Vladislav Tregubov HW 3: Color, Food Photography, and Instagram

Smart people do not read glossy magazines, they publish them!
Andrei Konchalovsky (Russian Film director, screenwriter)

I want to paraphrase this quote and say, smart people do not contemplate photo in Instagram, they publish them. I respect the people who make money out of thin air, but I cannot understand the people who spend their time for viewing those photos without any money for it. Maybe, I do not understand something in this modern trend.

I decided to check my photo archive and I discovered that there is no one photo with an only food plate or table! I have never made a just food pictures. I always made a person’s portraits without or with something else because food-photo was not interesting for me. I have photographed still lifes, but it never was a food. I rather prefer eat my meal but not photograph it. Therefore, I decided to do something unusual in my case. For this homework, I created special ice cream and photographed it as if professional photographs do it for glossy magazines.

Good color is a very important thing for any photograph but even now, sometimes, very difficult to create photo with a good quality of color rendition. Our eyes do not notice that all light sources have different color temperatures, but not photo camera. Even modern so-called smart cameras can make a mistake if there are two or more different sources of light, for example the sunlight and incandescent lamp. In food photo, it is even more important than in other type of photo, because the main idea for this photo trend is to persuade the audience that this food is delicious. For example, unlikely somebody can want to eat the meat with blue or green color. For best quality and natural color, I made photo during daylight and use only the freshest ingredients. I tried to do my food photo delicious and natural exactly as professionals do it for magazines or Instagram. I hope you like it!

P.S. Not all that is written above is true! If interested, try to guess what is not true?

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Little story about how I did this picture in reality.

I tried to do my food photo exactly as professionals do it and I use their methods for creating ice cream. I use hair conditioner and cornstarch for preparing fake ice cream and added red food coloring for more natural color. All my “natural and freshest” ingredients are shown at the photo.

For the best quality and natural color, I really wanted to use daylight, but without red color in composition, image was not interesting. See the example picture.

I need to add some red color into my photo. I bought a raspberry, but then I did it, the sun has already set and I had to use the lamps. For imitation of natural light, I used four lamps plus mirror. Base of the vase reflects some of those lamps. Of course, I could remove these reflections, but did not do it deliberately.

This is my little secret how to do such yummy ice cream.