Down the Hatch

Anybody know the joy of Fresh Roasted Hatch Green Chiles from New Mexico? I bought 5.5lbs of them the other day. Half were mild and half hot. Spent some time removing the skins, some seeds and membrane and bagging them for the freezer.

Anyway, working on some recipes to use them with and decided to use some local grass fed and finished beef to make a Stuffed Hatch Chile Cheeseburger.

Any suggestions on color balance, contrast, sharpness, text etc - I am well open to your suggestions.

heres ny go at it...bit of color saturation , slight wb to emphasis the yellow chilli and bun and some black point adjustments , contrast etc...ALso cheese needs to be color corrected and also needs to get the highlights under control...I will leave that to someone else to play with

Clipper

Except for the cheese, Clipper's treatment looks a lot better to me.

I agree that upping the saturation helped. The meat should look reddish brown.

About staging: (1) That's a nice piece of stone under your burger, but its gray and the background gray add up to too cool an environment for a food shot IMO. (2) The whitish cheese has the same effect. A yellower cheese would look livelier. Of course, competing visually with the chiles is undesirable. (3) The upper bun seems squashed.

Thanks folks! I sure appreciate your thoughts - very helpful. I did process on the lower contrast/desaturated side and now with a few hours away from the computer my eyes are telling me I went too far Thanks Clipper, FrankC and OhLook for guiding me back.

Some adjustments with your suggestions in mind ... the cheese, baby swiss, I am afraid I am stuck with that - not too lively. I did have sharp cheddar with more chiles stuffed in the center of the burger.

OhLook wrote in post #17672158
(1) That's a nice piece of stone under your burger, but its gray and the background gray add up to too cool an environment for a food shot IMO.

I like the gray background as it helps the warmer burger pop out of it.

Yeah, that is one sad looking bun! ; D

Lupo-Lobo wrote in post #17672274
... the cheese, baby swiss,

OK, so it's supposed to be more white than yellow. But the cheese at the left side looks a bit blue/green to me. Here's a quickie. I'm still not to happy with the cheese.

No amount of color adjustment will solve the other problem with the cheese: it didn't melt enough to drape over the meat. It looks stiff, more like hand-blown glass than like warm cheese.

For those that do their own styling...some hot water on a brush will typically give a nicely melted soft edge/corner to cheese.

Thanks again everybody for your thoughts. It goes to show how important it is to look at and consider every detail before wrapping up the shoot and more importantly not to get rushed. Great tip on the cheese Foodguy, thanks.

This project is pretty much a wash but I wanted to see if I could do something with the cheese ... I don't think it looks too natural and I still have the issue with the stiff cheese on the right but I learned something about color replacement tonight and that's a good thing.

Lupo-Lobo wrote in post #17673254
Great tip on the cheese Foodguy, thanks.

You're very welcome. Another trick is to trim the edges of the cheese before putting it on the burger and before hitting it with any heat. Trim it in an elongated shallow wave along the edge. It will add to the illusion of soft, melting cheese. I've watched lots of food stylists trim the slice of cheese, place it in a bowl of hot water to soften it and then put it on the burger and shape it to where they want it.

Thanks again Foodguy - that is really useful. I love it when these little tid-bits make it my way ... and, they still keep the food edible

What about 10 seconds in the microwave?

I think different cheeses behave differently when melting. That baby swiss was on the patty in the microwave for 1 minute 21 seconds and still didn't flow. It was probably malleable and I should have tried to manipulate it but I didn't ... there is little time in a day when caring for two octogenarians