Weekly Photo Challenge: Take Three

The WordPress weekly photo challenge asks for a story told in three pictures.  I have three pictures for you.  It is another evolution of my food photography project which is now on it’s third post.  Here are the photos:

ISO 400 50mm 0ev f/4 1/100

ISO 400 50mm 0ev f/4 1/100

ISO 400 50mm 0ev f/4 1/100

These photos were taken as the sun was going down, hence the golden light.  I shot a series of them also in the morning light and they have a much colder feel to them.  The second photo was shot with a piece of black paper in the background to make the steam visible.  The third photo is actually a combination of the first two photos that I created in Photoshop.

First, I started with the two photos in Bridge and went to Photoshop-load as layers.  That opened the two photos in a single layered file in Photoshop.  From there I went to Edit-Auto Align Layers and used the auto function to line up the two photos exactly.  Because I used a tripod and shot them in a sequence, the two photos had already been pretty close, but not exact.  Then with the darker photo on top, I dropped its opacity.  That is how the third photo came to be.

What do you think? Is the hybrid photo your favorite or do you prefer one of the other ones?  I have also changed the composition of the photos again.  Do you like it better or do you prefer something you saw in post one or post two?  Feel free to leave a comment below.

Thanks to everyone who has been commenting on this project as I have been working on it.  Once one of my photos is accepted in class, I will probably be making some other adjustments in Photoshop, just to clean it up.

Cheers!

 

 

Travel Theme: Romance

It was Valentine’s day this past week, but some of my valentines were out of town therefore it was kind of amusing to me that romance is the theme at Where’s My Backpack?  We don’t really go all out for this holiday in this household, but I do try to do something small for the family.  I was thinking about what I could make for my husband when I stumbled across this cranberry walnut bread over at the blog Notes from Dawn.  I am also working on a food photography project for my Photoshop class, so I took some pictures just to think about the lighting part of the project.  Many of you know that tea is the subject of my project, but here I am using cranberries as test subject:

ISO 1600 50mm 0ev f/2.8 1/60

For me, this photo reinforces my thought that I would like to use natural light for this project.  I dislike the tinges of artificial light that you can see on the strainer.  It was good to do this though, because natural light has been in short supply here lately,  and I am anxious to move along with this project.  I guess I’ll also have to learn something about patience.

The bread was yummy too, that was the other thing I discovered by doing this lighting exercise for my Photoshop class.  Also, I’m no romantic, but it is nice when everyone is back safe and sound at home.

Do you photograph food? what is your take on artificial versus natural light?

Cheers!