Kitchenalia...
Tilting and shifting at whisks
I must be tired using a word such as "kitchenalia" (it isn't in my "New Shorter Oxford English" either)... but I haven't been able to stimulate the grey matter to think of a better title for the above image in the half an hour or so between finding and scanning the image to uploading it now on Radio-Wonderland or whatever we use in this blogging community.
I do a fair bit of photography of bits and bobs in my kitchen... I spend enough time in there being chief cook and bottle washer in this household so I might as well click off a few frames whilst waiting for the soup to simmer or the vegetables à vapeur... or steam.
Usually I prefer to use my Leica M3 with DR Summicron for kitchen photography... the "specs" on the Summicron enabling close-up focusing to range between approximately 0,45 and 0,9 of a meter. I don't use that range though... I simply turn the lens to minimum focus of 0,45 meter and gently rock backwards and forwards to watch the subject come into focus on the rangefinder patch in the Leica's bright viewfinder. It sounds more complicated than it is... but I find that for general "near" shots of food on a plate or in a pan the field of view is just about right. Without getting technical the field of view of the 50mm DR Summicron is about the width of a computer keyboard... so it's easy to visualise before the camera is at eye-level.
However for more abstract images I need to get in closer... which is hopeless with any Leica M... so I use my hand-held Nikon "view camera." Many years ago Nikon made the PB-4 Bellows Focusing Attachment which had the facility to move the lens plane independently to the camera film plane in both "swing" and "shift" alignments.
Photographers normally use "swing" to bend the optical path and gain depth-of-focus and sharpness but it's also possible to use the reverse effect to not only narrow the field of sharpness... but to seriously degrade the sharpness at the periphery of the image. No doubt this can be done in Photoshop to a digital file but I like to see the effect in the viewfinder before I make and take it. The main image of utensils in a jug on my kitchen work top was made in the more conventional way with lens "swing" used to sharpen up the three strong elements of the design I was trying to capture... an ancient egg whisk, equally old potato masher and garlic crusher. All were reflecting light in different ways and revealing their different shapes in the harsh contrast between the patina of their metal surfaces and the gloom of the shadow inside the wide-necked jug that held them together as a group. The advantage of hand-holding such an odd looking apparatus is that you can very quickly shoot off a variety of angles and compositions... something not really feasible when using a tripod and watching the soup on the stove at the same time!
BTW: I still haven't thought of an alternative word to "kitchenalia"... it reminds me of the new breed of antiques dealers from the 70s and 80s whose patter rolling off their tongues rivalled that of used car salesmen. One horror I remember overhearing was "Vicky Cod"... a corruption of the much nicer sounding "Victorian Chest-of-Drawers." Such dealers probably use the same phrase today in text-messaging... they would also probably shorten kitchenalia to kitsch!
9:06:03 PM 
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