A Narrative Picture Essay - Arroz Con Pollo

I decided to keep things relatively simple and more under my control so that the learning experience was greater. Anything lying outside your own control such as the Lord Mayor's Show or local equivalent means that you are at risk of poor weather, unruly (always getting in front of the camera) crowds and officials that view all photographers as potential terrorists.

We all eat and many of us cook our own food and I felt that there was a picture essay in this everyday task.

The first thing we have to do is decide what we want to eat, whether to go for the tried and trusted or venture into something new. For the latter we probably need some guidance from a cookbook. A browse through its pages may well find us looking at a recipe that looks promising.

Here we have come across the recipe for Arroz Con Pollo. (Note - I have deliberately blurred the pages to avoid any copyright issues) - primarily a chicken, sausage and rice dish.

Usually we have to shop for the ingredients so off to the local supermarket to return laden with all that we need.

Having unpacked the bag(s) we can then proceed to prepare the ingredients ready for the pan:

There is usually the need to weigh some of the ingredients and also cut some of them.

Happily some of them come in handy sized units so that eventually we have our ingredients ready:

The next step is to place them in the pan as required by the instructions in the recipe:

Tomatoes

Rice

Pimento

Everything else except

Peas

for the observant you will have noticed that these went in approx 1 hours later

Having got all the ingredients in the pan it is time to give them a good stir to ensure that everything is mixed together well:

Having ensured that all is cooked the only thing left to do is to serve:

General comments - This was a very interesting exercise and something that I had never done. I had cooked this meal before so knew the process and the order in which things happened. This knowledge helped enormously when I came to prepare the photo shoot script. Also in setting up the camera and lights so that they were not in the way yet offered the best chance of a good image.

Lighting was a problem particularly as the day drew on and the amount of natural light fell. I decided, after experimenting, to use flash without a diffuser. I found that it offered the best image particularly on bright surfaces and I also liked the deep shadows that gave a sense of form and depth to the various utensils and other elements in the image.

We are asked to print the pictures and to lay them out to enhance the story being told. I have to admit that I have not done this but did use the power of Photoshop to create a virtual layout. I tried a whole series of different placements of the photographs but found in the end that the most successful was the linear one that is followed in this blog. The other alternative was a setting similar to an algorithm with elements to the side dealing with preparation and cooking. However it only seemed to work if lines were included so that the process could be easily followed.