Introduction with a Strawberry

[Thorsten K]

Hi

I'm new here and would like to introduce myself a little with a first shot. Yep, my real name is Thorsten too and where ever you will find this avatar it might be me.

I'm interested in food photography since 2005 and so it is not a surprise that my first photo here is food.

I like every and any comment on my pics.What do you think of this strawberry pic?

Have fun
Thorsten

[Sime]

Welcome to DPS, Thorsten! Can I just ask, is it wrong to want Strawberries with Chocolate at 9 in the morning... [heads off to market to purchase stramberries] Sime.

[Nicole]

Originally Posted by Sime™

Welcome to DPS, Thorsten! Can I just ask, is it wrong to want Strawberries with Chocolate at 9 in the morning... [heads off to market to purchase stramberries] Sime.

I totally second this... except that it's 8:20pm here Photo looks very good.

[Thorsten K]

Originally Posted by Sime™

Welcome to DPS, Thorsten! Can I just ask, is it wrong to want Strawberries with Chocolate at 9 in the morning... [heads off to market to purchase stramberries] Sime.

No, it is never wrong to ask for strawberries.

[knickers71uk]

strawberries...... slurp Mmmmmmmmmm Chocolate

[wulf]

Hi Thorsten. I see everyone else is getting distracted by the food and forgetting to say much about the photo!

I think it could benefit from a bit of work on the white balance. I did some food photography recently, which I blogged about yesterday (it will probably get written up for the "before and after" section here before too long).

I was amazed how much a little post processing lifted my shot to a new level. Your strawberries have a slight cyan cast, particularly visible in the background. I think that, if that moved closer to white, the new image would be much stronger.

Wulf

[jiminyClickit]

Thorsten K, Welcome

Outside of an advertisement context (where it might have to fit in with copy and other photos), this crop seems excessive. It doesn't flatter the food as a lone photo. Otherwise yum.

[Thorsten K]

Originally Posted by wulf

Hi Thorsten. I see everyone else is getting distracted by the food and forgetting to say much about the photo!

I think it could benefit from a bit of work on the white balance. I did some food photography recently, which I blogged about yesterday (it will probably get written up for the "before and after" section here before too long).

I was amazed how much a little post processing lifted my shot to a new level. Your strawberries have a slight cyan cast, particularly visible in the background. I think that, if that moved closer to white, the new image would be much stronger.

Wulf

Thanks Wulf for that hint. I have edited it a bit to less cyan. I didn't notice it this time. Good eye. What do you think of the edited one. I've compared the background colour now to the original paper and it is very close / identical on my screen.

[Thorsten K]

Originally Posted by jiminyClickit

Thorsten K, Welcome

Outside of an advertisement context (where it might have to fit in with copy and other photos), this crop seems excessive. It doesn't flatter the food as a lone photo. Otherwise yum.

Thanks for the comment. Actually it is a very drastic cropping. The idea here was more on a play with the strawberries cropped hard. The original idea was no strawberries in lower right, but that didn't work for me. The other idea "more" strawberry in the pic and less empty space is very often used. I wanted a drastic cropping.

BTW: the strawberries are a propping here actually. The chocolate dip is the original food here. Yes, you are right this pic is on its own not a food pic on first view. And it will turn only into a food pic with the recipe on the side.

Thorsten

[wulf]

Colour balancing ran into a problem because of the cyan cast to the background, so I cheated...

I decomposed the image into RGB channels and took a copy of the blue channel which was dark around most of the strawberries but had almost no information on the background. I then adjusted that with the curves tool, intensifying the dark and light areas but still leaving some greys to graduate between them and applied that as a layer mask on a plain white layer.

That allowed greater control of the colour curves of the original (pushed for more red, more green and more blue towards the highlights as well as an overall reduction of contrast), providing a brighter base for final touching up.

To finish, I merged the work so far onto a single new layer and then added a blurred duplicate layer in overlay mode, made translucent so contrast was bumped a little way back up. Finally, I created two new transparent layers set in "darken only" mode. On one, I used a clone brush, sourced from the new version, to paint a strawberry highlight over the blown highlights on the fruit; the other was for the same on the chocolate. Both of those layers were then adjusted in translucency to give the desired degree of highlight without stark, blown whites.

I think the result is more striking than the original, although it depends on what you are aiming for as to whether it is better (not least the colour context of where it might be displayed).

Wulf