Risotto Shoot.
For this shoot, i cooked risotto - a classic Italian dish which can be styled and cooked in many ways. I cooked it using peas for a touch of the green vibrant colour to make the dish look more interesting - additionally, i cooked some large garlic mushrooms, to place on top of the risotto to draw attention into the image as well as an added garnish. I placed these elements on a white, circular dish on a blank, slate background in my garden, on a cloudy day to utilise the naturally diffused light. I used a ‘Fujifilm Instax SQUARE SQ1’ for the Polaroid-style base image. I took the photos using a Canon EOS 4000d DSLR camera, changing the settings dependent on the angle.
Original Image.
This was the image that went inside the polaroid frame in my final development. I took it in a landscape orientation because i knew that later i needed to crop it to a square 1x1 frame, so i took the image in this orientation to maximise the space inside the frame (prior to editing). I shot using a moderate aperture to create a depth of field deep enough to have the entire risotto dish in the frame - this contrasts with the way i shot the background image, where i used a shallow depth of field to blur out the background to allow this image to be the focus. i used this white plate as a background, inspired by some of my previous Loftus-style work, because it gives the food a ‘glamourous’ look which i was aiming to achieve. The white plate also gives a simplistic composition and draws attention to the centre of the frame.
Developments.
Firstly, i opened my base (Polaroid) image into Adobe Photoshop and removed the inner frame of the photo. This allowed me to later import my image of the risotto on the layer underneath. I adjusted this layer until the risotto was in the centre of the frame but with a little white showing, to blend in with the background - this created a smoother final look. I then imported the image into Adobe Lightroom and adjusted the colours and lighting. I increased the vibrancy of the peas and increased the texture, to make the food look more appealing. I then adjusted the lighting accordingly, to brighten and highlight the food byt also increase the shadows on the background to create more depth within the image. I finally added a grain and cropped the image to a 1x1 square frame to achieve the final Maxim Zavialov inspired image.
Final Image.
I was pleased with the way in which my final image turned out. Due to the natural shadow created on my background image and the lw aperture i used, it allows the image to be percieved as if i took the whole image with a shallow depth of field, with the Polaroid image in focus - overall this editing style created an authentic look. The blank, monochrome backgrounds paired with the simple composition create a glamourous look - this directly juxtaposed my other cinnamon bun shoot which filled the frame, displaying the two sides to commercial food photography and the two audiences these foods appeal to. The cool lighting complements the glamourous atmosphere and the bright lighting diffused across the dish. This photograph and shoot links to the food photography style of David Loftus, yet also the Instagram-style of photography throughout Zavialov’s concept of photography.