Showing posts with label food photography. Show all posts

Thursday, November 19, 2015

Food Photography Experiments and Review #foodphotography

I am so excited to share about this wonderful opportunity that came through a couple of months ago. Reviewing a photography course from MyPhotoSchool. Course is spread over 8 weeks with bi-weekly video tutorials, assignments as well as personal help and feedback from the tutor.

Choosing the exposure for a photograph is both alarmingly simple and infinitely complex. Simple because there is just one dosage of light that will be right for you, controlled by just three settings: aperture, shutter speed, and ISO sensitivity. Complex because it affects everything about the image, what you wanted it to be, and its effect on your audience. Understanding how and why exposure works as it does is worth every effort, because it is not an automatic process, whatever camera manufacturers claim. There is no universally ‘right’ exposure for any situation, but there may be one ‘right’ exposure for you personally.

Hence the course is titled Michael Freeman's Perfect Exposure MasterClass.

All our assignments require to process our files from Raw to Jpeg with no adjustment to exposure and brightness. As our goal is to achieve the perfect exposure right in the shot.

Over the next 6 weeks, I will be posting my assignment notes and my conclusions from the experiments and learnings out here.

Assignment 1: Judging scene contrast (3 images)
Find and photograph three different scenes. One should be normal in the sense that you want it to be averagely bright, the second should be a scene that you want to present as dark, and the third should be one that you prefer to be bright.

For this exercise, I have chosen three of my favourite pictures - Moong Dal,Pears in dark background and Mint Sprigs with Lemon. In all the three examples above, I have shared before and after editing images.

I have shot all of them in Manual Exposure.

Assignment 2 : Choosing an appropriate metering method (3 images)

For this exercise of Mixed Vegetable Korma, I did 4 pictures with different metering modes - Spot, centre weight, partial metering and evaluate metering. The pictures with spot and partial metering were shortlisted to my requirement. Since I wanted to achieve a dark background but at the same time , keep the focus and ensure enough light is on the curry the chosen metering did just what I wanted.

From the Spot and Partial, there was a very slight difference in the images. There was little cast of shadow on the right hand side at the edges of the curry in the Spot metering image whilst in the Partial, it was just what I wanted.

With the Pistachio still life, just as the previous set, I conducted an experiment by shooting in all the 4 metering modes. Since it is a backlit image, evaluate metering was the right choice.

The set up for Lemon and Mint Sprigs was simple . White background and a backlit image. Looking at all the 4 metering results, Evaluate metering gave me the right exposure, as desired.

Assignment 3: Choosing a preferred exposure/shooting mode (2 images)

This assignment required us to choose different scenes and shoot with three exposure modes - Aperture Priority,Shutter Priority and Manual .Also need to document what is the advantage of shooting in each of the modes for the particular scene and finally to document the most appropriate mode.

I conducted my first trial with the Pistachios , set on the dark background and backlit. Shooting in Manual and Aperture did not pose any challenge as everything seems to b the same in exif. But Shutter priority was obviously not the right choice. All that I could set was the shutter speed and the camera decided the focal length based on that. Obviously in a still life scenario, that is the last thing you want. I would love to have a complete control of the scenario.

For the second set, I chose my sifting flour image. This is one of my favourite images and I had been sifting flour and cocoa powder for a couple of hours that day.

For an action- motion shot , there needs to be enough light in the scenario. In the Aperture priority mode with the same settings, I was not able to get the enough action that I wanted to capture. Using Shutter priority, I caught the action needed but not with enough depth of field. So I decided to stick to Manual Mode and that gave me the desired result.

Ghugni - Dried Green Peas Curry | Street food from Calcutta

Before every visit to the Indian Grocer, I make a humble attempt to have a quick glance through the provisions so that I do not forget to pick up something really essential for the upcoming week or ignore any particular lentils already at home. During this customary control, I found a packet of dried green peas , sneaking from the transparent box, stacked over the shelf. Its normally around Sept - Oct , for Navrathri ,is when I cook them up to a tasty sundal, that everyone enjoys .
This time I couldn't hold myself that long .. instead I decided to cook them up in to a Green peas masala..
But before that, the habitual photographer in me, decided to try my hands on picturing them.

Gorgeous day light was falling on the lentils and it was the day to shoot these resplendent Peas. I thoroughly enjoyed the experiment and the learnings that went in to this, that I couldn't resist sharing with all my virtual friends on Facebook.

After all the brain storming on what to and how not to transform these drop dead peas and all the heart warming comments, I finally decided to make Ghugni. Thanks to Chandrima for the recipe.
Yes !! I haven't forgotten the Mutter Chat ,Masala Puri and Green Peas Korma to try .. Thank you to all the splendid friends I have made over the years ...

The moment I mentioned I am making Ghugni for Friday dinner, the bong connection in H was super thrilled. He was transported to his growing up days. Just as usual, during an informal conversation, I was mentioning about Ghugni being referred to as chat in many places and I was in the same misconception. His eyes popped out and said - Ghugni was never a Chat. Its a street food !
And after that he placed his request for Luchi along with Ghugni.. Well its on hold for now and we will make it on some another occasion. We had them with some Roti's , Pulav and more yummilicious curries that my friends brought along for dinner.

I won't hold you too long , introducing the delectable distinctive humble curry- Ghugni with Bengal roots. Often Ghugni is made with Dried White Peas also referred to as Vatana . Its easy to make and easy to please the palette's.

GHUGNI | DRIED GREEN PEAS CURRY

INGREDIENTS:

For Curry

1 1/2 Cup – 1 3/4 Cups Dried Green Peas

1.5 Large Onion sliced finely

1 Large Potatoes diced into wedges

1 Tbsp. freshly grated Ginger

2 Garlic pods grated finely

½ Tsp Turmeric Powder

1 Tbsp. Cumin Powder

½ tsp Garam Masala

¼ Tsp Pepper Powder

¾ -1 tsp Sugar

Salt to taste

2-3 Tsp of Sunflower Oil

For Tempering

2 Bay Leaf

2-3 Dried Red Chillies , broken

1 tsp Cumin Seeds

For Garnishing+ Serving

½ finely chopped Onions

2-3 Green chilles finely chopped

1 lemon , ready to be squeezed

DIRECTIONS:

Soak dried green peas in sufficient water to sink them for alteast 5-6 hours or leave it overnight.. Pressure cook the dried peas / ghugni with water atleast a couple of inches more than the legume , a little more than how you would cook your regular lentils. So adjust the whistles accordingly. Open the lid after pressure has reduced.
Peel the potato skin and cut them into wedges . Heat oil in a non stick pan and fry them until golden in color. Season with salt after draining them onto a kitchen towel , if you like.
In the remaining oil, add the tempering ingredients and wait for cumin seeds to crackle. At this stage add sliced onions with a pinch of salt, fry them on medium flame until light brown in color.
Add ginger and garlic puree and saute for a few seconds until the rawness disappears.
Add chopped tomatoes, turmeric powder, cumin powder and the required salt. Cook on medium flame until they are all blended well and oil begins to separate. Pop in cooked green peas and fried potatoes and give it a good stir , until the gravy , green peas and potatoes are all mixed well. Add ¾ - 1 Cup of water and mix well. Continue to stir, in order to avoid burning at the bottom of the pan. Allow the mixture to cook for approximately 10 minutes in total. In between this, add sugar, black pepper and garam masala and mix well.
Garnish with chopped green chilies and chopped onion, followed by a generous drizzle of lemon juice on top while serving. Enjoy it hot. I served my Ghugni with Roti’s/ Phulka’s and some Pulav. You may enjoy it just on its own.

NOTES :
Ghugni can be made with Dried Yellow Peas or Dried Green Peas.

You may use Red Chilli powder , if you like to make it more spicy. I somehow enjoyed adding green chillies at the end , as the kids could enjoy the curry before the addition and they loved it too.

To enjoy on its own, you may add some Tamarind Chutney and green chutney , sprinkle some chat masala and serve. Well its upto you how you would like to make it chatpatta.

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