I’ve been playing with my food lately.
My photography is typically of the found variety. Outdoors, natural light, wander around, see what I find. Something catches my attention, then it captures my imagination. That’s it. My Sight. But lately, as we all shelter in place, I’ve been experimenting with created images.
I was re-watching a presentation on food photography by Alan Shapiro from the Out of Chicago Live on-line conference last year, and got inspired to try some still life food photography. I love to cook. I love photography. Why not put them together?
The world does not need another food blog. Certainly not from me. But what if I could create a recipe in a single image? What would that look like? How might I do that? I wanted to start with something simple. Guacamole? I’ve made it thousands of times. Always a little different, depending on my mood, and what’s on hand. It’s more of a process than a recipe. Kind of like my photography. Hmm. Maybe I was on to something here.
I popped down to the local market and rooted around in my pantry to gather together the ingredients. The one constant in the recipe is freshness, so I needed my photograph to reflect that. A perfectly ripe avocado. Vibrant cilantro. A bit of bright red onion, a clove of aromatic garlic. Pepper for heat. A tomato for texture and balance. Lime juice and salt to bring it all together. I stole one of Alan’s tricks and grabbed an old beat-up sheet pan to use as the backdrop.
My idea was to put all of the raw ingredients on the pan to illustrate the recipe. Deconstructed guacamole if you like. It was much harder than I thought to find a pleasing arrangement for the ingredients. I just kept moving things around ‘til I found something I liked. (Sticky putty helps a lot in keeping all the wobbly bits in place.) Taking the picture was pretty straightforward. Tray on the floor, camera leveled and pointed straight down, a macro lens and cable release for sharpness. I fired off a bunch of frames, bracketing for exposure and depth of field. Then I moved the ingredients around and did it again. Should I swap a single sprig of cilantro for the full bunch? Did the onion look better sliced or whole? Where to place the serrano?
At the end of the day, I came up with an image that I like. But it still wasn’t quite right. The cilantro stem should have been below the avocado. Those garlic cloves are too close to the left edge of the frame. The pepper is crowding the other ingredients. Where is the lime?
So a few days later I went back to the store, and tried it again. I added more ingredients; moved things around again; and chopped some of the veggies up. I added a tiny pile of guajillo chile powder and sliced the avocado to provide pops of contrasting color. I put everything on a chopping block. I shot a bunch of frames, and played around with different post processing techniques. After all that I came up with some interesting images. But still none were quite right. They seemed a bit too staged, too busy, or too processed.
Last week I gave it another try. I played around like I do in the kitchen. A little more of this, a little less of that. Put this in, take that out. Move things around and see what works. Taste. Adjust. Taste again. There were endless variations to be made. My guacamole was becoming a game of whack-a-mole.
But eventually it came together, and I ended up with the three compositions at the top of this post. Like my guacamole, each is slightly different, none is perfect, but I think they all work. Could they be better? Sure. But this is just the first step. Trying this out has opened my eyes to a new way of seeing, and given me a new subject to explore. And that, in the end, was what this exercise was all about. Learning, growing, trying new things. There are a lot more recipes to explore. If you want to keep up with my progress, keep an eye on the new Food gallery I added to my website.
And the best part? There’s all that leftover guacamole to eat.
If you want to see how this should really be done, check out Alan Shapiro’s work here. It is phenomenal. And if you are looking for inspiration to find new ideas to try in your own work, check out the speakers slated for this year’s Out of Chicago Live! conference coming to a screen near you in April.
But if you just want to kick back and eat some guacamole, check out the recipe below.
whack-a-molly
If I am craving guacamole in a rush, I will just mash an avocado into some homemade (or good store-bought) salsa, along with a squeeze of lime and a few spices from the drawer, season it up with salt and call it a day. (My go-to homemade salsa is based on this recipe from Rick Bayless.) If I have a bit more time, I will create a quick “salsa” from scratch as I make the guac:
Smash a clove of garlic (or two, if you like) and a little coarse sea salt together to make a paste in a deep wooden bowl. Mash the avocado into the same bowl. Finely chop some serrano or jalapeno and stir it in, or just use a bit of pure chile powder (I like guajillo or serrano best). Adjust the amount (and remove the seeds or not) depending on how much heat you want. (I use 1 fresh chile and about 1 tsp of powder with 2 avocados.) Taste, adjust the salt, then squeeze in a bit of lime juice and stir it up. (Start with a half a lime, taste, then add the other half if you think it still needs brightening up). Give it another mash to get the consistency even, then chop up some red onion, cilantro and tomato and give it a stir. Taste again and adjust seasonings as necessary. That’s it. Easy and delicious. If you have more self-control than me and aren’t going to eat it for a while, you can stir in a teaspoon or two of mayo to help keep it nice and green and bright.
Enjoy!