How I took that shot – by Karen Fleming

Posted on 10/03/2013 by admin

The winner In our recent ‘Food’ competition was Karen Fleming with her homely coffee cup image. Here, in the second of our 'How I took that shot' series, Karen explains how she created this image (click to enlarge).

"To come up with the food shot I thought to myself what is my favorite thing that I like to indulge myself with? The answer was simple enough - a nice cup of coffee accompanied by cake! Since Irish weather does not lend itself to alfresco lattes, I had to work indoors, and where is nicest place to enjoy such a treat besides out in warm sun? Curled up in front of a blazing fire!"

"This gave me a general idea for the shot set up. As I was using the theme of 'homely / fire', I wanted to portray the element of "home made" in my shot so I borrowed the coffee grinder and bean sack from a friend".

"With all the elements at hand, I began to set up the shot. I put the coffee table in front of the fire in a dark room to cancel out all other ambient light and bring out the detail and colour in the firelight itself. One of the biggest challenges was to find a shutter speed that would be slow enough to bring the firelight into the shot and fast enough to hold some detail in the flames without them blurring totally. There was a lot of trial and error to get the right look".

"I set the camera on a tripod and at ISO 100, I chose f22 to give me depth of field through the shot. I tried a few different shutter speeds to get a feel for where the fire was casting light onto the table and the objects on it. Looking at the results of these I could then see where I needed to start adding in extra light to my image".

"To achieve this additional lighting, I put a flexible desk lamp on the left and a flash head on the right fitted with a snoot so as to concentrate the light from that side onto a specific area in the image. I only used the modeling light of the flash head and not the actual flash itself. This could have been achieved just as well with a second desk lamp, fitted with a home made cardboard cone for a snoot".

"Now I had ambient light in the background from the fire and fill-in lighting coming from both sides, so all that was left now was to add some light from the front to highlight some of the details. For this I used my LED ring light, which attaches to the front of the lens. This is a continuous light source that can be switched from full ring to half ring, left or right as desired. They are designed for, and I use it mainly for, macro photography. They are available for about St£30 online".

"All set up, I left my camera on f22 and tried different shutter speeds to see the effects I was getting. Too slow was bringing in too much light and too fast was not enough light. Two seconds gave me exactly what I wanted".

Technical Details:
Canon 5d mk 1. Sigma 105mm macro lens.
ISO 100, f22 at 2 seconds.
Levels and Curves adjusted slightly.

See more of Karen's images here.

How I took that shot – by Mervyn Daly

Posted on 08/03/2013 by admin

In our recent 'Food' competition, Mervyn Daly won 3rd place with his unusual 'landscape' made entirely of food. Here, Mervyn explains how he created this image (click to enlarge).

"I wanted to try something a bit different. I originally wanted to replicate one of my seascape shots but the sea proved too difficult to get right, so I resorted to using mainly broccoli as trees. When my kids were younger we used to call broccoli - 'baby trees', in an effort to get them to eat it (unsuccessfully, I must add)".

"I set up on the kitchen table in front of the patio door with only natural light. The camera was mounted on a tripod, level with the table top. I began with the foreground by using brown sugar as soil, then placed some soda bread pieces as rocks and adjusted them to get the composition I wanted. These were positioned only a few centimeters from the lens. I then began individually placing the broccoli pieces, propped with cocktail sticks, checking the composition as I worked. I used drinking chocolate powder for the pathway, strips of curly cabbage as hedging, and I cut a loaf of bread in half for the hills at the back, and there is some asparagus thrown in for good measure".

"I had a white background behind which went muggy and grey with the settings I used, which I wasn't happy with, so I resorted to importing a sky on a new layer and blending it in. I was trying to create a kind of fantasy shot so I think I can be forgiven just this once".

Technical Details:

Nikon D300s. Sigma 17-70mm @ 20mm

Natural daylight, 3 sec @ f22, iso 100. Adjusted curves.

See more of Mervyn's images here

Food Competition – Feb 2013

Posted on 01/03/2013 by admin

The group met at The Midleton Park Hotel on Tuesday 26th February 2013. It was the first competition night of the year with the theme being 'Food'.

For the first time, judging was done on projected images rather than prints, and the competition drew 29 entries. As the images were previewed from start to finish before being judged individually, it was clear that the standard was very high and that the members had, indeed, been busy for the past few weeks capturing their entries.

All members present broke up into groups of 6 or 7 and critiqued each image in turn. Each member then awarded the individual images a maximum of 30 points by allocating up to 10 points each under the three categories of Creativity, Composition and Lighting. Once judging was finished, each member gave the back story to their competition image explaining the technique, lighting and post processing employed to create the image.

Following some serious number crunching the 1st, 2nd and 3rd places were established with third place going to Mervyn Daly, second place to Craig O'Brien and first place to Karen Fleming. These are the winning images (click to enlarge):

1st place: Karen Fleming

2nd place: Craig O'Brien

3rd place: Mervyn Daly

Chairman, Tom Tattan, praised the high standard of the images, some of which were submitted by new members of the group, for whom this was their very first competition.

View all the competition entries in the slideshow below. Mouse over to see the photographers' details and to use the controls.