Cucumber sandwiches

Continuing the food theme ... cucumber sandwiches are wonderful, simple and elegant! Bread and butter with slices of cucumber and a sprinkle of salt - presented on fine china. The china in this image is Japanese.

 Tea and cucumber sandwiches

Serving suggestion - pie sandwich

A previous serving suggestion blog image was "inspired" by some poor examples of images on food packaging. The image was semi-abstract, including cut-out photo images of food items. The odd appearance of some food items was obtained by including the shadows in these cut-outs such that the shadow cast by a lettuce leaf is included in its photo cut-out. The colour and placing of the shadow is therefore deliberately inappropriate to the lighting although it works for me.

The image below is more realistic, but again each item is a cut out from a separate photo. Shadows have been selectively added after the fact, but these are still deliberately odd, so that there is something not right about the overall image.

Pie sandwich

The pie sandwich is something that I first encountered in an episode of Coronation Street, being eaten by Corrie's Gary Mallett. The Urban Dictionary tells me it is also known as a Wigan sandwich. This food concept is also known in Dundee.

Serving suggestion

I normally expect manufacturers of foodstuffs to put effort into making their products attractive to potential consumers. The manufacturer's marketing departments sometimes illustrate the food contents with so-called "serving suggestions".

Here is my attempt at bettering the professionals.

Serving suggestion

Multiple exposure - triptych

A recent challenge from a local camera club was to produce a triptych - three images in one frame. The three images in a triptych should be related in some way. For example they might tell a story, have a common theme, or show three views of the same subject.

A favourite painting is "The Garden of Earthly Delights" - a triptych by the Flemish painter Hieronymus Bosch, dated about 1500. Bosch's painting is very complex, full of fantasy, symbolism and metaphor. The painting is a mystery - today no one seems to have a full understanding of its meaning.

Inspiration for the camera club's challenge comes from Bosch's bizarre painting - it steals a few simple ideas as a basis. Here is the result:

 Triptych

A technical inspiration is the use of multiple exposures. I had been exploring the creative possibilities of multiple exposures, and testing a few ideas using fruit as the subject. Most of the triptych is composited from multiple exposures of fruit. Some examples:

In each case, the multiple exposure image has been created in-camera by a Canon 5D mark III in Darken" multiple exposure mode.

Multiple exposure - Abstract - for Alex

A life at sea

Shipwreck and rescue. This abstract image celebrates the life of Alexander Scott Masson who spent most of his adult life at sea.

Multiple exposure - Falls of Feugh

Spent an hour on the footbridge over the Falls of Feugh taking a large number of multiple exposure images. This image is from three images originally blended in camera, with some minor re-working in Photoshop (white balance, crop and sharpen).

 Blue Feugh

Multiple exposure

 Multiple exposure images of the past season's barley fields in Aberdeenshire.

Muir of Fowlis

Near Tough

Images are created in-camera with post-processing limited to crop, mono conversion and adjustments to exposure, contrast and clarity.