[attach]9483[/attach] Modernist Cuisine: Food as Art
Former Microsoft chief technology officer Nathan Myhrvold left the digital world behind to dedicate himself to food, spending years to put together the much anticipated Modernist Cuisine (out March 7). The six-volume, 2,400-page tome's mission is to decipher the science behind cooking, and it's getting rave reviews from chefs and critics alike. Topping the list of what people like about it are the lavish and striking photos, mostly done by principal photographer and photo editor Ryan Matthew Smith. Here: Smoke and light emerge from a cracked ostrich egg. "It's got the feeling of mystery meets science," Smith says.
[attach]9484[/attach] Grilling Becomes a Learning Experience
This shot was composed with 40 different photographs, many of them of individual charcoal briquettes that had to be separately heated with a blowtorch. The meat was also hand-ground for the picture. "It was definitely one of the more challenging photos because we couldn't get the patties quite right," Smith says. "We ended up overcooking them a lot, or they'd turn out raw."
[attach]9486[/attach] Slice of Beautiful Life
This shot of slices of grapefruit-like pomelo was among the most basic to shoot, but Smith counts it among the most successful photos. "We don't clutter backgrounds at all, and this is the best example of that. About as simple as you could be: It's just a slice of grapefruit."
[attach]9487[/attach] Split-Second Stir-Fry
This photo is Smith's way of condensing the usual step-by-step illlustrations in a cookbook into a single, elegant image. "The bao technique is to keep the wok tilted on one side while throwing food up to keep it cooled as it's in the air and scorched on the wok," he says. "It's really cool that we could keep the motion going and get the idea [of the technique] in one photo instead of a series."
[attach]9488[/attach] Liquid Photography
This visual illustration of the chemical formula for water took some 200 shots, with Smith hurling the inch-thick acrylic letters into a tank of water with one hand and pressing the button on the remote shutter release with the other. "When you throw the letters in, they kind of want to turn up, and you have to get it perfect," Smith says. "I was just chucking them in, over and over again."
[attach]9489[/attach] Shanghai Surprise
Of this photo, of crab meat suspended in crab-and-pork broth in capsules of gel, Smith says, "It's kind of spacey. You can't tell what it is. You almost wouldn't think it's food at first glance. Then it turns out to be this crazy delicious dish though it looks like something from outer space."
[attach]9490[/attach] Food as Sculpture
This dish, duck Apicius, started off as inspired by the artist Piet Mondrian, but ended up looking like a作者: evaxiaofan 时间: 2011-3-20 11:48
本帖最后由 evaxiaofan 于 2011-3-20 11:49 编辑
[attach]9491[/attach] No Use Crying Over Spilt Wine
This photo is actually a mistake, but a fortunate one that made into the book just on the basis of its beauty. "We wanted to illustrate how a wineglass breaks, but this one just didn't break on us. We didn't drop it from high enough."
[attach]9492[/attach] Troublesome Lobster
"We got in huge trouble for this shoot," Smith says. "It was just too much fun to shoot. We wanted to shoot the fire inside because of the beautiful lighting, and everything was shot on plastic. Well, the plastic lights on fire, and everything goes crazy. We had to pull out the fire extinguishers, but we got the shot, so. . . ."
[attach]9493[/attach] How Do You Take Your Coffee Photography?
To get this shot of cream spreading out in a mug of coffee, Smith had find a way around the cream's natural inclination to billow out in a circle. "The swirling cream was taken in a different photo. I took it in a five-by-five bucket of coffee so it could [appear to] bleed toward the edge of the cup."
[attach]9494[/attach] Belly of the Beast
Any idea what this is? It's a dried-out salmon skin shot with a 1:1 macroscopic lens. "It's another one of those ones where no one seems to know what it is, but then they do know, and they're like, 'Oh yeah. . . .'"
[attach]9496[/attach] Food Photographer's Best Friend: A Sniper Rifle
To accomplish this shot, Smith set up six eggs at an outdoor shooting range and used a sniper rifle and a top-of-the-line video camera. "One of the great things about working on the project is. . .if it looks awesome, we'll fine a way to put it in. Why are you going to shoot a bunch of eggs with a gun and put it in a book about cooking? It looks awesome. That's the reason to do it."
[attach]9495[/attach] Towering Meal
To achieve this shot, Smith cut the wok and the burner in half, then had the project's chef toss up noodles and various vegetables. The various photos, about five of them, were then composited together. "I just like the action," Smith says. "The composition is circular, you keep your eye on it."作者: kobe 时间: 2011-3-22 09:29
I'm hungry after I saw these pics作者: evaxiaofan 时间: 2011-3-22 21:38
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