September 30, 2009 - Peanut butter chocolate kiss cookies

1/13

f5.6

ISO 400

55mm

RAW

Welcome to one of my all-time favorite cookies. These peanut butter chocolate kiss cookies are so easy to make but so hard to stop eating, especially when you have a cold glass of milk with them!

I took this photo as the cookies were cooling. We had just pulled them out of the oven and placed the chocolate kisses on each one. The heat from the cookies was melting the kisses in place. That's why there is a sheen on the kisses — they're liquifying.

I shot this in RAW and without a flash, using the light from the stovetop. I used my image-stabilized 18-55mm lens, which allowed me to take the handheld shot at an incredibly slow 1/13 of a second (it probably helped that I braced my elbows on the countertop as I held the camera).

The reason why the shutter speed is so slow is because I was pushing the aperture to as small as possible to get a deeper depth of field. When focusing this close to your subject (the cookies were only about 12 inches away), your depth of field is really shallow and you need a smaller aperture to get more in focus. In particular, I wanted this shot to have a whole cookie in focus, and f5.6 allowed me to do this.

Thanks to the RAW format, I had good control of converting the color to true white using Photoshop Elements and Adobe Camera Raw (it comes bundled with PSE). I have tried setting my camera's white balance to incandescent so it will match the light bulb under the stove's hood. But for some reason this light gets all wacky anyway, so I have to correct it using PSE.

Even though I shot this in landscape format, I liked the resulting crop better as a vertical. I think it brings more attention to the in-focus cookies in the lower third of the shot (rule of thirds!). I also add more feeling of depth to the shot by having one row out of focus in front and three rows behind.

I really like this shot a lot. If I had to nitpick anything, there would only be a couple. First, I think the kiss in the very front has an odd, slightly distracting shape. And second, I wish the two kisses in focus had more of a reflective shine like the ones in the back.

I am not sure why, but I really like taking food shots. I often find myself studying the food shots in elaborate restaurant menus, trying to figure out what makes each photo so nice, so effective. Then I try to keep those things I notice in mind for the next time I shoot.

I think I am getting better. What do you think?