Again, the crumble will sit better if the raspberry layer is set pretty firm, otherwise it will “sink” into it. With the crumble, make sure that when pouring it falls straight onto the jelly and not on the glass. It’s really hard to clean the crumbles that sticks on the glass wall because if you move/tilt the glass the main crumble layer will collapse.
I finished off with a couple of pieces of fresh raspberry. I moist them a bit so they can appear shinny on the surface.
Shooting
I did try several setup. In fact, I did try to shot above in high key, but I like the dark version more. It gives a “dinner” mood. The high key one give a sense of “morning” or “breakfast”, and I don’t think this dessert is suitable at 10am.
This time I put the softbox on the 9 o’clock direction with big mirror on the 4-5 o’clock direction. I also choose the black surface to contrast the white-ish rice pudding and the white saucer plate.
Note that since the verrine glass is stemless and therefore less “curvy” at the bottom, the reflection is not too bad. It still reflects some light from the surrounding, but not to the extend it’s distracting the visibility of the layers. In fact, you’ll probably want some reflection otherwise it will look rather unnatural.
Camera setting is at f4.5 1/20 ISO100 at 100mm. The camera position is elevated a bit – approx 15-20cm above the surface of the subject. I’ve included a snapshot of the setup.
Lighting Setup
The tripod on the left is where the camera position was (there is no camera there because I need to camera to shoot this setup). Also you can’t see the reflector because I actually hand held the reflector when I shoot so obviously I have to put the reflector down when I shoot this setup
Observation
You can see on the background I placed a porcelain milk container as a prop. Now that milk container get reflected (refracted?) onto the bottom of the glass. You can see the inverted image of the milk containter there. I don’t mind it there, but it got me thinking, what should I do if I’m in the situation where I need to get rid of it? The light must have been reflected off the milk container surface, travelled through the bottom layer of the glass, and onto the camera lens – the bottom part of the glass effectively act as a big fat lens itself. Maybe I can put some kind of flag or gobo in between the milk container and the back of the verrine glass to block the light. That might work as long as the flag/gobo doesn’t interfere with the shot (ie not in the frame). Any other ideas?
Also for any of you who has the Verrines book by Jose Morechal, you’ll find that the one in the book is quite different from the one I posted here. The one in the book has the raspberry layer interlacing with the rice pudding layer creating quite a nice pattern. Any idea how to do this? I did try it but as you can guess, I failed miserably. Maybe the jelly is too firm I don’t know. But if anybody can throw some light that would be great! Being a food stylist is not an easy job at all.
Couda
As suggested, this is the high-key “morning” version that I mentioned before. My preference is the low key one. See if you like this one better.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged biscuits, black, cream, dark, dessert, dinner, fresh, fruit, high key, light, low key, milk, prop, pudding, raspberry, reflection, reflector, rice, rice pudding, softbox, speculaas, sugar, sweet, verrine | 11 Comments »
October 24, 2009 by Suwandi
Ok, finally I got started on this rather ambitious project. It’s actually quite a bumpy start. You know to start the verrine project the first I thought I should find is obviously the verrines. By the way for you who don’t know – verrines are type of dishes that is served in small glasses. It is derived from the french word “verre” which means “glass”. Quite popular now especially in the restaurants that serve modern western dishes.
Anyway, so I began the quest to find the verrines by visiting the major store like David Jones, Myers – and I found nothing. Then I tried the popular kitchenware warehouse Victoria Basement – and I found nothing. Ebay – nothing! Then I google “verrine buy” and finally I found several website that sell different set of small glasses. Most of them are french or british website. “Yay!” I thought, happily add the items to the shopping cart and proceed to check out – and guess what – they don’t deliver to Australia! It happens that all website that I found either only deliver locally or don’t deliver to Australia. They say its our Custom, they are too strict. Great, big speed hump before I even get started.
So you all have to excuse me that this first verrine project is not really made in a verrine. I just use whatever glass I have that I think is reasonable. So here we go.
Niçoise crumble with goat cheese cream
Food Creation/Preparation
This is also the first food shot that I have to make from scratch. Well when I say “I have to make from scratch” I usually mean “I read the recipe about 5 times and attempted to make it myself but then I make a big mess in my kitchen and my wife jump in and take it over from there – meanwhile I start setting up my camera”. I still find it fun tough, not sure what my wife think.
As the title implied, this verrine starts with a ratatouille as the base, followed by a think layer of goat cheese cream, then another layer of Nicoise crumble on the top. One tip that I can give here is that when putting food into a clear kitchenware such as a glass for photography purpose, let the food cool to room temperature before putting them in. Otherwise the inner side of the glass will become foggy and you can’t see clearly through the glass. Unless of course that’s the effect that you want.
In the first attempt, the second layer (the cream cheese layer) quickly sip through the base layer because the base is not dense enough. The result is that there is no clear and clean separation between the base and the second layer. So we have to start over. This time we really compact the base layer until it’s really dense before pouring the second layer. This time it works ok, although I still think if you want a cleaner separation you need another technique. One technique that I can think of is to pour a liquid jelly on top of the base layer and let the jelly set. This will then became a rather solid base for the second layer to sit on. Other trick may be to spray glycerin on top the first layer. I’ll give it a go next time.
Second layer is not as difficult but you really need to be careful so that the cream doesn’t touch the area of the glass that you don’t want to (such as the tip). It’s really difficult to clean, you can’t really use napkin to wipe it off because it’s greasy (well, cmon, it’s cream!) We use Windex to clean the glass – and gloriously render to batch inedible.
The Shooting
As usual, it takes probably good half an hour to come up with a composition that I like. I decide to do a low key shot this time since all my previous food shot is rather high key. I also got this nice table mat as a base to cover off my blindingly white kitchen bench. Shooting a low key shot on a reflective white surface is rather challenging.
I positioned the softbox rather high, 11 o’clock direction and a big reflector on the approx 2 o’clock direction to lighten up the crumble on the top. The most challenging part of this shot for me is to reduce the reflection on the glass surface. As I mentioned before the kitchen bench is white, so you can see it pretty clear on the glass surface. Now I don’t have a big black cloth so 3 of my black T-shirt need quite a bit of washing after I sacrifice them to be used to cover my kitchen bench. Even after that you can still see some reflection from the stuff that I can’t cover (such as the white plate etc). Now if you know how to get rid of the reflection completely in this kind of setup would you pleeaaaasseeeee let me know. I still can’t figure it out.
I use my usual 100mm macro, and set the f-stop to 3.5 so I can get a nice blur on the book on the background. In case you haven’t noticed, that’s the book that contain all the recipe for this project.
What’s next
I’m thinking to alternate between savoury and sweets so next one will most likely be a sweet verrine. I hope I have the proper verrine glass by then. If you know where I can buy them AND deliver them to Australia, please please please let me know
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged black, blur, cloth, cream, crumble, foggy, french, glycerine, goat cheese, grease, jelly, layer, light, low key, napkin, Niçoise, ratatouille, reflection, reflector, small glasses, softbox, verrine, windex | 6 Comments »
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