September 12, 2009 - 2:12pm
Photographing your bread
Ive admired not only the breads here but also the photography. I have trouble in both departments but do occassionly have bread that I would like to photo and post but my photos look worse than the bread. I have a sony digital about 4 years old and that's about all. Does any one have advice on how to improve the pictures?
Herb
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Do you have some examples of your "bad" pictures. Adding some images you consider bad would help people give you advice on improving them.
Whoops . Another problem. I clicked on the little tree and then on the folder image but don't know what the URL image is or how to locate it. I do know how to turn on the computer believe it or not. The images are on my hard drive and so far the only way to send listed is to e-mail
When you click the tree icon, the box that pops up has an a field to type in an URL, but at the END of that field is a little square icon. Click that and you'll get more options including uploading directly from your computer.
Note that maximum image size you can upload is 800 X 600
Some folks use a light tent and/or side lights. Some use flash, others avoid flash. A lot of it depends on the environment in which the pictures are taken. Frankly, I don't worry about it. I just collect a bunch of images using room light, natural sun light, incandescent light, flourescent lights and whatever else I can find and use the one(s) that happen to turn out the best. The two things that caused me the most trouble in the beginning were shadows and depth of field. My little cheap-o digital camera doesn't have a lot of high end adjustments to I find myself experimenting until the result is satisfactory. There's nothing more to gain from an outstanding photo than a there is from a mediocre one on any of the forums I frequent.
I don't have the artistic talents of taking pictures of my breads like some other forum members here. I just pick up my camera, point and shoot. The good thing about digital camera is that I can see the results immediately. If I don't like the angles or the colors I just take it again until I am happy with it. I try to use natural light as much as possible and I place the bread near a large widow for pictures. They usually turn out all right. This is a picture I took today:
Nothing fancy but I think they look all right.
The URL the "little tree thing" is asking for is from a hosting site of some kind. Photobucket is one of the popular ones but there are others. You simply put your image onto your hard drive go to Photobucket:
http://photobucket.com/
After you have opened a free account of course and then click to upload an image. When your image is uploaded place your cursor over it and a box will open up with 3 links and generally for forums you want to use the third one that has [img] before it and [/img] after it onece you add your post your image should show up. As far as shooting as has been said a great way to light an image is just use some diffused natural light. If you have white curtains on a window with the sun coming through it and that will diffuse the light very well. Use either auto white balance or the setting for sunlight and you should be good to go. Another thing photographs benefit greatly from is being processed through an image editing program like Photoshop or lightroom to adjust your levels and curves.
Still trying to post photo![photo of jewish rye unsliced](//s573.photobucket.com/albums/ss180/caviart/?action=view¤t=JewishRyeMay42009002.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i573.photobucket.com/albums/ss180/caviart/JewishRyeMay42009002.jpg" border="0" alt="2009-05-05"></a>)
I don't think it worked. But I'll click save.
Open the forum page into which you want to paste an image or be prepared to save the image on your clipboard before going to the forum page. Just don't lose the image while it's on the clipboard.
Log on to Photobucket. Click on the "Upload Images and Video" box. That will open the last used folder on your system. If that folder doesn't have the image you want to upolad, click on the arrow at the right hand end of the "Look In" box, select the folder that contains the image you want to use, and click on the file name for the image in that folder.
Wait until the image is uploaded (it will appear on the monitor in front of you) and assign a title or description of the image in the spaces provided. You can leave those blank if you want to.
Click on "Return to Album" and you will see your image on the monitor. It will have the same file name assigned to it that you used when you first filed the image on your system. Above your image you will see "edit/move/share/delete". Click on "share".
You will now see tabs marked "post to web site", "send email", "get link code" and "send to phone". Click on the tab "get link code".
You wil then find you have five choices. You want the one under "IMG for bulletin boards & forums". Left click on "clickable thumbnails" (that will take less space on the forum page - it's kind of a courtesy to avoid loading great big files that aren't really needed) Then, when you see that field highlighted, right click on it and select copy from the menu that appears. Left click on "copy".
Go to the forum page into which you wish to post your image, right click on the comment page you're working with and click "paste".
That's all there is to it. ....
I like north window light for bread photos, specially in a cloudy day:
When I have to use the flash I always tilt its head to bounce the light on the ceiling or on a wall, direct flash gives ugly results. Of course, you can only do this with an external flash.
The pics in http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/13834/hello-spain were taken this way.
If you can't bounce the flash, try to avoid using it.
I never use the flash and if I am photographing the crumb, I switch on the Macro mode on the digital camera as well.
We love the photo's and seeing a pic. gets us inspired. Have you ever thumbed through a cookbook while bored. The written word passes by without even a second glance. But put that yummy photo in there and you start hunting the index for the recipe. My photo's used to stink too, and with a lot of help they don't stink so much now! Don't give up. Anything you really want to do is worth the effort! As your photo skills improve so will your baking skills I'd bet!
Audra