Cooking with Raymond (Italian) - Flamed Pepper/Mozzarella/tomato salad + Pancetta/Liver/Mushroom Tag

Makunouchi said:
Except he's not really moaning, he's making some pretty good points. Although I apologised earlier your handling of this and the tone of your posts almost makes me wish I hadn't bothered.
There's no reason why we can't discuss your pictures instead of the food, this isn't a cooking forum, any topic is open for discussion as long as there are no personal insults.
Also, if you hadn't of phrased your responses the way you did then we probably would not still be talking about it.
Having not clicked any of the links in your sig before I have to say that I am actually pretty surprised you get away with it, although there's no direct 'business' link, there is a link to what you do as your job, and then several ways to contact you.
Like I said, if you had just gone "lol never mind" to the initial comments I probably wouldn't be posting this now, grow a thicker skin and learn to accept that not everyone is going to like your stylistic choices.
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My first response was

Raymond Lin said:
Do you want to see the state of my hobs or something??? :confused:
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As I was really confused why you would want to see more depth.

Which followed by the "lol never mind" in which I tried to redirect the thread back on topic, but clearly people disagree.

Raymond Lin said:
Well, thanks i suppose.

Anyway, BACK to the food, please? Lol
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and we might as well get a few facts straight while I am at it.

I started the thread with the intention of FOOD. You disagree. Nothing I can do there, we can argue until the cow come home on that.

There are many ways to contact me. Unless that is illegal on the forum, well, there is not much you or I are going to do about it. So I don't really see what your point is there. Practically every member has it in their sig or profile page one way or another, it has been there since 2001. It just happens that I take pictures, and posted a thread with pictures that you think I am using threads like this to pimp myself. Well, like I said before, I shoot weddings, if I were to pimp myself, I would post a photo from my weddings once a day, everyday. I have over 5,000 processed shots in my Lightroom library that I can post. It will be perfectly legit to post it. I don't, I took pictures of a pepper on a gas hob instead.

My "response' comes from you guys' comments. What's good for the goose is good for the gander.
 
Well, speaking as somebody that doesn't really care about how the food is photographed (but in all fairness, it does look great), I think the food looks delicious. I love the idea of it, as well.
 
Robbie G said:
Sure, sure. Except it's not for you to decide what course the discussion takes, unfortunately.

I can understand that you 'just took the photos' on whatever settings your camera was on, and nobody is asking you to take terrible photos. I just find it interesting that overly blurry photos are considered 'good'.



I don't think your photos are that good tbh.
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I don't mind you say the photos are bad or that you don't like shallow depth of field. But if you really want to understand, and want to talk about photography then I will explain it to you.

My kitchen has 3 lights, none of which are directly over the worktop OR cooker. To get the maximum amount of light, I need to open the lens up. Sure you can say I can up the ISO on my camera, it is a 5Dii right? Well, to me, that is the last thing i want to do because that is the last thing anyone does in a low light situation. It is not a style, it is what every photographer does. You would change aperture and shutter speed before you change ISO. That is a rule of thumb.

Given that fact, and the fact that my kitchen is dark, the way to lit the photo is to use wide aperture. Now thankfully I do own some fast glass that can let in a lot of light. So I use it. Even though I use a flash, it is bounced. I bounce it (off the ceiling and wall) because it gives a more diffused result than firing it directly. What happen when you do that is you get what is call a "dear in headlight" result. I light background by open up the lens, that gives the atmosphere.

I do all the above almost second nature, there is no intention of "blur". If there are any intention, my intention is make sure what I want in focus, IS IN focus. Whether it is a face, a ring, a flower, a pepper on a hob, parsley in a pan. I pick out a subject, focus on that, and that is that. The background is blur, it doesn't matter to me because that is NOT the point of the photograph.

That is the intention.

I don't mind you talking about photography, but to suggest I use it as a backdoor way to promote my business? Pepper on a hob? If I want to promote my business, you think I won't use a better and more relevant topic and subject ?
 
Thanks for the tips and the recipe, I'm cooking more from scratch myself as of late and have been doing so since new year.

I'm doing well, can follow a recipe but lack the inspiration and sometimes ideas of what to actually cook, so appreciate you giving ideas.
 
Why are you getting so up-set?

There's not much to comment on other than your photography because of what was made. It's just some pasta, that's not to say you executed the dish well, it's just pasta. :p

Unless you posted just for positive comments, which is fine, I'm not condemning. :)

As a tip though, use big tomatoes instead of those tiny little danish waterbombs.

Did you cook the liver whole or chop up and fry?

I like to cover the liver in flour and fry in butter because I'm unhealthy like that.
 
LeJosh said:
Why are you getting so up-set?

There's not much to comment on other than your photography because of what was made. It's just some pasta, that's not to say you executed the dish well, it's just pasta. :p

Unless you posted just for positive comments, which is fine, I'm not condemning. :)

As a tip though, use big tomatoes instead of those tiny little danish waterbombs.

Did you cook the liver whole or chop up and fry?

I like to cover the liver in flour and fry in butter because I'm unhealthy like that.
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I wouldn't say upset, but offended. You can say the photo is too saturated (someone has), and I am okay with that, in fact he's right, a couple are a touch too saturated. You can say the DOF is too shallow, and I accept that too. I do get offended when I get accused of something that wasn't my intention, as you would if I accuse you of something you didn't do. Then I will defend it the best I can. It is simply as that really.

Back to the food.

I thought about the bigger tomatoes you know when I was doing the shopping, I did!!! I do like cherry tomatoes though and I eat it like a snack sometimes so I bought a small box.

The liver was chopped up then fried, it was actually quite hard to chop up as it is REALLY slimy and quite tough. Tougher than chicken breasts. And although i did enjoy eating it, but I think next time I would replace the liver with something else, may be some kidney? or some kind of salami or sorts. But liver is cheap, that 250g was just 39p.

Flour over the liver is an interesting idea but you are right about it being unhealthy lol there is already double cream and pancetta and the salad has mozzarella.
 
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I suppose if it's just for yourself the cherry tomatoes are fine but big tomatoes are much better value and taste better I've found.

Try cooking it whole next time with flour then chopping, leave the middle a little less grey than the outside, it will cook entirely when introduced with the pasta any way. Why the flour? Makes the outside really dry and cook better. It will taste better when fried in butter but if you're concerned about weight and don't exercise often, should give it a miss. :)

Edit - And yes I hate being accused of something I had no involvement or intent regarding something. :p
 
ColdAsIce said:
I like cooking threads with photos and I can understand you choosing to take the photos in the style you have. Only annoying thing is adding the watermarks really.
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The watermarks are likely automatically added by lightroom, since he likely has pre-sets he uses. It wasn't him advertising his business, since well he's a wedding photographer.
 
Excellent photos mate. I came in this thread specifically to check out the photos as the author was Raymond.

People are just jealous they cant get the same effect with their crap P&S cams.
 
Raymond Lin said:
but I think next time I would replace the liver with something else, may be some kidney?
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Ergh, that's even worse :p.

I think I might give it a try, but with some nice chicken breast.

Usually my pasta dishes consist of pasta + jar of sauce. Or I sometimes go all iron chef and bung a bit of cheese on top, with a sprinkle of oregano :D.
 
Another great cooking thread - OP is not someone that needs photographic advice or constructive criticism, but for the record it's great to see some real photos that capture the essence of the foods and gastronomic processes!

Nice simple, but delicious looking meal; I'm quite opposed to liver, I cannot get on with it. I think the pancetta and mushrooms alone would suffice :)
 
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