Costco Pizza

OK, I never said that this blog would be all about home made food. Last night we got lazy and decided to try one of those 16" Costco take and bake margherita pizzas. For $9.99, what did we have to lose?

It was pretty good, better to use as a base to build upon than as a standalone pizza. It needed more flavor to really work - even some salt or chopped garlic would have pumped up the flavor sufficiently. Anyway, we have leftovers for a week now.

For lighting, I wanted to try something simple, but a bit different. I bounced one flash off the wall to give some even background lighting and then snooted the other flash (I need to find something better than a piece of white paper for this purpose) and aimed it down at the table from about 8 ft up. The snooted flash was a couple of stops brighter than the bounced flash.

That worked pretty well in creating a spotlight on the pizza. I used a green fabric remnant as a table cloth to highlight the green basil leaves on the pizza.

Given that it's just a store bought pizza on a cutting board, it's not a bad image.

Lessons Learned

1. Fresh basil gets all crinkly and ugly when baked at 400 degrees.
2. Using a background that matches the color of an element in the food can really provide a nice color boost to the image.
3. I like the effect of the snoot on the lighting, but I have a long way to go to learn how best to use it