I had 3 photo shoots of food today and each one was a little different to work with but you can simply apply the same rules to get you by, and get you out — unless you get to eat it (And I got to!).

Shoot 1.

Spinnakers Restaurant on the harbor can be a great place to shoot if you can control the amount of light that reflects of the water through the 200º spanning windows!
It would be easy after a few trial and error shots to get both dish and view, but I find it distracting from what you’re actually trying to showcase sometimes; food!
The view is nice but to be honest I think more people come for the food than a view that they could get from the restaurant next door, 2 doors down, or possible a few blocks down the road!

First thing you need to take into consideration in a situation like this, is to know that if you’re going to get a shallow depth of feild, bye, bye background and hello white if you’re facing a window! So go with the white or angle the snap to get the table in.

Below is the setup and the final dish.

Shoot 2.

Restaurant Synergy at Mercure Centro Hotel is now my number 1 place in town (And not the factor I get to eat their dish after!).
This is a pretty nice place for photos — a true treat! I have almost an unlimited number of places in the restaurant to take a photo and a vast array of lighting sources. The only problem that I get with this restaurant is that nearly everything is white! If the colour of the dish is vibrant you really don’t run into any problems, even if the plate and table is white. You can get a great effect if you eliminate its shadows to make the dish appear that it’s floating. In Synergy I chose to go on a granite table to give it a little more depth and colour.

Below is the set up and the 2 final dishes.

Shoot 3.

Compass Restaurant at Rydges Hotel is one of the most challenging places for a shoot. It’s not the product, it’s the natural light. It’s quite cut off form the shades overhanging the windows.
Today was a good day for the lighting outside because it was shinning in pretty well.

Since the dish was so wide, the f number was large and a larger f number on a 50mm f/1.8 doesn’t really work too swell! But lucky the sensor in the 5D MarkII is so good that you can shift the ISO up pretty high (ISO 1000 was used on the final shot) and you really don’t get any grain.
I had to face the dish towards the light rather than away because the light coming up the back of the salad ‘distorted ‘ it. Another factor for facing it towards the light eliminated a lot of shadows and the flash that I needed to use to generate the missing light shone-up the juicy lemon so I had to shift position…
The flash was bouncing behind so it didn’t flood the dish or illuminate the lemon too much.

Hope this will let you experiment a little bit more and think about solutions to some problems that might spring up during a shoot.

I love food!

One thing I’m extremely happy about is the Fankie photo shoot. My first multi-national editorial pic!
The very morning it hit the shelves I received a txt that it was out, and within minutes I was there to pic up a copy. I didn’t think it was going to be a full page!!

I was so nervous taking the shot because it was my first shoot with my then brand new Canon 5D MarkII. I had gone straight online and rented a Canon EF 17-40mm f/4L and a Canon 580EX II to make sure that I got what I needed and the day after it arrived I went for it — and I’m stoked with the results!

I’ve been still shooting like mad at Focus and with the 5D I’ve had even more fun.
They call it now at work the “make’s you look hot camera!”.

One thing that I’ve been doing more of is food photography. I love it! The smells, the colours, the textures and the ability too add as much bokeh as I want!
Though in most instances I only get about 20 minutes to get the meal, snap it, and be ready to head off to the next shoot. Head over to my flickr for some of the delicious shots! *nom nom*

Anyways everyone, I have quite a number of web sites to make and launch, this web site to re-gig for my new style and also I have to prep myself to be into my new place on the 16th of July where I’ll set up some studio gear to get some hawt pics with a few models I have lined up.
Be in contact if you’re close and keen for and shots and can be willing to travel…

Creamy, sweet and oh so easy!
And that’s what I’m all about when it come to being in the kitchen — just simplicity as much as possible! And this creation was inspired by a Woolworths: Good Taste magazine recipe; Strawberry & Vanilla Custard Slice. Same name, slightly different.

Recipe:

Preparation Time 5 – 15 minutes

Cooking Time 10 minutes

Ingredients (serves 4)
1 sheet (25 x 25cm) frozen ready-rolled puff pastry, just thawed
2 tbs quince paste
1 tbs flaked almonds
160ml (2/3 cup) bought vanilla custard
1 tsp lime juice
13 strawberries, washed, hulled, thinly sliced
Vanilla sugar to coast strawberries
Icing sugar, to dust

Method
Preheat oven to 200°C. Line a baking tray with non-stick baking paper. Cut the pastry sheet into 4 even squares. Cut each square in half to make 8 rectangles. Place the pastry pieces on the lined tray. Use a fork to prick the pastry all over and brush lightly with butter. Bake in oven for 10 minutes or until puffed and golden. Set aside for 10 minutes to cool. Use a large serrated knife to split the pastry pieces in half horizontally.
Add lime juice and almonds to custard. Spread the cut side of half the pastry pieces evenly with the quince paste and custard mix. Toss vanilla sugar and strawberries together in a bowl. Top with strawberries and the remaining pastry pieces.

Dust with icing sugar and serve immediately. Also great with double cream or thickened cream on top — or even a Vanilla or the very beautiful Maggie Beer’s Quince Paste and Bitter Almond Ice Cream. (Don’t knock-it before you try it! Found at a lot of Coles Supermarkets)

Bon Appétit (Though it’s only dessert and not a meal ) ]]> http://the-mil.com/blog/bite-me/feed 1 http://the-mil.com/blog/bite-me http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheMilStudiosForceCreativity/~3/Yk2f8yASYSY/so-long-farewell http://the-mil.com/blog/so-long-farewell#comments Sat, 18 Apr 2009 08:28:32 +0000 admin http://the-mil.com/?p=357 Sadly I’ve decided to get rid of my backup gear – Canon 450D.
Since my 5D is quite heavily insured (As anyone should for it’s price tag) I’m making some room in my camera bag so it doesn’t weigh like my old high school one — BLOODY TEXT BOOKS!!

I’ve got some keen buyers, but if you’re also keen just give me a holla at info [at] the-mil.com. Everything in top condition (Par the very cheap plastic ’silver’ decorative lining on the lens). Tagging it at AUSD $850.
Locally only

1x Canon 450D, 5x Batteries, 1x Battery Grip, 1x Miniature Tripod, 1x 18-55mm f/3.8-5.6 Kit Lens, 2x HOYA Filters, 1x Local and Wireless Trigger, 1x Flash Defuser and 1x Charging dock (UK/Singapore plug connection – Will include universal plug). Also my 4 & 8 gig SanDisc SD cards.

So, Road Test! A night out on the town.

Every new toy needs a good test, and this was one that especially made it for me: A reasonably dark restaurant and a bar that has hardly any lights on – Perfect!
All set and a night out on the town, annnd a place to stash the camera incase I decided to go a bit hard while I was out: WORK! Also I am aware that taking a trinket such as a $4000 camera out on the town wasn’t a great idea, but thats really up to the insurance company to decide. Haha
So here we are, the tests – First test shots are not processed in Photoshop – only resized to put up in the corner the original size with grain. The second test pics are on flickr and slightly touched up in Lightroom.

// Test 1: The dark Italian Restaurant.

Warm Chicken Salad

Me!

Tortellini Bosciola (I had it too! Freaking awesome!)

// Test 2: The dim lit Bar.

Dasha spinning out some tunes

Dasha spinning out some tunes

Hide and go sneaky!

Louise at the bar – Only light is from register!!

Signing off for the night – Me + Kimmy

I love this camera and I just can’t wait to get out and do a proper shoot with it! Loving the new setting where you can increase or decrease the bokeh effect too!
I just love working with it so much and the HD video system is great too… but no so good when you’ve had a few drinks from the girls that you know behind the bar and you mention ‘strong drink’ to them…

Oh, all shots were take on my VERY cheap Canon 50mm f/1.8! So many times I thought I was shooting through a f/1.4.

So before my sister was about to toddle off to bed I snagged her for a few shots and liked how they came out.

Since I don’t have a flash on hand any more I just had to improvise with pretty much every ceiling and pedestal light in the house switched on.
Also I don’t know where it came from but my brother got his hands on some purple celefane and placed it over the body light so it was mainly the background was purple and not so much the subject.

Quite impressed with the results and would love to get to use this lens even more; and I will defiantly use it on the 5D Mark II and get back to y’all. My 450D isn’t crash hot with that fantastic lens indoors unless there is a massive amount of light – a very good outdoor lens because of the amount of light that pretty much floods every surface. Love it!

Also I’ve put the setup down the bottom

Will be posting more — looking forward to it!
Stay tuned.

I guess the purpose of this post is just to let people know I’m alive and to have a bit of fun in a post…
Earlier this week I was chatting via twitter with master Johnno’ about the 2009 technology checklist… So I’ve decided to set up this post with that named list and share with the interwebs my deep… ‘desires’ as you will.

Let us being eh!
I think I might break it into sections… and you will marvel at it!

• Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 f/1.2
  • I’ve been sprucing for a while that I’ll get this little-beauty but I’ve just had to keep putting it off! And after renting it and absolutely loving it so; I’ve had a few conversations with people here-and-there and decided to go for the 1.2. I KNOW very exy’ with around a $2100 AUSD price tag which is about $1400 AUSD more expensive then the 1.4. I also know I wont get the full potentional out of the lens (Though you still get great results) with my current 450D because it isn’t a full frame camera. Thats why the next thing on my list is a
• Canon 5D Mark II NOW A PROUD OWNER
  • I really wouldn’t mind the good old 1D/1Ds Mark III (Well who wouldn’t) but I don’t believe I’m really ready to go that far (At the moment) with photography, and hey – it’s about $2000 cheaper here in Australia! I’ve thought and thought, and came down to just thinking that the 5D is slightly more ‘future proof’ at the moment compared to the 1D which it has kinda run into the ground (Only on some levels I guess!) and now also with the 500D on the market it’s made the 200D and 50D and pretty much the 40D have a run for their money so for the moment the 5D Mark II is looking quite spiffy — well… Until they launch a 1D Mark IV at least! Or maybe a just a plane ‘D’! But what I’m more clueie about is why I dont have a
• Canon 580EX II
  • I’m serious! Why don’t I have this puppy already! Plan is to eventually have about 4 or so! Mixing in a 480EX II instead maybe but still with the 580!
• Canon EF 15mm f/2.8 Fisheye
  • Why would this marvel need explaining! It’s super rad!
• iPhone 3.0 NOW IN MY POCKET!!
  • I’m planing on getting my hand on the Beta SDK 3.0 and having a fiddle with it, and a look and most importantly let people marvel that I have it before them… well… Physical people that I know!I’ve had quite a few ideas for some apps and hopefully I can get it off the ground!
• Apple LED Cinema Display
  • Something (Like pretty much everyone else) is just one of those dreams that you want to come true… Just like
• MobileMe DOING A 60 TRAIL
  • I mainly really want this so I’m in more control of my emails and images and what-not. But also I just want it for a more central management!
• Adobe CS4
  • There are quite a number of new features in InDesign that will make up more efficient at work when creating the magazine but for now – it’s too expensive to order it for about 6 computers… Though 5 are updates; I get spoilt when I usually get the newer version containing Flash and Dreamweaver… But that now comes standard! Hahaha. Though I think my boss wouldn’t mine CS4 Master Collection! And he wouldn’t mind a copy of Lightroom 2 for himself. All us photographers at work have it and he’s not that much of a fan of 50 clicks to process any more!
    Another thing like everything else! I was fortunate enough to test it out and really enjoyed it. Some elements that are just plain annoying thats over-written a few things like in Photoshop the hotkey ‘R’ is replaced with ‘Canvas Rotate’ then the previous ‘Touch Up Tools’.

On a more personal basis I guess I wouldn’t mind starting from the basic end of the scale with Photography; re-cap things I might of missed and/or misunderstand with a few photography courses. Also perhaps visit the Apple store in Sydney, open my bottle of Cognac, travel quite a bit more, fix the horrible noise my MBPooooo (Thanks Pasq for that term ) that seems to be coming and going, perhaps master the Wordpress and maybe even bring up so old projects that weren’t entirely finished like my ‘Coffee‘ idea

Much to do and many people to see I guess. Who knows, maybe this year I’ll get that last narrowed down to a few pen scratches over the top of them. See… I knew you would marvel at it!

… I’m counting that as 2 marvel-points cos I saw how much you marveled!

Tonight I went pretty hard in the kitchen and – well… mains didn’t got too well so I’m willing to share dessert for the moment.
Though this isn’t my own recipe; I’m just pushing myself to make it a habit of recording my ‘cookings’ and whip out the ol’ camera, set things up, and click away.

The setup (Sorry – taken on iPhone):

And here is the final product: [recipe]

So yeah, this is really just to get my A-into-G and do some of my original ideas for the blog and to share another one of my passions: The Kitchen!

Stay tuned! ]]> http://the-mil.com/blog/food-for-thought/feed 1 http://the-mil.com/blog/food-for-thought http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheMilStudiosForceCreativity/~3/ly-BTTx3rjI/the-virgin-strobist http://the-mil.com/blog/the-virgin-strobist#comments Sat, 21 Feb 2009 14:29:04 +0000 admin http://the-mil.com/?p=284 Yes, it’s true! I’m quite the virgin when it comes to being a user of the humble flash!

Recently I thought I’ll get in there and rent a nice little Canon 50mm f/1.4 along with a 580 EXII and see how I went on my own for a little bit… and had some interesting turn outs!
After fiddling with a few settings, then realising that one of the people that had been informing me about those setting used a Nikon (Was pretty much backwards – cos we all know Canons rock-socks!), and I had to pretty much go from there!

On of the hardest things when trying to even become a ‘amateur strobist’ is finding out your settings!
No one place I could really find how to get your settings right… So, first bit of knowledge is using M or Manual! And it’s pretty much smooth sailing from there!

If you plan on having your subject close to the light srouce (Like above), and you’re in  a reasonably lit room, having you # at 1/250 and f/ at F13 – got that? Then you’re pretty much set and can figure a few things out along the way!
I also force set my ISO to around 200, though it should be that low if you have you’re ambient lighting rather dim for your shoot.

Using a pair of Pocketwizards, a light stand with a hotshoe attachment and a Translucent White Shoot-Thru Umbrella – I was ready to go.

There was also a Silver Reflector or both left and right sides. A small light to catch harsh shadows just behind the model at a rather low level to the floor while the flash was positioned high right (Of camera) which flooded the subject.

Basically with the same as the above, I used the same but without the ‘flekies’ and the flash was positioned at the models height.

Next I just ditched the Translucent Umbrella and added a ‘Snoot’ too the flash.

“A funnel shaped tube placed over the flash head to direct the light”

I just used a bit of thick paper and small amount of tape to keep it on. And for a different effect later of, I placed straws within the snoot too create a honeycomb grid, which created in a way – a spotlight/flash light effect.

Flash positioned camera right directed at the wall. No reflector or umbrella used.
Happy shootings, and I hope I helped those in some way that didn’t.

I’m glad to also announce I have a collection of my work contained in a new section titled Field Work and will now post whenever I get new work up and running. Just trying out this new things this year called a ‘blog’! It’s an amazing thing you know!!

So here we go, just a few nice new shots for you to feast upon… In your dreams.