What’s Wrong With This Picture?

What’s wrong with this picture? What’s wrong? I don’t even know where to start. It’s probably much easier to state what is ok with this picture: It is sharp and correctly exposed. Apart from that there is not much I can say in favour of this shot. Well, the food tasted great, but I guess that’s something else.

And exactly what is wrong?

Let’s start with the light. Light is the single most ingredient (pun intended) for every photograph, not only for food photographs. On this occasion the sun was already low in the sky and we had dinner on the patio. However, the sun still cast strong and fairly dark shadows. Furthermore a large window to the left of the scene reflected the sunlight, resulting in crossed shadows on the plate. That is a definite no go!

All in all there is simply to much going on in the picture. The plate with those ungainly shadows, the cutlery and the wine glass, also casting dark shadows and, last but not least, the napkin and the table cloth with their strong colors (which are quite ok for a rustic meal on the patio) all distract immensely from the food. The creases in the table cloth, oh well …

It’s a typical snapshot that could have been taken with a cell phone (have you ever noticed how often people in a restaurant take photos of the food?).

What can be done to improve the picture?

Little can be done about the lighting. You could wait till the sun is below the horizon but by then the food is probably quite cold. So you have to take the light as it is or just refrain from taking a picture. Simple as that.

But apart from that there is a simple thing you can do: just don’t show what distracts from the subject. The next image is a slight improvement:

Better, but not good. So let’s get even closer:

There you go. Much better indeed. By turning around the plate a bit even the nasty shadows are gone. The depth of field could have been a bit larger but apart from that I’m fairly happy with the result.