Food Photography - Please Critique

[thenaturephotographer]

Hi Everyone, I'm doing some more food photography over thanksgiving, and I was just wanting some feed back. These are pretty much just straight out of the camera. Thanks.http://www.johnzdorphotography.com/photoposts/Garlic%20Bread-1.jpghttp://www.johnzdorphotography.com/photoposts/Mini%20Potato%20Patties-1.jpg

[L.Morey]

Need more DOF

[cryforashadow]

Why not edit them? They just lack something I can't put my finger on IMO.

[thenaturephotographer]

cause i'm still shooting

[td67mustang]

I like the lower poitn of view in #2, i just think a tighter crop or more DOF. the blurry subjects out of center are distracting.

[form]

I'm not thrilled with your light source angle. I think food shots do well with back lighting and soft fill or sometimes overhead spot lighting.

[kylejackson]

they're okay. you should zoom more and compose better.

[thenaturephotographer]

Thanks Everyone for your comments, these photos are being cropped in almost a 1x1 ratio for a cookbook. I will try to get better shots later tonight

[zwhitworth]

Nice compositions. I think the tablecloth clashes in the 1st photo.

[Jim M]

These were posted in Adobe RGB instead of sRGB. As a result, they look flat on the internet, although they probably look fine on your computer. Here they are converted from your posted images, but the second "save for the web" hasn't done them any favors.

[thenaturephotographer]

thanks for the colorspace conversion.

[Jim M]

Although I don't know beans about food photography, I'll give you my "worth what you paid for it" advice. I think the main light needs to come from behind or more from the side. On the potato cakes, I think the light falls off too much from left to right and the second light (reflector?) is way too obvious. My disclaimer - in my nearly 50 years of playing around with photography, I've never shot food.

[Bill Boehme]

They are both too blurry for product shots. In the first one, the second and third buttons of garlic are the only things that look sharp. It appears that the DOF is only about 2 cm. In the second image, I do not see anything in focus.

[Walczak Photo]

I don't want this to sound rude and as always this is just my own personal opinion. Also, I don't shoot food myself and I'm not really sure if or how much this is going to be helpful, but there is something lacking from these shots. The best way I can think to describe it is, if you look around on the forums here you will see food shots where people immediately start saying "great...now I'm hungry"...these shots did not do that for me. Aside from the DOF issues already mentioned, while the food looks "nice" and certainly well prepared, I think the problem is simply the compositions themselves. To me they really seem to lack the little something that makes you wish your monitor had "smell-o-vision", LOL!!!

Again, not sure if that was really helpful or not but that's what went thru my head.

Peace,
Jim

[thenaturephotographer]

I guess I should of said this earlier, but these shots are for a cookbook and will be cropped in a ~1x1.2 ratio, and thanks everyone for your comments.