Degustation Menu at Sono - OH YES!

My birthday celebrations continued last night, with dinner at the delicious Sono, in Brisbane's Queen Street Mall.

Michael, my parents, one of my food-loving besties from Sydney and I shared the Sono degustation experience for over four hours....and every morsel of it was fabulous. I would definitely recommend the Zen option!

I loved having my new G12 on hand - far less intrusive than one of the big DSLR cameras, although we were in a private room, so it wouldn't have been a problem to pull the big guns out.

Here's what we ate, and some pictures. The photos may not do the food justice - the sake was flowing fast and furiously, but the entire evening made for a completely unforgettable Japanese meal!

* Zensai
* Assorted sashimi
* Steamed white fish with enoki mushroom and cherry leaves
* Wagyu steak grilled on magnolia leaf
* Deep-fried lobster with tea leaves and wonton skin
* Duck and prawn in yolk vinegar sauce
* Assorted sushi
* Miso soup with clams
* Dessert platter

Lemon bubbles....wiling away a wet day in Brisbane

It's a wet old day here in Brisbane, so I decided to get out the macro lens and play with some liquid macro photography!

I was inspired by one of the macro tutorials in a Kelby Training online tutorial, to shoot a lemon with bubbles.

The set up was easy enough - light tent, with a black background. My 5D II + 90mm Tamron lenses was mounted on a tripod, and I placed a square vase on an upturned bowl (to raise the vase off the bottom of the light tent).

My speedlight, sitting behind the whole set up, was dialed down to 1/64 power and triggered remotely.  Then I just experimented with aperture for different effects.

I did a few test shots with the lemon clipped into place to check focus, then added a litre of soda water, which bubbled around the lemon.

Here are the final results (including the set up of the shoot) :)

ISO 800, f/4.5, 1/6 sec

ISO 800, f/8, 1/80 sec

 

365 Challenge #318 - who says you can't play with food!

The weather is still crapulous outside, and I was itching to do something with my camera today. So...time for an indoor photography project! It was the perfect chance to play with one of the techniques I learnt in last week's workshop of the Colour II course at the Brisbane College of Photography and Art.

We discussed and experimented with how to shoot translucent objects, like these gorgeous red onions. I love the colours and patterns that come from natural objects, and working out how to light them to really show off those naturally beautiful qualities.

I don't have a light tent or light box, and our tutor showed us a really simple and quick way of achieving the same effect. The next picture shows the ingredients - two translucent plastic chopping boards, two glasses (which prop up the large board), translucent ingredients like red onions or lemons, and some form of flash or continuous lighting.

My set up for the shoot was as follows:
1) Large chopping board propped up on the two glasses - ideally it's level!
2) Smaller board blocks off the back of the set up, to bounce light back in to the "box".
3) On reflection, I should have used white blocks or something other than glasses to prop up the chopping board, to prevent light escaping - but in this situation, it worked fine.
4) Flash or other light source (in this case, I was triggering mine wirelessly, but in class, we used a small desk lamp which provided continuous light).
5) Arrange ingredients over the board, and shoot. You can see the flash going off in the picture below,  and how it blows out the background, leaving just the onions.

In terms of the gear I used, my macro lens is out visiting a wedding this weekend, so I used the Canon 500D close up lens attached to my Canon EF24-70mm f/2.8 L lens on the 5D II. I hand held the camera (although really should have used a tripod).

The camera settings were: ISO-100, f/11, 1/200, focal length of 50mm, manual focus. The speedlight was dialled down to 1/16 power. 

And voila! That's how I made translucent fruit. There's really no limit to how else this technique can be used - jelly babies and other types of see-though lollies, other fruits and vegetables, leaves....and on it goes. Next time I might add a gel over the flash, to throw coloured light into the "box"...the possibilities are endless!

Who says you can't play with food??