Pushing out of the comfort zone

A few weeks back, my wife and I received a request from a daughter, Sol, who is working on starting up a business in Barcelona–a healthy, but fast-er food, restaurant to be named Almmendra. She wanted us to think about doing some photography for her–specifically, she wanted images of the food, the ingredients, and the behind-the-scenes process of putting together each dish.

“Aaaack!”, was my instinctive response. Neither of us do that kind of photography…just like we don’t do weddings!

But, being a daughter, you can’t say no, right? So, we agreed to try–with the caveat that she should not hesitate to fire us and look for someone more competent if she didn’t like our work.

Below, then, are some initial practice attempts based on some basic instructions from Sol on what she wanted. My wife did the food selection and the plate arrangements while I concentrated on the photography and post-processing. There is a good chance we may use some sort of subtle filter effect with future images–say, Topaz Impression’s “Painterly” at 50%, or some such thing (as in the last example).

We still have a lot to learn about lighting, food selection, and color balance…just a few areas in which we are pushing on the frazzled fringes of our comfort zone.