Wednesday, September 04, 2013

Recent work - Cereal bowl and spoon with fruit


Cereal

Crisco is a great way to keep food in its place but using it totally grosses me out.  Something about not being able to get it off my hands gets me to wonder what is it doing to my body.  Crisco is nice for its color in that it kind of looks like milk but adding real milk on top of the Crisco completes the illusion.

This image is comprised of many layers.  The spoon was shot first with Crisco as the base holding the cereal and fruit in place, then a couple of layers of the spoon with milk in different places.  The bowl was added in much the same way, first the bowl with cereal but without milk, then a couple more layers of the bowl with the milk in different parts.  Also an overlay was used when shooting the bowl with cereal.

Adding milk is the tricky part, too much milk and the cereal flakes change their color and texture as they become soggy, too little milk and the image just doesn’t look right. 

I worked with Kimberly Colburn during this shoot. She is always my first choice whenever I seek a food stylist. With her help we are a team moving pieces of the puzzle around to create the most appealing final image possible. 
        
For this project I retouched the images myself but yes I do use a digital retoucher when needed.