doubt my abilities,where do i g wrong?

Several things jump out to me. A silver reflector held just out of camera range and under the camera would have bounced some light back across the composition and added some pop. The leaves appear slightly wilted, slightly yellow and somewhat crammed into the bowl, one stalk is even broken. The lower tangled root is distracting as is the rather bright wooden table. The six red peppers are too many. Three is ideal. One seed in the lower lime is out of its socket. I like the general idea however, and the exposure appears to be OK.

Benji

Chef, too many things are on that plate.less is more with food, outside of the peppers, everything is monochromatic. White dinnerware is usually chosen instead of earthenware for the contrast abilities?
Solid color BG as well..but you are getting there

hm thanks for your comments, it was just thrown together quickly, with the only purpose (after proper set ups failed) to see if i can get pop, talking food etc.....

anyhow......on my kneess back to the drawing board.....am not happy......but yes hopefully one day i get to pleasing phoographs.

thanks

Marco

http://www.foodportfol​io.com/frames/base_fra​me.html

He does some fabulous setups....

thank you ill look into it right now!

ooooooh Flo you spoiled my day now!!!

macobee wrote in post #6299291
ooooooh Flo you spoiled my day now!!!

Lol.good spoil or bad spoil?

Bad one!!! defnitely a bad one............going o bed now cause tomorrow its mid autumn festival in Hong Kong and f888888 everybody wants to have dinner at the place i work......

ciao

I agree with Flo. In this case, less is definitely more. The plate is way too cluttered and I'd chop off the roots as well On my monitor the image looks a bit warm too.

There is not anything wrong with you ... it is just that the lighting and food have conspired against you.

As the web site that Flo referenced says, food photography is a really big deal to make it look as good in print as it does when sitting on a plate in front of you. But, I did find it interesting that many of the images that the famous foodie shows on his site have large blown out areas ... maybe blowing out an image has been embraced as the latest style ... I do see it a lot in magazine advertisements.

As the others have said, how the food is displayed is all-important and I confess that I wouldn't know where to begin. However, I noticed several things that would help improve the image. I think that the main problem that the image does not look good to you is because the white balance is off. Fixing that would go a long way towards making the image more appealing. Other than that, the things that I see are:

1. table is picking up too much glare from somewhere causing parts of it to have a washed out purplish hue.
   
2. the cut edge of the lime has partially dried out.
   
3. the pepper stems are turning brown -- that may be the best time to eat them, but not the best time to photograph them.
   
4. the parsley is slightly wilted and old and has dried out ends on the stems where it is broken.
   
5. overall, the lighting is too flat and harsh.

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I would also moisten the Coriander leaves too. might bring out a bit more colour in them, although they dont have that much on the undersides. Turn all the leaves upright..

If you want to leave the roots on them try not bending them and put the food on a small board??

thank yu for your tips and comments, i think it has most to do with my lighting as i mostly have to shoot at night as im ll day out for work.

here some samples from what i can do with daylight available through my windows, much much better:

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macobee wrote in post #6315804
thank yu for your tips and comments, i think it has most to do with my lighting as i mostly have to shoot at night as im ll day out for work.

here some samples from what i can do with daylight available through my windows, much much better:

Last one the focus is a bit off but nonetheless much better then the shot i started showing here at first!

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Hey Macobee,
I can't really compare with your first shot as Flicr is saying the shot is unavailable, but over all I think these look pretty decent. The two biggest issues I'm seeing are basically white balance and DOF. First your colors look just a tich off to me...on my monitor at least. If you shot these in RAW, I'd go back and play with the color temp and/or tint just a bit more. I would also ask if your monitor is calibrated as well...that will certainly affect your color.

Secondly I think you're using too shallow DOF. I'd try closing down a couple of f/stops (aka use a smaller aperture). I have nothing against "selective focus" but I think it's just a little too selective here.

Otherwise I'd saying your framing/composition looks really good as does the sharpness (barring the fore mentioned DOF issue), contrast and saturation.

Just my $.02 worth,

Peace,
Jim

Macobee,

First rate images. Well done. Looking at them made me hungry...

Tony
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EOS 40D, Canon 24-70mm f/2.8L, 70-200 f/4L, TAMRON SP AF17-50mm f/2.8
Images from my EOS 40D