Some food photography and a healthy quinoa salad

Since I started to learn photography I have become a little disconnected from things I used to do more often and enjoy, for instance cooking.

Today I have decided to go back to it and do a little ingredient/food photography on the side while I made the salad outlined below. It is a pretty good salad packed with protein and omega-3 fatty acids.

What you need

• 1 cup of red quinoa, cooked;
• ½ pound wild salmon, cooked;
• ½ cup cut peppers (chose the color);
• ¼ cup fresh cut mint;
• ¼ cup fresh cut italian parsley;
• 1 teaspoon jalapeno pepper, cut in very small pieces;
• 1/4 cup fetta cheese (not in the picture);
• 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil (not in the picture);
• salt and lemon to taste.

I photographed the ingredients and the salad under the kitchen's artificial light since it was already dark outside. I admit that this is not a work of art, particularly the way things are arranged, but the goal was to make a salad, not great art. I chose f/8 to have some depth of field but I focused on the red pepper to have the depth of field slowly softening towards the back of the picture. The metering was spot metering, simply because I had forgotten to change it to matrix after the last shooting section :-(

Nikon D3100

35 mm prime, ISO 400, f/8, 0.5s

How to do it


• Mix everything in a large bowl after quinoa and salmon have cooled down.
  
  
  
  
  
  

Nikon D3100

35 mm prime, ISO 400, f/8, 0.5s

In the photo above I had switched back to matrix metering...  

And by the way, the salad is delicious.