What's Cooking?
Dear Community,
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Tips for taking great pics??
Some of you have amazing pictures in your blog. Any tips on how to make mine better? I use a Nikon D70 SLR camera. 
Re: Tips for taking great pics??
Use natural lighting and turn off your flash.
Use a tripod if you need to.
Back up (dont take the food so up close, let some of the surrounding features of the landscape in)
Set up your table before you even plate your food and look at it through your view finder. If you get this part set up you won't have to rush your shot as much (I know we all want to eat ASAP so I tend to rush things if I haven't done some preplanning).
Take my advice with a grain of salt because my pictures obviously aren't the best around here
From Hey To Horses
I am still learning, but I think practice is invaluable.
ITA with Branny - set up your table and a "scene" and then shoot. I usually try and set-up my table while the dinner is finishing up if it happens to be a weeknight. I always eat what I plate and still want it to be warm!
Never use a flash - bleck.
Use natural light when possible. I even shoot outdoors a lot. My neighbors must think I'm off the rocker! When I don't have natural light available, I use an EGO light with a basic bounce set-up off a white board to reduce any harsh shadows. It works really well.
Take your time when you shoot and try different angles - from the R, L, eye-level, overhead, different points of focus, etc. I usually take 40-60 frames for a single shoot and use 3-5 of those images.
I think photo editing is key (I currently use Picnik, but that will change after it closes in a few weeks), especially for setting a white balance. I also play around with exposure, highlights, shadows, and contrast and then recently learned how to play with the sharpen feature. You must have a quality photo to edit, but editing will take that photo to the next level.
Not necessary, but you may want to invest in a few props -- a few remnant fabric pieces, etc. to if nothing else, get the creative juices flowing!
I loved the book Plate to Pixel. Worth every penny and was very easy to understand for a DSLR novice.
I have a page in my blog that goes through some basics of taking good food photos.
For now, check out Picnik for free post-processing software. But it's being transitioned over to Google+ in April, and I think it might be substantially simplified then too. Picasa is also pretty good, I think.
my food blog