Jun/Jul 2012 Contest - Food Photography

[T Paul]

Food photography is a still life specialization of commercial photography, aimed at producing attractive photographs of food for use in advertisements, packaging, menus or cookbooks. Professional food photography is a collaborative effort, usually involving an art director, a photographer, a food stylist, a prop stylist and their assistants.
~Wikipedia

Transform the provided photo into an attractive photograph for use in a cookbook. In food photography the item would be staged perfectly for the shot, but in this case you will have to work digital magic to correct the image and turn it into a shot worthy of a commercial cookbook.

Source Image: Photo from morgueFile.com.

Fish: Click here to download the image.

Things to think about:

• Color Correction
• Exposure Correction
• Bringing out detail (contrast)
• Removing unwanted items
• Rearranging items
• and so forth

New to the contests? Please review the FAQs

Prize: Prize will be "Winner's Choice" of any one plugin: Dfine 2, Viveza 2, HDR Efex Pro, Silver Efex Pro 2, Color Efex Pro 3, or Sharpener Pro 3, donated by Nik Software

Dfine 2.0
Best-in-class noise reduction to improve the quality of virtually every photo.

VIVEZA 2
The most powerful tool available to selectively control light and color in photographs.

HDR EFEX PRO
The new professional standard for powerful realistic and artistic HDR imaging.

SILVER EFEX PRO 2
The world's leading black and white imaging software.

Color Efex Pro 3.0
52 photographic filters with over 250 effects for professional quality images.

Sharpener Pro 3.0
The most advanced, powerful, and complete sharpening solution for photographers.

THE RULES:

1. Contest will run from 2 June to 24 July 2012. Deadline for entries is 6pm (U.S. Central Time).

2. I will not answer questions concerning the rules. Interpretation of the rules is as important as execution.

3. Tasks:

• Transform the provided photo into an attractive photograph for use in a cookbook.
  
• Final image must be exactly 800 pixels wide by 650 pixels high (landscape format); cropping to get the required dimensions is permitted.

4. When you submit your entry put your username in the filename (ie: tpaul.jpg). This is so users can save the images to a local directory and remember who did what--important when it comes time to vote.

5. Post your entries to this thread. Links will not be accepted. Please restrict your comments, questions or discussion to the Contest Discussion thread. Inappropriately placed posts will be deleted.

6. Only one entry per person. You can change your entry up to the deadline.

7. Voting will run from 25 to 31 July 2012. Only those with entries may vote. Although everyone (contestants and noncontestants) are encourage to leave comments on the entries in the contest discussion thread.

8. Voting:

• Submit the 5 best entries (by artist name) in order, starting with your favorite.
• You cannot vote for your own image.
• Once you have voted, do not change your votes. Often the votes are tallied as they come in so any changes in the votes may not be reflected in the final results.

Finally, please remember that this is a friendly contest and suppose to be a learning experience. Tips and suggestions to help others are highly encouraged. Also please don’t limit your comments to just the top 5 when you vote. Most members are eager for feedback about their images, so remember to help each other out.

[lkroll]

Kept it simple; enjoyed the play though.

[Nasturtium]

just to get things started...

[fenix]

Here´s my attempt.

[skipatk]

Like Lyle, I went with the KISS principle.

[Veralisa]

Here's mine, focus on fish for cookbook:

[Bressler]

Can't say I ever did amu editing involving food before.

[tomato1236]

I didn't realize I had such a low upload size limit here. So to meet the standards and still participate, my image quality suffered. Poor, poor image quality.

[nazca13]

My very very first food product..will prob change, but my first try

[Lorraine]

Food photography is totally new to me so I read a few articles about it and tried to use some of the techniques.

Those were mainly color and contrast correction and fixing the peas so that they didn't look like I cooked them. I removed the stray rice and whatever those dark green things were in the rice. Also, I eliminated the granite and went for a solid background in an attempt to bring the focus solely on the food.

Lorraine

[Kraellin]

been a while since i entered anything here. let's give this a go. lots of adjustment layers!

if i dont vote, it'll be because i'm out of town. just eliminate me and that's fine. hopefully, i'll be able to, but i am planning being out of town around then, but even at that, i may still be able to get my vote in from wherever i am

[CathyH]

I have been really busy, but I took some time out to play. Here is my version.

[renata]

I thought a table cloth would give it a little more "warmth"?

[victorm]

Hi all, been lurking the forum for some time now, finally decided to post. I'm a photog trying to specialize in food photography so here's my attempt.

[Cupcake]

Here is my try!