Sometimes a picture is served with your dinner

For the recipe, please follow this link: Judy's broccoli and cheese soup.

Recently I was reading a humorous piece on what it's like to be married to a photographer. One item drew my wife's attention: one must accept the fact that a photographer, significant other rarely eats a great meal while it is still hot. They are too busy shooting pictures of the meal!

My wife read this and smiled.

The picture with today's post was quick and easy. Light was supplied by a large window in our kitchen dining nook. The attractive china and flatware were simply my wife's choice for use on Boxing Day. The red background is simply the plastic, placemat. The camera was a Canon S90 set to the automatic, available light setting.

This all went so quickly, I still enjoyed my soup steaming hot.

Note: This image would not work professionally. The reflection of the photographer in the spoon ruins this for professional use. A simple white tent of some sort to hide the photographer and supply a clean, white surface as the reflection is called for. With the help of an assistant, two dish towels can be held taut above the subject, with the camera lens poking between the towels to capture the image. The camera lens can easily be removed later in Photoshop and the harsh white of the dish towels subdued.

Better or worse? You decide.

Copyright: Robert Abell

Recently I saw the above image shot and posted to the Web by my nephew. I really like his work and I like this image but, to my eye, it had a cast: a red or deep pink cast. Look at the cement. On my monitor the cement appears quite pink.

I took the image into Photoshop and using the grey eyedropper tool in Curves, I tried to neutralize the red cast. Using the eye dropper set to sample a three by three pixel area, I clicked on various areas of the image that I believed might well be a neutral grey. When I thought I had the red just about gone, I tweaked the individual colour curves to remove any linger remnants of errant colour. What do you think? Is the picture improved or weakened?

I find that correcting the colour even makes the detail in the young woman's sari pop.

Copyright: Robert Abell