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”.

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