Photo Finish

Loyal readers are well-aware that I enjoy peppering my gluten-free scribblings with photographs, both for instructional and aesthetic purposes. Tragically, in some unfortunate cases my pics have turned out so badly that postings about their subjects had to be abandoned in order to preserve my reputation as a cheerful perfectionist. The image of Risotto alla Scozzese, for example, taken to commemorate the inauguration of my freshest batch of lobster stock, looked like a heaping bowl of pink oatmeal. A plate of Spaghetti Carbonara, immortalized as a tribute to De Boles corn spaghetti, was - how shall I put this delicately? - let's just say 'indescribable' and leave it at that. The portrait of my Yorkshire puddings (six less-than-impressive fawn-colored dough lumps) failed to convey the success of an otherwise triumphant g/f baking experiment. Cream-hued and brown-ish foods are definitely a challenge to the would-be food-porn artiste.

The latest victim of my amateur efforts was Monday's bowl of brown sushi rice, easily my poorest pictorial striving to date. No matter what I did, the result was uninspiring, unappetizing, and unworthy of these carefully designed pages. I include it below so readers may judge for themselves what I was up against.

Bowl of Brown Rice (a severe case of the blahs)

Never one to admit defeat, I was nonetheless a bit unsure of where to turn. Fortunately, help arrived in the nick of time. Just last week, Andrew Scrivani published in the New York Times an article called 'How to Shoot Ugly Food,' which I had printed out and tucked into Moleskine's back pages as insurance against just such an eventuality.

Too late to save my previous pics, I was determined to apply Scrivani's wisdom to the current problem. He talks about how difficult it can be to 'take a good picture of an uncooperative subject' - which a bowl of inanimate brown rice definitely is. His advice to the unfortunate food photographer is to make like a seventeenth-century Dutch painter and consider the comestibles as a sort of still life. Now it's been a while since Art History 101, but as the philosopher once said, 'it's just like riding a bike.'

The first thing I remembered about all those Olde Masters was their devotion to lighted interiors. Scrivani writes of the need for lighting to be 'exquisite', which I call wishful thinking as I am severely limited by my basic digital camera, the aperture of which is about the size of - oh - a pinhole, thus necessitating daylight shoots in all but the most unavoidable cases. Fortunately, at this time of year the sun's bounteous rays sometimes stream into the south-facing dining room in a pleasing way. I was able to make use of the beams' play on the table by working at an angle:

Bowl of Brown Rice (after Emmanuel de Witte)

Much improved! But I had barely begun to scratch the surface of Scrivani's insight.

He talks about how he often relies (as a distraction, I suppose) on table settings and 'beautiful props' for added interest. I recalled our good Japanese rice bowls, purchased at great expense from Takashimaya many years ago and, astonishingly, still all accounted for. I transferred a small amount of the rice to the prettiest of the bowls and carefully mounded the grains into a slightly off-center ziggurat, discovering in the process that cold rice sticks to itself better than warm rice. Chopsticks and tweezers proved helpful for creating the pyramid's 'natural' look.

Bowl of Brown Rice (after Willem Kalf)

But still Scrivani has not imparted his entire philosophy. Finally, he urges us to concentrate on elements of 'textural and geometric interest'.

I'm ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille! 

Bowl of Brown Rice (after Abraham Hendricksz van Bayeren)

Now that's a fine-looking bowl of rice.