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Quentin Brown's picture

Critique my ice cream sundae

I would like a critique on my ice cream sundae that I shot this past Friday. I was given the assignment on Thursday afternoon and shot first thing the following Friday. This was shot with a Nikon D5200 with the kit 18-55mm lens. I shot tethered to a macbook and used PhaseOne CaptureOne to process the image and export out the hi-res tiff. This was shot on a white plexiglass backdrop with two impact digital monolights. The main light was was camera left and to the side of the bowl with a 24"x24" soft box and with a white card to give some fill light to the right side. The second monolight was position camera left as well but it was also positioned behind the food (mainly using as hairlight). Food was style by a chef, that is very good at foodstyling but probably has a few more shoots today before I would call him a seasoned professional. Once the image was exported out from CaptureOne I then took it into PS for clean up any does and imprefections, cutting out the background, adding shadows & reflections back in and some more color grading. The surface was also added in PS. Let me know what you like, don't like and what I could improve upon.

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4 Comments

I'm glad you explained that it was shot on white and cut out. The edge is a little two crisp. My eye almost went immediately to it. I knew something wasn't right. I've found, especially when using the pen tool, the edge needs to soften up a little. After I load my selection I will soothing it at 2 pixels, and then feather the section by 1.

I love the bark on the right. but on the left things are getting washed out. What I would do in this situation, not that one is more right than the other, its just what I would do. Expose for the highlights on the left. Then fill the right side with a white card of mirror.

I would love to see the original.

Here is the image basically straight out of camera. The only thing that has been changed was the White Balance.

sure looks like a tasty ice-cream and lots of good stuff around it. i noticed the sharp edges as well, but what bothers me the most is the lack of depth. there are shadows and all hinting that it is a 3D structure but we don't really get a feeling of size.
i assume that this big ball of ice cream is actually sticking out of the bowl with the whipped cream right at the top. we don't see that. i would go lower and shoot from the side or maybe 30deg angle. This way you allow the view to imagine how he/she will eat it

I really think the Raw version is much better