The Camera Never Lies ... But The Light Meter Might

First impressions are as important in the culinary world as they are in the business world. As human beings, we tend to embrace every experience with as many senses as we have available. Before we taste food, we smell it. Before we smell it, we look at it. And before we look at it, we can hear it being prepared and coming our way. How often have you been in a Mexican restaurant and heard the sizzling fajitas approaching before you ever see it? Like a Pavlovian dog, just hearing that noise causes you to salivate in anticipation.

For those of you who have been reading my blog for a while (and thank you, by the way), you may have noticed a trend over the last nine to twelve months that my food pictures have gotten better and better. Until roughly one year ago, I was taking all of the pictures you see on my blog with my cellphone camera. It was convenient, it was inconspicuous, and it did an okay job in better lit restaurants. The problem was trying to get a good picture at the darker restaurants, the Momocho's, the L'Albatros's, the Greenhouse Tavern's of the world. Even though my cellphone camera had a flash on it, it was so dark that the darn thing couldn't even focus.

So, I decided to upgrade to an actual camera. A Canon G12 point and shoot to be exact. And then over the course of the next year, I actually upgraded twice more, first to a Canon Rebel t3i and finally to a Canon EOS 60D. I won't go into the nuts and bolts of why I upgraded, but let's just summarize by saying that as I became more proficient, I realized I needed a more capable tool. And that is a perfectly valid reason why a lot of people spend more money and upgrade to a better camera.

The problem, however, is that from the cheapest point and shoot to the most expensive professional camera out there, if you don't take control of the camera, you will get crappy food pictures in restaurants. Many people put the camera in fully automatic mode, point the camera at a plate of food, and think that is all that needs to be done. In a well-lit restaurant or outdoors in the sunlight, you might be right. The camera can reduce the shutter speed enough where even being handheld is possible without blurring. But in a moderate to dimly lit restaurant? Game over.

Today I met up with a friend at Hudson's Restaurant in Montrose for a beer and some much needed catching up on our respective lives. We went back and forth about what we had been up to and when we got into my recent food photography, I was explaining to her that I always shot in Manual exposure mode because it gave me full control over the resulting picture. Since I am a bit of a control freak, this style of shooting perfectly fit with the pictures I was taking. She didn't believe me when I told her that were I to set the camera to one of the automatic modes, that it would take a crappy picture.

"Fine," I said, "I'll prove it."

We had ordered an appetizer off of the menu to split. I mounted my $1600 camera (including lens) to my tabletop tripod, set the little dial to the "green square" (which is fully automatic on my Canon), and pressed the shutter button. The on-camera flash popped up, the picture was taken and here was the result:


Wait a minute, now ... what is that large gray area at the bottom of the plate? That would be the shadow where the light from the flash couldn't reach to illuminate it. The other problem you may notice is that the light falls off the further back it goes on the plate, so even without the large shadow in the front, the light level isn't even.

Okay, then, so flash is out. By switching the mode from Auto (green square) to Program AE (P), the camera would still pick out all of the settings without using the flash. This would be equivalent to what most people would pick on their cameras when shooting food in a restaurant. Surely it must be better, right? Let's see:


Ack!! What's with all of the gray? Last time I checked, most restaurants served food on whites plates, not gray ones. The problem here is that the light meter built into every single camera (which basically measures the reflected light off of the subject) are programmed to expect 18% reflected light. This number was determined many decades ago when an analysis of thousands of photographs revealed that, on average, 18% of the light striking the subjects reached the film in the camera. So, in the case of Program AE (P) mode, since most of the scene above is reflected white light, the camera toned down the light in order to meet the 18% value. If you've ever taken a picture of a snowy day and wondered why the snow appeared gray and not white, this is the reason.

Okay, enough horsing around. It's time for me (the photographer) to take charge of the camera. In order to set the correct color balance, I pulled out my handy "gray card":


This is literally a 8 1/2" x 5 1/2" cardboard card that I keep with me at all times in my bag that is 18% reflective on one side. Resting the card on my water glass, I used my camera's controls to set the white balance. White balance, for those who might not know, is also referred to as color temperature. If you've ever taken a picture of something white and it appeared a bit blue or yellow, this is due to the type of lighting illuminating your subject. In Hudson's today, the lights above the bar were incandescent bulbs, which tend to make white look yellow.

After obtaining a proper white balance, I switched my camera into Manual (M) mode, selected my settings and took this picture:


This was the picture as it came straight out of the camera. The only alteration I made to all of the pictures above was to correct for barrel distortion and resize them for this blog post. As you can see, when *I* selected the shutter speed and aperture, I managed to capture what I think is a much better exposed picture. Of course, my camera thought the image was too bright, but I simply ignored its suggestion and went with my own.

Once out of the camera and into my photo processing software, I barely tweaked a few color settings to make the image look its best:


I'd suggest you open the images up side by side. The differences are quite subtle. And then open up the first two images and compare the first two to these last two. Big difference, eh?

Okay, fine, so this was in a moderately dim restaurant. What about a real challenge ... say, a really dark outdoor patio around 9 pm where I couldn't even see my dining partner's facial features anymore? I'll take that challenge.

Last Friday I met my friend Elizabeth at Basi Italian Restaurant in Victorian Village located north of downtown Columbus, Ohio. We arrived around 7 pm and they sat us at a quaint little table for two on the patio, just outside of the bar. As we ate and chatted, the sun began to set and by 8:30 or so, the only light source was from the thin sparse strings of white Christmas lights adorning the bar. At that point, I took this picture of our table:


The light you see reflected off the table came from those Christmas light strands. When the dessert finally arrived, it was so dark that not only did auto-focus fail to work, but when manually focusing the lens, I had to use the light from my cellphone in order to properly do so. Once I got everything ready, I pushed the shutter button to take the picture and fifteen seconds later, I got this:


Now, granted, I did do some work on that photograph to optimize it. But it didn't take very long and I don't even think I could've gotten that picture had I set it to one of the automatic settings. By the way, just so there is no confusion, no flash was used to take that picture. And I don't lie, it really was that dark.

So what is the take away from all of this? If you want to take good pictures of food in not-so-great lighting conditions, you're going to have to take control of your camera and get out of the automatic exposure settings. You'll probably also need to get a tabletop tripod, too. Is my new rig a bit more conspicuous at restaurants? Absolutely. But I've discovered through a lot of trial and PLENTY of error, that there just isn't any other way to get consistently good pictures.

Two Year Anniversary: A Second Retrospective

We have arrived yet again, gentle reader, at another milestone for Exploring Food My Way: the second anniversary of my first post (technically that would be tomorrow, but skipping a post on Friday and posting on Saturday instead would fall outside my normal posting schedule). While I was happy to celebrate successfully writing on my blog for one full year, the fact that I've continued to do so for an additional year has helped give me a sense of purpose and accomplishment all at the same time.

Looking back over this last year, I realize that I've discovered some very tasty places to eat, done some very cool things, and met some incredibly cool people along the way, both readers and others in the culinary and media fields. Something you realize very early on is that even though northeast Ohio covers a lot of square miles, it really is a pretty tiny place and it turns out that everybody seems to know EVERYBODY. Six degrees of separation is much more close to two.

So now, to commemorate the past twelve months of work, let's take a look at Tino's Top Ten Totally Tremendous Things about year number two:

10. Winning free tickets to the Top Chef event at St. John Medical Center and having a great time attending with my friend Edsel.

9. Eating (and surviving) my way through The Lenten Project. My love of fried fish and pierogi knows no bound.

8. Being able to happily announce the opening (or discovery) of some great restaurants and the sadness involved in announcing some closures (Baricelli Inn and Bar Symon).

7. Being in complete and utter awe that people from all parts of the world have taken time out of their busy lives to visit my website 100,000+ times since I started keeping track back in May 2009 (as of 12/17/2010 12:00:00 AM, the number was 101,552).

6. Being asked to give cooking demonstrations at both the Howe Meadow and Hudson Farmers Markets.

5. Meeting Lisa Abraham and having an article published about me and the blog in the Akron Beacon Journal (the original article has been archived, but this link is the exact same story).

4. Being asked to be a judge at both the Autism Chili Cook-off and the March of Dimes Signature Chef's Auction.

3. Being able to cook and share a number of great meals for my grandmother.

2. Adding critical reviews of another 150+ restaurants to my considerable base.

And, of course, no Top 10 list would be complete without an awesome number one:

1. Being banned from my very first restaurant. Ironically enough, the article I posted about getting banned received FAR AND AWAY more attention than the original review I wrote on the restaurant itself. Even with Wendy Williams's help.

I really could not have predicted that this was where I would be two years ago. I am hoping for even bigger things to happen in my third year of blogging about anything related to food. I’d love to be able to parlay all of these connections and the experience of writing, editing, and publishing a blog into something full-time in the food and/or writing industry, not something I do just as a hobby that I love.

Of course, I want to finish this second retrospective by thanking all of my faithful (and even the drive-by) readers. It's an odd feeling to know that you aren't just writing in a void and that people not only enjoy what I write but also interact with me and each other through comments and emails. I particularly like that about the blogging community and I hope that aspect continues on for a long time.

And now, back to our regularly scheduled programming ...

Freebies And Giveaways And Contests, Oh My!

Welcome to the first (of hopefully many) giveaway here on Exploring Food My Way!

I have in my possession three $25 gift cards to the recently opened AMP 150 up near the Cleveland Hopkins International airport. I originally thought about having three separate giveaways and asking readers to answer trivia questions in order to qualify. Then I quickly came to my senses and realized that if I wanted maximum participation that I should make it as easy as possible for you to channel your inner Arnold Horshack and shout "Ooh-ooh-ooooh!" Sadly, no extra credit points are being offered if you can identify the TV show I just referenced, but you will get a commiserating look from me because you, too, are now officially "old."

To that end, if you would like to participate in the giveaway, simply leave a comment on this blog post saying that you'd like one of the gift cards. You must identify yourself in either the name you give or if you select "Anonymous", you'll need to identify yourself in the actual comment portion. If you don't, I have no way of identifying who you are if you win. The contest will be open from Sunday, April 25th 12:00 AM through Sunday, May 9th 12:00 AM (EST). At that time, I will use a random number generator and pick three comments and announce the winners in a separate blog post. The winners will then have one week to contact me via email in order to supply me with a postal address so I can send out the gift cards. Feel free to leave multiple comments if you want to increase your odds of being selected, but as I want AMP 150 to get as much exposure as possible, I am going to limit one card per winner.

And speaking of exposure to AMP 150, I wanted to invite you to come back on Monday morning and read my review of an amazing six course mushroom dinner featuring the wonderful products being grown at Killbuck Valley and being prepared and served by Chef Ellis Cooley. It was an incredible meal and as a by-product of that dinner, I have these fantastic gift cards to give away.

Good luck!

Hello And Welcome Back

Welcome back, gentle reader.

It seems like forever and a day since I have posted anything to the blog. And, in fact, I didn't realize how much time and effort I had been spending posting to the blog until I went cold turkey for two weeks. Looking back now, it should be fairly obvious that experiencing, writing, and editing posts about food five to six times a week would've been a time-consuming task. And frankly, during that time period, it was okay because I have been out of work since mid-December and looking for a new job. Frankly, having my time pre-occupied with such a wonderful job as writing on this blog has been a life saver. I can understand how easy it is to fall into a funk when you fail time and again to find steady employment. Writing and pursuing this blog kept me thinking and focused on other topics. Sure, I occasionally felt depressed and despondent about not being able to do work which is something that I had never ever experienced in my life before, but writing and posting so consistently gave me little time to dwell over the bad things.

Fortunately, the last two weeks have given me the opportunity to pursue and accept a new job that will start on Monday, April 19th. After months of absolutely zilch, I was presented over the break with three opportunities from which I had to choose one. Had any one of them come along on their own, they would've been welcomed and appreciated. How odd that when things finally started to gain momentum that I was presented with three great jobs and had to agonize over which one to take. I suppose that is a great problem to have though and I certainly don't want to complain too loudly.

Just as a balanced work/life relationship is important to have with your job, I feel the same is also true with the blog. Don't expect the crazy posting schedule I attempted in February and March. My plan is to return to the Monday - Wednesday - Friday posting routine with an ever-so-occasional "Extra Helpings" thrown in just for good measure. Now that Lent, the Christian season of Friday fish fries and pierogi dinners, is behind me, there won't be the need to post so often.

A few other blog-related items to mention. First, I wanted to remind you, gentle reader, that I will be a guest judge for the sixth annual Cleveland chili cook-off benefit for autism that will be held next Wednesday, April 21st from 6 - 9 PM at the Terrace Club at Jacob's Field. The suggested donation is $20. There are going to be many fine chefs and home cooks representing the best chili that Cleveland has to offer and even better, the cause is outstanding. Read a more thorough discussion on my friend Nancy's blog (Nancy will also be one of the guest judges, too).

The following Wednesday, April 28th from 6 - 8 PM, another event is being held at Musketeers Bar in Richfield, Ohio to benefit the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. For a $20 donation, you get all you can eat bar foods such as salad, pizza, and chicken wings as well as beer and well drinks. While I am not a judge for that event, I definitely plan on attending the event and showing my support. More information about both events can be found on the right hand side of the blog on the Exploring Food My Way community calendar.

Speaking of Exploring Food My Way, I have set up an official Facebook fan page for the blog so that you will be notified whenever I post a new blog entry (assuming that you have a Facebook account). Click on the link to be taken directly to the page where you can "fan" the blog. The link has been placed in the "Five Ways To Follow My Blog" section on the right hand side of the screen along with my personal Twitter account. I often tweet on topics other than my blog, but I always post links on both Facebook and Twitter.

Finally, I have an upcoming article about a mushroom dinner I recently had at AMP 150 and tying into that blog post I have graciously received three $25 gift certificates that I intend to give away to some very lucky readers. I will post the details of the giveaway soon and you'll be able to access the blog entry during the course of the giveaway through a link at the very top right side of the blog. Chef Ellis Cooley is really doing some fantastic dishes with local farmers markets and purveyors and I am only too happy to help share the love (and the gift certificates) with those of you out there who are looking for a great place to eat.

Once again, welcome back and I look forward to continuing to take you to some fantastic new places all over the northeast Ohio area. While today's double-posting will be more the rarity than the norm, don't forget to come back in order to read the article that will post later this morning on a return trip to Louie's Bar and Grille where I apply some new perspective to one of Akron's best burgers.

Sometimes You Just Need A Vacation

In case you didn't figure out the bit of fun I was having at your expense in yesterday's post, check the date at the top of the post and read it again. You might even want to click on the Yahoo link I provided. I was going to try and subtly get part of the corporate logo on the sandwich wrapper in one of my photos, but ironically, the burger in question no longer comes in a wrapper. Royale with cheese, anyone?

As you can probably tell by looking at the archives for February and March on the right hand side of your screen, I have been a blogging fool as of late ... twenty articles during February and twenty-four during March. I can attribute this copious amount of work to two things: being snowed in during the month of February and my unhealthy love of fried fish and pierogi during the month of March. Now that I can see a color on the ground other than white and The Lenten Project has officially concluded, it was only within this past week that I am suddenly feeling like I need a bit of a break on the blog. Nothing long. And certainly nothing permanent. I have far too many future restaurants from which to be banned before I am willing to hang up acerbic wit and global palate.

I will continue to monitor comments and respond to emails, just like always. I might even occasionally glance at my blog statistics every now and again, just for curiosity's sake. But I definitely think a two-week downtime will do me some good. I suppose that whatever you endeavor to do in life, everyone needs to recharge their batteries periodically. I notice that on other blogs I follow, sometimes they, too, have long gaps between posts. Since I have been posting SO frequently these last two months, I didn't want any of my regular readers to get alarmed and start flooding me with concerned emails.

When I return, I definitely have some exciting events to tell you about. First and foremost will be me not only attending the 6th annual Autism Chili Cook-off in Cleveland on April 21st (see calendar item), but attending as a judge! I would encourage you to come and check it out as there will be some really fine chili and of course, the event is for a great cause. In addition, I have come across several gift cards for a local Cleveland restaurant that I will be giving away to lucky readers. And finally, there will be a return to the down-to-earth blog posts you've gotten used to seeing on everything from donuts to dim sum.

Thanks for reading and I look forward to seeing you when I get back.

A Change ... For The Better?

During a recent conversation with Facebook friend and owner of Local Food Service, Joe Harvey, he lamented the fact that many of the food blogs he had come across weren't adding enough value to the discussion of the local restaurant scene. In his opinion, it wasn't enough to have a meal at a restaurant and then write up an article to be posted at a later date on the blog. He felt that for a truly fair and effective review, the restaurant in question should also be given the opportunity to respond and their comments published along with the original review. This would give the restaurant and/or chef the chance to correct any factual mistakes in the review as well as provide feedback on the food blogger's dining experience.

After having recently been banned from a local Cleveland restaurant for a review that appeared on my blog in late 2009, I began to revisit Joe's ideas again and have decided to create an experiment. What you won't see is a change in my posting frequency or types of food reviews that I do here on Exploring Food My Way. What you will see, gentle reader, is an attempt to solicit comments whenever practical from the restaurants that I review. What does "whenever practical" mean? It means that if I can get in touch with the restaurant or chef via email, website, Facebook, or Twitter, I will do so. I have set up a staging blog, completely separate from this one, where I will publish finished reviews so that the restaurant in question can read my review in its entirety. At that point they have the option of submitting feedback or not. I will then include some or all of this feedback at the end of my review. My intention is to give the restaurant at least a one week notice to prepare their response.

What if a restaurant prefers not to respond? A restaurant may not decide to respond for a number of reasons and I don't think it is a negative reflection on them if they don't wish to participate. In Joe's estimation, he feels that maybe only 25% will actually respond. I would hope that I will get a higher percentage than that, but that is where the experiment will eventually bear fruit. Depending on how successful this is, I may decide to continue doing it or simply give up the effort after about a four to six week period. Managing the staging blog does add extra work for me, but if the end result is a more robust review that benefits not only the diner but also the restaurant, then I am certainly willing to put in the time.

Sadly, the restaurant from which I have been banned did not and does not have a website of their own, so in that case, it wouldn't have helped the situation since I wouldn't have been able to contact them electronically.

This new, revised review process is set to start with the publication of tomorrow's entry about a recent lunch experience I had at Vaccaro's Trattoria. What do all of you think about this idea? I'd love to hear your comments about whether adding this type of response to my restaurant reviews will add more value to your experience here on the blog.

Link To An Excellent Cause

I came across a tweet this afternoon from another blogger I follow who had linked to the following blog:

Fed Up: School Lunch Project

It's a blog that just started at the beginning of January 2010 and chronicles the efforts of a public school teacher to demonstrate just how lacking our school lunch programs can be. In the same vein as Morgan Spurlock in Super Size Me, "Mrs. Q" has decided to put her money where her mouth is and committed to eating the exact same school lunch that her students are offered for an entire year. While still in its infancy, I think and hope that this blog will help to expose the issue of nutrition (or lack thereof) in many of our school food programs.

Normally when I find a link that I like, I simply add it to the "Things I Like To Read" section on the right hand side of my blog. However, after reading what Mrs. Q has had to say so far in just this month alone, I felt like I would like to do just a bit more and decided to post an entry urging my readers to check out her blog. Plus, as an aside, you'll get a walk down memory lane when you read about the many classics that apparently have not faded with time. Salisbury steak anyone? Isn't it great to know that the "pizza" being served to our youth today is just as terrible as it was when you were back in the 8th grade?

The Right To Write

Credibility happens to be a ten letter word. It is also the life-blood for any kind of writer. Traditionally, getting a magazine article or book published gave you credibility. Whether you are buying the New York Times or Cosmo, you know that the editors and publishers of these nationally available printed materials have spent many years in their respective careers reviewing the good, the bad, and the ugly. They have invested the time and effort to build up the necessary skill and experience to know a good writer from bad.

Enter the world of the weblog, or blog for short. For the first time ever, a writer can not only write what he or she wants, but can publish their work as well to a global audience. Suddenly, what was once a stogid, well-entrenched system for disseminating ideas has become a grassroots movement for freedom of expression. As always, this is a double-edged sword. To publish a work that you also wrote requires that you be author, editor, and publisher. Fail at any one of these and you lose credibility. I can't count the number of times I have come across an interesting article on the web, only to find that the prose is so riddled with spelling mistakes, missing punctuation, and poor grammar that it becomes too painful to read.

The mechanics of successful writing aside, the entire point of a blog is to express a unique point of view. As you have no doubt already noticed, gentle reader, my point of view happens to be about food. Whether I'm eating it, making it, or talking about it, that will be what I am writing in my blog. But, as one longtime friend put it, what gives me the right to write about it? Why is my opinion more valuable, say, than Aunt Sally or your neighbor, Joe? Why should anyone believe what I have to say about anything?

The simple answer is that my opinion isn't more important than others. I put my pants on one leg at a time in the morning, just like everyone else. I don't own special magical cutlery that I use at mealtime to allow the vast array of flavors to be available to my taste buds alone. I don't have piles of cash available to me to travel the world eating at only the best restaurants and drinking only the most expensive wines. But then again, I don't think writing about my 50th experience at Alinea in Chicago or Per Se in New York would excite either me or you.

The biggest difference between myself and Aunt Sally is that I made the decision to have an outlet for my voice. If your Aunt Sally is like mine, she definitely has some strongly held beliefs. But if her ideas aren't out there in cyberspace to be read by others, does it matter? To be a tad bit cliche, if you write it (and hopefully write it well), they will (eventually) come. I didn't really believe this myself until I started monitoring my own blog's statistics. I naively assumed that if two people left a comment on a blog post, that only two people had actually read it. The truth of the matter is that for every comment you get, perhaps fifty or one hundred people have actually read the posting.

Okay, fine, so I have a voice and now I can express it because I took the time to register with Blogger, put some words in a box, and then hit 'Publish'. Big deal. What gives what I write credibility? Two concepts immediately jump into my head. Consistency is the first concept. Connecting with readers is the other. If I didn't apply the same consistent set of rules and expectations to every food experience I have, I couldn't be fair and as objective as possible. That I expect my $6 hamburger to be seasoned and cooked properly is no different to me than the $35 filet mignon I order at a fancy shmancy restaurant (that would be the technical foodie term, by the way). As I have come to learn over the years, really good food does not have a price point. I've had great $6 hamburgers and lousy $35 steaks.

I'll be the first one to acknowledge that being consistent is a great personal barometer to ensure that my writing stays on the straight and narrow. Without connecting to readers, however, I might as well take this little dog and pony show offline and just start keeping a diary. Once I realized I HAD readers, and returning readers to boot, I have to honest, it did change the way I thought about writing. It wasn't that I started to believe that I needed to pander needlessly to the whims of the everyday blog reader. Instead, I decided to start asking myself one simple question, "If I was reading about a restaurant for the first time, would this bit of knowledge be something I would want to know ahead of time?"

In my particular case, I also enjoy the freedom to express my opinions using mixed media. In addition to the words that I write, I post photos (almost all of which are taken by me), videos, and links to help tell my story. As the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. I can write paragraph after paragraph about how sloppy the plate looks, but if I show just one photo demonstrating my point, I can instantly convey my thought to the reader. I've often thought how challenging it would be to write nothing but prose when trying to describe an entire food experience. On the plus side, I suppose my entries would be a heck of a lot shorter.

For me, credibility is about earning your trust. Trust isn't just about blind faith. I would never ask for blind faith; I don't have that myself for anyone else. Earning your trust means that you believe I am employing critical thinking skills when I give an opinion and that I've done my due diligence to collect as many facts as I can before rendering my opinion. One of the most thrilling aspects of writing on a publicly accessible blog is that putting myself out there for review demands that I now have accountability. If I make an error, I can expect to be challenged. I have been called on it in the past and will no doubt be called on it again.

At the end of the day, what you are left with is something more valuable than just my contribution. While clearly my job is to start the conversation, interacting with readers through comments and emails is where real value is established. While it's always nice to hear that others have had similar experiences to mine, I also firmly feel that people who challenge my assertions are valuable to the discussion as well. Even I don't take myself so seriously that I ask you to believe that the words that appear on my blog have been uttered by a booming voice that came from a cloud at the top of a mountain.

From talking with friends, family members, and readers out there on the Internet, I get the impression that a lot of people feel that they could never write a blog. They look at me and see how large the blog has gotten to be in just over a year. Frankly, sometimes I can't believe how successful the blog has become in just one year. But, if like me, you are passionate about the subject matter, you'll find your voice and the desire to share it. A blog just ends up being a convenient outlet.

So, at the end of the day, what gives me the right to write? As it turns out, all of us have the right to write. It's just a fact of life that only some of us choose to do so. I'd love to hear what you think about the importance of credibility in bloggers, me specifically or bloggers in general.