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Elaine D's picture

Cheese Board Critique Please

I'd love a critique please.

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3 Comments

A few suggestions for this photo:
1) Always select the focal point carefully on the main food-cheese. Here it looks like the apples. Use more DOF or a higher perspective to get more in focus.
2) The foods should be spaced out better on the board.
3) Very light cheese is hard to photograph because it looks all white.
4) The baskets in the back and the handle hole are distracting.
5) Cheese pairs better with wine than beer.
6) The board is good, but should be on fabric rather than a wood with different grain and color.

Cheese boards are seriously the hardest thing to photograph other than a pizza or paella, so don't get discouraged. A few notes, assuming you did the food styling as well.

1) Fruit should have droplets of water, not be soaked. Use glycerin.
2) The apples are brown, use lemon on them to keep them fresh longer.
3) Choose a better focal point, or use an arrangement that highlights the fruit and cheese. Here we only have fruits in focus, and to compound the problem, the darkest part of the photo is directly in the center.
4) The lettuce with onion (?) is a strange thing to put there. Its pretty obvious that you were just trying to put together whatever you could and take a picture of it. No shame in that, I'm sure we've all been there, but sometimes less is more.
5) The two types of wood are conflicting and don't match. Beer is a bad choice for cheese plates.
6) The baskets. Either include them, or get rid of them, but don't leave them in no man's land.
7) The single slice of swiss cheese is strange and flat. Cut it up or use a wedge.
8) Hopefully in something like this you should be able to get some textures, but here because of the poor focus on a dark spot and brown apples, virtually everything is soft.

Thank you for the insight, the most helpful advice was regarding the point of focus!