Through My Lens – The One With the PB&J

Those of you who participated in the most recent Through My Lens event probably thought I took your photos and ran! Tempting, because I do love PB&J and the amazing photos you all turned in had my mouth watering. You all did a great job with this assignment! I have decided, however, to share you talents with the rest of the world and get this post up! The delay was because my working version of Photoshop is on my PC and I try to avoid turning on my PC as much as possible because it literally pains me. Since the version of Photoshop I have ordered for my Mac still hasn’t arrived, I’m going to just do this the old fashioned way, not have a collage and let all of these photos have their glory, one by one. So here we go…

If you’ll remember, the assignment was to pretend like you have been hired by a magazine to photograph a Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwich. How would you interpret that assignment? And now, for your viewing pleasure, here is the PB&J Through My Lens roundup:

Blog Name: Liesl’s Confection Dissection
Equipment Used: Canon Rebel XTi w/ 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 lens, Manfrotto 190XB tripod with Slik AF2100 pistol grip head, Impact reflector, Canon RC-1 wireless remote….and a white plate as an additional reflector.
Photo Editing: Photoshop…I used the cloning tool to take out the “Williams & Sonoma” logo.  Also, brought up the saturation, brightness and contrast, and used the sharpening tool.
Props: Cookie Cutters to make sandwiches, colored plate, William’s & Sonoma lunchbox

Blog Name: Our Best Bites

Equipment: Canon 40D, 50mm f/1.8 lens

Photo Editing: PSE, cropping, increase brightness

Setup Details: Outdoors on patio, natural light, foam board in background.

Props: Cutting board, homegrown grapes from my garden, and a jar of PB!

Blog Name: Panini Happy
Equipment Used: Canon Rebel XTi, Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II lens, Tripod, Canon wireless remote control, White foam board
Technical Details:  RAW format, No flash, Natural light, Aperture f/4.5, ISO 200
Photo Editing: Adjusted white balance, exposure, clarity, vibrance and saturation in Photoshop Elements to brighten the image and accentuate the colors. Cropped very close-up to make the individual ingredients even more visible.
Setup Details: I placed the sandwich on a white plate on my kitchen table, opposite a large window. I used a white foam board to bounce the natural light onto the right side of the sandwich (a tip I learned from this site!).
Props: White, rectangular plate
Additional Tips: This is an inherently messy sandwich, so I went ahead and let the jam flow! In this instance, I think seeing the bright red drops against the white plate actually makes the sandwich look more appetizing. I also put more peanut butter toward the edges of the sandwich so it would be more visible in the photographs.

Blog Name: Something Shiny
Equipment Used: Nikon D80, Nikkor 35mm 1:1.8G AF-S DX lens, tripod, foam core bounce board
Technical Details: Exposure 1/20 sec at f/4.5, Aperture Priority mode, Focal Length: 35 mm, Focal Length in 35 mm film: 52 mm, ISO Speed: 200, Exposure Bias: -0.3, Flash did not fire, RAW format
Photo Editing: Photoshop CS2, PW Action set 1 – “fresh & colorful”, Brightness/contrast
Setup Details: table next to North-facing window, window on right, bounce board on left; clothes rack behind table for draping backdrops
Props: red and white checked towel, small white plate, small clear drinking glass

Blog Name: She’s Becoming DoughMessTic
Equipment Used: Crappy little Sony Cybershot.
Photo Editing: A little bit of Photoshop Cropping, Contrast & increased Saturation

Blog Name: goodLife {eats}
Equipment Used: Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ5, Photoshop CS
Technical Details: Macro setting, No Flash, Adjusted the exposure on the camera to +1/3
Photo Editing:  Cropped the image, Increased the contrast by +10, Applied a warm toned gradient map on soft light 25% to warm up the color of the bread, Duplicated original layer, set to soft light 50%, sharpened the image
Setup Details: Set up on my kitchen island with a white foam board opposite the light source.  Plates on clearance from Martha Stewart line at Macy’s  Placemat from Crocodile Creek via Oompa Toys
Props: Placemat, Plates, Sliced banana and strawberry

Thank you all for participating and for submitting these beautiful photos! PB&J has never looked so good! I’ll announce the next Through My Lens assignment next week as well as the winner through the random drawing for the Digital Food Photography Book.

Tagged as: PB&J, Sandwich, Through My Lens