a blog by Peter Leonard
Looking through some old CD's, I found the archives of last year's trip to Las Vegas for the National Assocation of Broadcasters digital video show. My friend and I decided to split dinner across a few restaurants in the Mandalay Bay, and that's where our troubles began.
Committed to memorializing the various innovative dishes for posterity (or at least tax purposes,) we had on hand a variety of photo gear from Canon, ranging from pocket-sized Elph S100's and S400's to the quite large D60 Digital SLR. All of these cameras have different advantages and disadvantages in a restaurant situtation: the D60 was clearly the best camera, but its size and length of its lenses meant it was likely to end up snout-first in a terrine of turtle soup -- too much of a macro shot for our tastes. The smaller Elphs, by comparison, were conveinently hidable in a shirt pocket should a waiter get suspicious, but offered poor low-light performance. In the kind of restaurant where dim surroundings facilitate all kinds of social transactions, we knew we would need the wider iris of the DSLR.
Having given those caveats, I still think it's impressive the degree to which every single shot below demonstrates fatal errors in either composition, focusing or exposure. Truly, I've never seen food so expensive look so bad. This was almost a year before I got truly comfortable photographing victuals, and it shows.
On the stage of world-class restaurants, every appetizer is the protagonist of its own drama. If that food had a bad agent, and got lousy head-shots, this would be the result.
Our first stop was Chalie Palmer's Aureole, a branch of the New York City original known for its towering wine rack.
Warm Roasted Portobellos with Organic Greens
caramelized onions and fromage blanc
Our tour begins, appropriately enough, with fungus. The Portobello is hiding there somewhere, but apparently the D60's auto-focus system was on Atkins and focused in on the zero-carb salad.
You know something's gone wrong with the picture when the cheese has the texture of spackle. Trust me, it tasted better than it looks.
Big Eye Tuna Tartar with Pickled Vegetables
upland cress and french extra virgin olive oil
There's a trick to photographing raw fish to have it not look like raw flesh. A trick I haven't learned. Let's move on to the Kosher Special...
Roasted Prosciutto-Wrapped Pork Tenderloin
cranberry beans, ramps and sautéed polenta
This may look like Boa Constrictor sliced to a 1" depth, but it was really quite good.
Am I crazy, or is the top right piece of pork smiling at me?
Moving on to China Grill, a place we've eaten at the past few years, usually to satisfy the desire to have dinner in a room shaped like a giant Fez. We have a habit of ordering the same two dishes, which are preserved below in a nightmarish simulacrum of their actual aesthetic presentation.
Kobe Beef Carpaccio
thai chili-infused hot oil
I've read that Kobe cows are fed mostly beer during their short life-spans. Perhaps the accumulated bar tab accounts for the rather costly nature of this dish at China Grill. In any event, that fact makes it even more criminal that I chose to focus on the deep-fried wontons in the center of the plate, instead of the valuable carpaccio surrounding it. I think the final tally worked out to around $5/slice. The forearm in the shot, courtesy of my dining companion, was free.
Wasabi Mashed Potatoes
sautéed lawn trimmings
Alright, I made that subtitle up, but I definately remember there being some kind of edible ground cover decorating the top. This dish tastes about like it sounds, with a healthy dose of horseradish flavor balancing out the strong flavor of, er, potatoes. This shot at least looks artistic, although whether what's being shown is fusion cuisine or an arctic bird's nest is left as an excercise for the reader.
This year, our plans for restaurants aren't quite firm yet. They may be impacted by my new grad-school budget, leading us to explore the effect of focal length on McDonald's french fries. Rest assured, whatever photographs we do take will be informed by the miserable results shown above. As a chef, you can eat your mistakes, but as a photographer, you can only resize them.