…you gonna eat that?!

TopazLabs, whose software I use quite a bit in my processing, asked me to write a post for their blog.  If you don’t know TopazLabs, then…well…here’s the post.  If you enjoy making photographs, you should get to know TopazLabs and take advantage of the 30-day free trials for any of their products. They are a large part of my ‘workflow’…..

(Topaz B&W Effects)

Everywhere you look, one of the most popular subjects for photography is food. The ‘food paparazzi’ are legion.  The drawback I see with so many meals being shared on social media sites and surprisingly, also on some restaurant web-sites, is the lack of allure that some of the photography renders.  If I’m photographing a Chef’s ‘ plate’, I want it to appear as tantalizing ‘on-screen’ as it does in person, and I shudder at going to a web-site and coming away with, “Well, the ingredients sound intriguing, but the picture certainly didn’t look appetizing!”

(Topaz Adjust Light Pop Smooth)

Food photographer Teri Campbell, (whose work I guarantee you have seen somewhere or another), states something to the effect of,
The challenge in food photography is in illustrating a  subject that engages all of the senses and trying to project the sight, touch, smell, taste and even the sound… the ambience… in two dimensions.

(Topaz Adjust Medium Detail)

The professional…no… the expert/high-end commercial food photographer often has the luxury of  utilizing the talents of  food stylists, a battery of lighting equipment and/or locations and props,  and the benefit of insisting on 200 buns or 3000 chips from which to glean the perfect 1…

The Hero…

Taking into consideration that the majority of food photography is just ‘Us’ with a camera and a plate of food, I asked the crew at The Chef and I Catering, in Nashville, if I might tag along to one of their events to see what I could come up with.
All of the photos on this post were shot ‘hand-held’ in a very low-light venue.  There were small spotlights in some areas and in some instances I used a speedlight, on camera, pointed at the ceiling, or a wall…NEVER directly at the food.

(Topaz Adjust Detail Light… plus cropped, and I moved the dish on the right for a better composition, which SHOULD have been done in camera…doh!!)

First tip….(which you will find probably in any food photography book or article…)
Side or back-light is always preferable to bring out the textures of the food.  Now, that means you may have to have someone hold up a white napkin.. a small mirror…anything you can find… as a reflector for the front, or, as I did on some of these shots, I held one of these white plates to the side of the subject while shooting.

I then relied on Topaz Adjust 5 to bring out the areas that just were not quite up to par in the capture.  Things I saw that the camera didn’t react to as my eyes did.

(Topaz Adjust French Countryside)

The above shot, due to shooting without a tripod,  was a little motion soft…you can see the specular highlights become squiggly worms instead of dots…

(oooh…I probably should have used a better word than worms in a food post…)

So… I found French Countryside in Topaz Adjust and enhanced and accentuated the softness of the scene while masking the bacon to hold as much sharpness as possible there.

I’ll admit that I am not adept at teaching, and not terribly ‘tech-savvy’ with screen-shots and such, so what I am showing are the ‘befores’ and ‘afters’ and the filters used, without going into exact parameters.  These are more fun to  work out for your own individual style and for each individual photo.
(I find that once I open Topaz, I want to see EVERY possibility, and use the ‘snapshot’ tool quite often.)

These next groups are not before and after, but simply some that I thought worked well.  For the befores and afters, I posted some more from this ‘shoot’ at

http://www.flickr.com/photos/44475453@N03/sets/72157633280783513/

in a ‘Set’ titled ‘Topaz Adjust Before and After’  (Though the way they lined up on Flickr, it should be called “After and Before”.

This is the original of the opening B&W Effects photo and the ‘after’ using Topaz Adjust Photo Pop.

And…allowing for the situation where sometimes a phone is the closest camera, this last one, the tomato bouquet, is an Android photo at a different location and day,  ‘beefed up’…pardon the pun…with Lightroom for saturation, then Adjust and finally Topaz DeNoise.

I would always prefer a bright window and a light airy feel to shooting food, but, hey…It’s what the heck you do with what the heck you’ve got!

Topaz Adjust allowed me to accentuate some areas of these dishes and also to compensate for, or create, a look that just wasn’t there, as far as the camera could record.  I suggest always opening Topaz filters on a new layer, then you can click back and forth and sometimes I find that if the full use of a filter looks good but maybe a little over-the-top, I can lower the fill on that layer until it looks good enough to eat!

Feel free to visit my web-site at www.rkpowersphoto.com.  My own blog is there and I sometimes talk about things photographic and sometimes….not.  Or ‘Like’ rkpowersphoto on Facebook.  I would be glad to see you in either place.

And don’t forget….your images will be around much longer than that masterpiece on the plate in front of you!!!!  Take the time to savor both!

The Skys Have it…!

Well…..
My last blog post…
A bit of ‘tongue-in-cheek’ satire,
was overwhelmed by the sound of crickets!
I guess I had better stick to photography and photography related subjects and steer clear of the satire…
(Right…me keeping satire at arm’s length is very unlikely.)

So,
this post is related to a recent 12-day trip to Daytona for SpeedWeek…plus…

I will eventually get around to writing about and posting pictures from the races, but as I went through my initial edit, I realized how much I enjoy simply looking at the sky.

(I can’t help but think of the stories told about baseball pitcher Rube Waddell and his penchant for being distracted by a fire engine and leaving the mound, mid-game, to follow it… me…”Oh, there’s a race going on? Look at the clouds…!”)

As a photographer, the first thing that usually pops into my head when I see a dramatic sky is,
“What can I put in FRONT of that?!”
Then, other times, I appreciate the sky alone for what it has to  offer.
Then,
“The sky’s the limit”

The very blue images are from above the clouds with a phone camera.

I’ve posted about clouds previously, and I still enjoy both sides…over and under.
The other images are from the big track at Daytona, but have very little to do with the track itself…or racing…
Just skies…

Oh…I did find something to put in front of a sky…

NFL ALLOWS WASHINGTON TO KEEP NAME WHILE CHANGING LOGOS

In an unexpected move today, the NFL commissioner has stated that the Washington Redskins football team may keep their team name as long as they introduce a secondary logo for team merchandising.

“We think this is the best of both worlds.  We will slowly bring the new logo onto sweatshirts and caps and as the new look becomes more endearing to our fans, we will gradually switch over totally.  Our colors will stay the same, so it won’t be all that noticeable.
We are also working on various mottos for the gradual change and are in negotiations with Mr Potato-Head as our future mascot”

The ‘Redskins’ have come under fire recently…once again… for their 80 year-old name because there are those who feel that Native-Americans should be offended.  We were not able to speak with any Native-Americans who were offended, but the fear remains amongst those who have appointed themselves as the ‘first-string offensive squad’.

Juana Stahpew, the director of the Citizen’s Coalition for Correctness Politically, the CCCP, stated,
“This is the first step. We in the CCCP have taken on the monumental task of informing various groups when they should be offended.  Sometimes, you know, they just might not be smart enough to know, or they are more concerned with putting food on the table, or looking for work to notice when they are being bullied.”
Ms. Stahpew mans…persons… the national CCCP office in Des Moines, though she refuses to call her state ‘Idaho’.
“That’s another word we’re working on.  It’s not really a Redskin… I mean Indian… I mean… Native American word, as many people believe, but was thought up by white men in the 1860′s.  We believe that its origins were just another way for the white settler to keep women in their place…’I-da-ho’ should be stricken…!!”
We have a proposal before our state house to enact an appropriate name change that will not negatively affect self-esteem.  We have several alternatives, including  my personal choice,
“Idamazing”.

CCCP spokesperson, Inga Ramos, recalls, with misty eyes,
“We are the group who brought national attention to the unsettling use of the word ‘niggardly’.  Why, that word, supposedly meaning ‘stingy’ or ‘miserly’, has been used since the 1300′s and we were the first to call attention to the obvious fact that it could very well sound like a racial slur.”
When asked, she replied,
“No, we don’t know any stingy people who were actually offended, but they could have been…”

The CCCP’s next big push is to hold talks with the Nabisco corporation about their rampant mis-use of the term ‘Cracker’.
“Most Caucasians don’t even realize the implications….!”
“ Also, in conjunction with our sister group, the
‘Personal Health is a Universal Problem, Declaiming Unwarranted Concern’, known as PHUPDUC, we will be pushing for Nabisco to also remove the word ‘Salt’ from Saltines.”
We’re hoping for Nabisco “Tines-Unleavened Flatbread Wafers”
“We are a little concerned that the use of ‘Tines’, sounding like ‘teens’ next to the word ‘Flat’-bread may cause offense to some young ladies.
But that’s another campaign, entirely!”

“This is a battle for all citizens and we will work to let every person know when they should be offended!
We only hope that the victims appreciate our efforts and we will do everything in our power to keep them from being laughed at for believing that they are being laughed at”

Chilly Chili Bowl

I’m going to tell on myself…nothing bad…at worst, just stupid. I found occasion on this particular weekend to laugh at myself, and I guess, if you can’t laugh at yourself, then it can be more ego bruising when others might laugh at you…

Not unlike when you decide to ride the empty grocery store cart to the cart rack and your weight causes the cart to flip over backwards and you land  face-down on the asphalt…hands still on the cart handle…

Not that that has ever happened…

(But I certainly wish someone had been video-taping…we might have been a YouTube sensation…)

So…

Chili Bowl weekend.  It was the 25th annual running on a 1/4 mile dirt indoor track (1/4 mile is the same as the track that runs around your local high school football field).  I had 9 cars to try to ‘capture’.

First lesson: On turn 3, between the on and off ramps leading to the track, there seemed to be a fairly open area so I started shooting from there.

The white spots in this image are not dust spots on the camera sensor. They are small mud projectiles that my flash illuminated…just before they turned me into a negative image of a spit-wad laden blackboard on substitute teacher day.

Had I turned around sooner and taken notice of this….

I might have had some inkling of what was coming my way…and why this particular vantage point was not already heavily populated with the standard race photographers…!!!

After deciding that the infield was indeed the spot to be, I realized that with the low (as far as cameras are concerned) lighting I would certainly need a supplemental flash unit. I pulled the old SB-26 from my bag and knowing it was powered by recently recharged batteries, I hit the red button…

Nothing happened.!

I dumped those batteries and replaced them with some also recently re-charged batteries…hit the button…

Nothing!

I went through two other sets of dry cells with the same results when I gave up and said to myself that the ‘on-camera’ flash on my Nikon D200 was pretty good and would have to do.

These races, or ‘heats’ are fairly short so there is plenty of time to regroup, but it took at least another hour before I realized that the ‘red’ button on the flash unit actually did nothing until the ‘on/off’ switch was pushed to the ON position….!!!!

Now, I internally have great pride in not being a total ‘doofus’, and I have owned, and used,  this flash unit for…oh…probably 15 years, so it was all I could do to hold onto a certain sense of decorum and not broadcast my relief at recognizing and overcoming my idiocy….or at least a portion thereof…

One scene I couldn’t resist while wandering the pit area was this little guy helping with his dad’s car…

Now the ‘chilly’ part…

If you saw the post http://rkpowers.wordpress.com/2012/04/30/photo-safari-ooooooo-klahoma/ then you’ll know that I was taken aback by the Oklahoma scenery that I witnessed, and this weekend I was blind-sided by the OK weather.  Upon leaving the races, a ‘brisk’ 19 degree Plains ‘breeze’ sent icy needles into my face and my rented car had  a quarter of an inch thick  sheet of  ice on the windshield. After starting the car, I dug through the glove box and console and found nothing but an empty Eclipse gum container.  I scraped and scraped…no gloves… I mean, I’m in Oklahoma for cryin’ out loud…

End of story…

When I turned the car in at the airport the next morning, while searching for elusive hot dog receipts, I found an ice scraper in the driver’s side door pocket…

“Smile at the silly man who’s laughing at himself….and quickly walk away!!!”

Ok…to photography….

This is what happens after several hours of indoor dirt track auto racing….Dust, exhaust fumes…etc.  After a while, the flash unit is a detriment because all it is lighting is the air between you and the cars.

So, my advice is “Shoot Early. Occasionally step out for some fresh air, and don’t forget to add “Camera Cleaning” to your expense estimate!!!!

Maybe Tomorrow…

Wow….it has been 4 months since I last posted on this ‘blog’.  It hasn’t been through a lack of ideas, or imagination, or experiences. It wasn’t brought on by a paucity of subject matter.

No, I can only blame my late tendency on those two insidious words in the title…Maybe Tomorrow… each an expression of indecisiveness, longing, and/or procrastination… but together?!…probably the impetus (or lack thereof) of every great thing that has never been done.  Of every not-so-great thing that has never been done….of every mistake that has not been made in the quest for achievement.
I’m not one to make ‘New Year’s resolutions’ but I have vowed to myself that I will replace those two words with another set. Every time I find myself thinking or saying, “Maybe tomorrow” I will replace them with “Definitely!… Now!?”.
The pictures on this post are an illustration of the results that ‘Definitely!… Now!?’ have brought to bear.

My young actor friend Daniel Mark Collins and I had talked of updating his headshot.  I suggested that I would be glad to do it but would also like to experiment with some lighting techniques if he was ‘game’.
For quite some time I have admired the photographic style of George Hurrell  http://georgehurrell.com/ and I wanted to see (Maybe Tomorrow) if I might be able to… not so much imitate, as simulate his use of lighting and post-production.  I spent some time studying his work, checking out the lighting and the posing that did so much to create the ‘star’ aura that his photos projected.  The goal, at that time, was to elevate the stars into gods and goddesses, not bring them down to the level of ‘ordinary people’.

“The most essential thing about my style was working with shadows to design the face instead of flooding it with light” George Hurrell.

Where Hurrell wielded 8×10 cameras and film and retouched on the actual negative, I employed PhotoShop.  I believe, were he alive and still shooting that he would have loved PhotoShop.

I think Daniel and I did alright and the results are at least reminiscent of the Hollywood photos from the 30′s…and a few other techniques, besides.

I didn’t want to load this up with all of the shots, and I am still editing.  It seems that every time I go through them, another image strikes me and challenges my post-production limitations.
If you are interested in more, they are posted on Facebook under ‘rkpowersphoto’ and on Daniel’s page, as well.

…and, yes, we did get the ‘straight’ headshot!…though you won’t find it here.

So…whatever it is that you NEED…WANT…DESIRE…MUST… do…

Maybe Tomorrow is not going to get it done! Now is all there is!!!!!!

Photo Safari…or, Meet Me In ‘Saint Louie’…

This almost became extremely long-winded so I edited considerably.  The basic premise is about a little side trip that Eric Adkins and I took following a photo shoot in St Louis, MO.

But…
There’s a story at the end that contains a serendipitous confirmation of a work philosophy that seems to have faded in this day and age.

As I stood below the St Louis Arch, I couldn’t help but think that there was probably not a single angle of view that hadn’t already been photographed by someone with every conceivable camera, lens and viewpoint, but as Eric stated…
“Not on this particular day with these particular clouds!”

As a little background, on Wednesday, Eric was photographing a Cartier/King Jewelers event in Nashville.  He asked me to come along and churn out prints for the attendees to take home with them.  We were going to load up after the event and drive to St Louis for a photo shoot the next morning.

5 hours up, arriving at 4:30 a.m., sleep till 7:00, shoot till 10:00, drive back home for 5 hours…
In the middle of this, we decided to visit the Arch for a couple of hours of personal ‘photo fun’.

The night before, when we told people that we were leaving for this whirlwind trip, I heard several queries as to
“…Why would you do that?”
I heard Eric and myself give the same answer.
“Because that is where the work is that someone is willing to pay us to do.”

Now, the philosophical point.
On the riverfront in St Louis, I happened upon an historical marker commemorating the Mesker Brothers, a metal working company in the late 1800′s who were responsible for many storefronts around the country.

The part of the story that most struck me was that their grandfather, (who was also a metal-worker) in 1855 would get on a riverboat in Evansville, Indiana and sail to New Orleans selling his wares along the way.
He would then walk….WALK!…up the Natchez Trace (444 miles from Natchez to Nashville) to get home, create some more ‘goods’ and do it all again.
And we were questioned about the sanity of driving 70 mph for 5 hours  in an air-conditioned auto, stay in a hotel room and then drive home….????

I think that summed up what is a major difference between how our country became great and how it has become soft.

I hope that whenever some task comes up that I am slightly hesitant to pursue because it seems difficult, ole Grandpa Mesker will pop into my head.  He won’t have to say anything, all he’ll have to do is smile and I think I will get the point!!

Yes, We Can…

…Forget politics for a bit….AND auto racing….and savor the Harvest…

Autumn is coming!!!  Cool, crisp air….leaves turning….sweaters  coming out of storage…back to school…flannel shirts…bonfires…
and of course….
All across the US, the State Fairs have once again been hastily assembled, where they will provide an end-of-summer, last thrill-ride for a week or so, and then they will disappear overnight…along with the hot sweltering days and the smell of funnel cakes to be replaced with reading, ‘riting and ‘rithmetic….

Cotton candy and candied apples, not to mention popcorn, corn dogs and pork-chop-on-a-stick will be consumed in mass quantities…in some states the ever popular ‘demolition derbies’ will bring the crowds to their feet with a roar to match the last growl of  300 horsepower engines as they crash their way to their final resting places, crushed and cubed as scrap.

I would assume, in most states cattle will be judged… along with sunflowers, roses and pumpkins and pies.

And, the blue ribbon will commemorate the results of long passed-down recipes for canning peaches and tomatoes…

pickles and relish…jellies and jams…

The beautiful produce reminds me of the days when my grandmother and mom and however many sisters would join in, would ‘can’ tomatoes, peaches, beans,  and my grandmother’s never-to-be-beaten dill pickles.

I searched Google for the history of canning food and found that, with a rather large cash prize from the French military as incentive, Nicholas Appert is credited with discovering that food sealed in glass bottles under extreme heat was the most effective method for preserving food for the Army as they embarked on various campaigns. This was in 1795.  It endures today.

Then Peter Durand, patented the tin can in 1810.(Actually, tin-plated wrought-iron) The irony, pardon the pun, of this is that the can opener was not patented until 1848.
The instructions on a can,…. “Cut round on the top near to the outer edge with a chisel and hammer”.  I believe the ravenous fighting forces sometimes just used a bayonet or a rock….!

Apparently, in those days, a good worker could produce 4 cans per day.  Now, I think automation has it up to about 400 cans per minute….!!!

With the advent and popularity of frozen food, I’m afraid those canning ‘parties’ are more of a wistful memory than they are a Norman Rockwell harvest standard.  They, like the ‘quilting bee’, were as much a time for social gathering as for work.  Sadly, they have been all but replaced by Facebook and cell phones.  I’m certain that in some farming communities and in homes where the effort is considered worth the results, you might still hear the words, “Hop down in the cellar and bring back a jar of beans and a couple of onions”, or, “Go to the spring house and get a slab of butter” instead of “Run to Kroger and get a can of chili!… And some margarine.”

Food is a common thread in all cultures for the simple reason that…well,…we have to have it.  The difference in these cultural divides is that every geographical location is home to different staples and spices.  I’m sure this is an extremely simplified anthropological statement but, I think many cultures have been somewhat shaped by the food that is readily available to that culture, and then expanded by the ability to acquire those food-stuffs that were previously unknown….considered exotic.    I have read that King Henry VI was fond of the spice mace when it was first brought to England along with nutmeg.  (Mace is the hairy fronds that grow on the outside of a nutmeg ‘nut’.)  Not knowing the botanical properties of each, he reportedly proclaimed that “We need to grow more mace and less of that nutmeg!” In the Fourteenth century, half a kilogram of nutmeg was the same price as 3 sheep or a cow…but it was hard to fit the sheep into a spice rack…!!

And, of course, almost every misunderstood, new, and exotic spice and vegetable’s  first and foremost claim was that it was an aphrodisiac….

I recently found an article in the July 2011 National Geographic that dealt with the disappearance of many vegetables in the name of yield and heartiness, and the effort to preserve a largely vanishing variety of vegetables.  Taste is often sacrificed in the name of uniformity.  Maybe that’s why I was so intrigued with these examples.  Every tomato, every pepper, every squash had a unique, natural look and for some reason that look alone makes them more appealing, so unlike the ‘hot-house’ tomatoes that are on the standard grocer’s shelf .

( BTW, if you can’t find this particular issue of National Geographic in a hospital waiting room, as I did, you might try here…)   http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/07/food-ark/siebert-text

The NatGeo article describes the number of varieties that were available a century ago compared to now. For instance, a hundred years ago there were known to be 487 varieties of lettuce and by 1983 there were 36.  Beets…one of my favorites…were represented by 288 strains.  Now…17.

I always appreciate, and pay dearly for, a meal that includes some of the more rare varieties of produce.  (There are still thousands of varieties of potato grown in the Andes.  These people have taken it upon themselves to preserve flavor over uniformity and to work with the climate instead of trying to create it. If you find yourself in Peru, how about sending me a box of ‘Sacred Mountains’, ‘Makes-the-daughter-in-law-cry’, or ‘Ashes of the soul’)

The article also tells of the seed banks around the world that are working to revitalize some of the endangered species of vegetables and fruits…preserving, if you will, flavors that are all but lost.

I know that I’ll probably never grow nutmeg in my back yard or on a roof-top garden, but I can certainly grow and enjoy ‘heirloom’ tomatoes, or purple squash… amongst other tasty fare.  And, the effort of planting and nurturing and then picking a nice ripe tomato just before dinner, somehow seems to add just that much more flavor.