Cook, Shoot, Eat. Summer Salad & Wine

[wlou]

Cold pasta salad with Chareau Carré white wine. Sure was hard to work it trying not to have reflexion of light everywhere. Natural light. All real ingredients..
Your comments are appreciated.

[Mike Buckley]

This looks very good! I really like the depth of field.

Just three concerns, two minor and the other easy to correct: Why is the glass of wine on top of folded material, perhaps a napkin? Did you try using a polarizer to eliminate the glare on the tomato? There seems to be a slight yellow color cast even though I understand the oil is giving the pasta an attractive yellow appearance.

[Mike Buckley]

I wonder if this version is closer to what you ultimately have in mind. I changed the color cast by applying a neutral eye dropper built into my Levels & Curve tool to the inside of the white dish storing the oil. I was surprised at the still strong yellow tone of the pasta, so I then reduced the saturation of all yellow tones throughout the image.

[Shadowman]

Nicely done, the dof is making me dizzy or else I'm just hungry.

[wlou]

Apart from the fact that the pasta are not white because they are corn & rice, I don't know where the colour cast comes from. The plate is light brown to go with the pasta. No polarizer where used. I had placed the fork on the napkin and then I remembered someone(hum,wonder who?) said that a glass of wine would be nice with pasta. Work in progress. I think I will like this food photo project. We eat good.

[Mike Buckley]

the pasta are not white because they are corn & rice

That could explain why the color was more intense than I expected even after I adjusted the color balance. My gluten-free pasta is also made of corn and rice flower but I've only been cooking it recently and have never paid any attention to its color.

I don't know where the colour cast comes from.

Considering that white balance is so very important when photographing food, I strongly urge you to buy the smallest (because it's the cheapest) version of the WhiBal card. It's spectrally neutral (unlike a grey card used for metering exposure). Include it in your scene and use it as your neutral color to quickly determine the software setting to use when you post-process your image that doesn't include the card.

[wlou]

This is with auto tone in Lightroom.

5

[Mike Buckley]

Select a look that works best for you. As an example, I like the overall look of my version best so far but I don't like the look at all of the piece of tomato in the center of the plate in that version.