James Peterson

Even though a food stylist’s role is to make the food look good for the camera, in a real life shoot setting, the food stylist, prop stylist and photographer are all interacting to make the photograph work. Because of this, it is helpful to notice as much as you can about the image and the set to bring the food into the best possible relief. Most of these things are the job of the photographer to control and some the prop stylists but it’s always helpful to have an overall idea of what’s going on.

The Horizon: Unless the set is on a sweep which can be an actual plastic table with a back that bends upward and out of the frame or a piece of fabric suspended from a rod, the picture will have an horizon line. The horizon divides the image in two and usually cuts across somewhere in the frame of the picture. Here are some things to think about regarding the horizon line:

a) Is the line straight? Most images have a traditional straight horizontal horizon line, but sometimes, especially in images for magazines, the camera is tilted so the horizon becomes diagonal. This gives images a more casual hand-held look and also allows more of a plate for example to be included in the image since it can go from corner to corner instead of from side to side.

b) Where in relation to the horizon is the food? Do you want the food to cut across the horizon line or to be above or below it? Do you want props to cut across the horizon line or break up the line? Do you want to use the horizon line to break up arcs or round props such as plates?

c) Where in the image is the horizon line? If the food is very vertical it might be necessary to keep the horizon low in the image so there’s room to show the food. If the camera is angled sharply over the food, the horizon line will be relatively high up in the image.

The Background: Depending on the positioning of the horizon line, the background can occupy a large proportion of the image. Often, fabric or foam core is used to make the background. What color do you want the background? Do you want the background evenly lit or bright in the middle and dark on the edges? Do you want to break up the light with streaks and shadows? A black background is sometimes used for a Dutch still-life effect while a lighter background is used for higher key images.

The Surface: What color is the surface? What material? What texture? What do you want to imply by what kind of surface the plate or bowl of food ends up on? Do you want something austere and elegant such as a white tablecloth? Wood? Do you want something reflective? Some shiny surfaces such as polished wood, will end up bright and take on the color of the sky or whatever soft light is being used for the shot.

Second Surfaces: After selecting a surface, you may end up putting the food on a second surface such as a placemat or napkin. A second surface can be placed on the plate to add a line or lines, or a corner to break up the roundness of a bowl or plate. For example if you have a red fabric surface, you may want to place a black placemat over it to frame a plate or bowl with black while still leaving some of the red visible around.

The Relation Between Background and Surface: It’s sometimes a useful exercise to make an image exciting and dynamic before even putting the food in it. Think of a late Rothko painting in which the juxtaposition of a background over a horizon line, and for us what would be a surface below the horizon line, creates all the excitement. Use the color chart in the back of this booklet to recognize complimentary colors that you might want to juxtapose.

The Front Edge: If you’re shooting on a table or other such surface, you may want to include the edge of the table in the shot, in essence creating a second horizon line. Sometimes the line provided by the front edge is a welcome contrast to a round plate or bowl; sometimes it’s too much. But be aware of it.

The Serving Vessel: What shape and color and size is the plate or bowl in which you’re going to put the food? If it’s too big it will take up the whole frame and eliminate the background or other elements in the photograph. If it’s small, you may want to include something in the image such as a spoon or fork that, by comparison, indicates the size of the food. What degree of formality do you want to connote? Do you want to convey a sense of place? Do you want to show the food on more than one vessel such as say a plate and a platter in the background?

Position of the Food in the Photograph: Once you’ve chosen a vessel to hold the food, you may want to make a “dummy” plate for you, the photographer, and the prop stylist to work with to position the food in the shot. At this point the photographer will be working on an angle from which to shoot the food. This angle will dictate the layout of props, second surfaces, and of course the placement of the food in relation to the horizon line and the front edge.

Shooting Angle: The position of the camera in relation to the set is going to have an enormous affect on the layout of the food and props. The angle can range from a straight overhead shot to one in which the camera is level with the set and the front edge and the horizon line are squeezed together in the frame. Interact with the photographer, if it’s appropriate, about what angle she or he will be shooting from. Form a square with your hands, or better yet use a pair of black cardboard framers, to look at the set from different angles.

Props: Once you have a general idea of the camera angle and the position of the food and second surfaces, you can start thinking about adding other props such as silverware, napkins, wine bottles, carafes, glasses etc. Make sure that any props you add make sense and would really appear on a table with the food you prepared. Think of the props in two ways: as telling a story and creating a sense of place and of a real occasion occurring such as a family meal, a picnic, an elegant meal in a restaurant, a snack. Second, look at the props in the frame purely graphically without assigning any meaning to them. Just notice the interplay of angles, curves, corners and lines in the shot. Notice the interplay of colors and be careful not to upstage the food.

Light: While the lighting setup is the photographer’s job, it’s going to have a profound effect on how your food looks. Try to avoid juxtaposing very dark objects such as cooked mushrooms and very light foods or props because the combination is very difficult to light. Try to make the dark mushrooms lighter and whatever’s light, darker. If the photographer is using window light or a large soft-box opposite the camera, wide flat surfaces such as sauces surrounding foods or soups will be covered with bright highlights which should be broken up with something. (These can also be attenuated with a polarizing filter.) If the photographer is using direct light, either sunlight or artificial light that’s raking across the food, then the surface texture of the food will be emphasized and even exaggerated. Try to avoid foods that are very dark green. Light is a complex subject and almost impossible to predict but its effects will be visible when you start looking at screen images. Here are a few distinctions to keep in mind:

a) Soft versus Hard: Soft light is light that comes from a light source that is large in relation to the set such as a window facing north or with no sun shining through it. The sun, being a small point, is a small light source and hence produces hard light. Photographers often soften it by placing a scrim—fabric such as cheesecloth or muslin—between the light source and the set. Very hard light sources make unpleasant looking little points of light on the food—called specular highlights—and are usually avoided by placing some sort of scrim in front of the light source. Some photographers combine both soft and hard light.

b) Light Color: Natural light comes in different colors. The sun is considered a warm light source, especially in the very early or late parts of the day when it becomes more amber. The sky, which is usually blue, is a cool light source. Many photographers try to emulate natural light or work with it so there’s a relatively hard light source that’s warm like the sun and a fill light that’s blue like the sky. This creates the blue shadows seen in so many still life photographs. Shadow color can be altered by placing different colored fill cards next to the set or by placing filters over the camera and over the light source.

c) Light Direction: Notice the direction of the light by looking at the shadows. If the light is very soft, such as a soft box placed directly over the set, you’ll barely see any shadows at all. If the light is pointing toward the camera it will create hard and bright reflections that can cause glare.

d) Contrast: The contrast of an image is the range from the brightest object to the darkest object. To some degree contrast is a function of the objects themselves; very dark and very light objects in the same image are going to make it a high contrast image. Contrast is also a function of the relationship between the key light, which is the main light shining on the object, and the fill light which is the ambient light. If you’re in a dark room and shine a bright light on an object, it’s going to cast very dark shadows and create an image that would be described as “contrasty”. Photographers sometimes like to see high contrast but it’s also necessary to control high key areas so they don’t “blow out” and fill in dark areas so they don’t just turn into dark masses with no information. Nowadays, if an image has more contrast than the camera can handle, the photographer can take two images—one more exposed than the other—and then combine them in Photoshop.

e) White Balance: Because different lighting conditions create different color casts, cameras must make up for the variations. It used to be that film came in daylight and “tungsten” and was balanced for shooting in the open daylight or with incandescent lights. Now the photographer has much more control because he or she can set the white balance for the exact lighting ambiance. To set the white balance, the photographer takes a photograph of a neutral object, often a gray card, and then has the camera assign neutral white values to that object. White balance should be controlled before color casts are introduced into the images or the camera in many cases will compensate automatically for the casts and eliminate them.

Focus: You’ll often hear terms like “selective focus” “depth of field” “soft focus” etc. These have to do with how much of the image is in focus. It’s become popular in many photographs nowadays to have just the food or part of the food in focus while everything else goes blurry. This emphasizes the graphic components of props and can be used to draw the eye to an exact point. If, for example, you’re showing a large platter of food such as lasagna, it’s not necessary that all the food be in focus since if we see a little, we see it all. If, on the other hand, you’re showing a large platter of hors d’oeuvres, all different, then it’s likely you’ll want them all in focus. If the photographer is using a view camera—an old fashioned looking camera with a bellows—he or she will be able to alter the actual plane of focus so that objects in various parts of the photograph can be chosen to be in focus or not.

Length of Lens: The photographer can control the amount of background that’s included in the photograph by choosing a different length of lens. This usually is of little concern to prop and food stylists per se but on shoots where there’s no prop stylist, the food stylist may find herself arranging the props on the set. If the photographer is using a “short” or “wide-angle” lens, more of the background will be included; if she’s using a very long lens, then only that background directly behind the food will be visible.

Theme: Is there an overall feel to the photograph? Do you want it very graphic and angular with lots of squares and lines? Is it Asian or European? If you combine Asian and European elements such as silverware and chop sticks, make sure it makes sense and that it’s really something you would do if serving the food being photographed. Is the scene bucolic with lots of wood and antiques? Or urban and urbane? Is it a process shot or a finished shot or both? It’s sometimes exciting to include elements used in the preparation of the food and juxtapose them with the finished food.

Most of us cook lobster in a straightforward way, usually by plunging it in boiling water for a few minutes and then serving it with drawn butter. Occasionally we split the tails in two and broil them.
Both of these techniques makes sense when expediency is the primary goal and when we wish to eschew the complexities of French sauce making. However, to extract the most flavor out of a lobster, other techniques and processes are needed.
It helps to remember that the flavor of lobster is in three places—in the flesh (obviously), in the shells, and in the coral/ “tomally.” Different techniques are required to get the flavor out of each.
Much of the flavor of the flesh is released in the form of flavorful juices that it releases when it gets hot. If the lobster is being boiled in a pot of large water, these juices release into the surrounding liquid and are lost. An alternative is to steam the lobster in a little wine, water, or vegetable broth and then convert the steaming liquid (which will now contain the juices from the lobster) into a sauce. I usually do this with some finely chopped parsley, a drop of cognac, sometimes a little tomato puree, and a bit of butter or a little cream.
More complex approaches will also require you to get the flavor out of the shells. This only makes sense in situations when you’re serving the lobster out of the shell or at least when you have access to shells from other dishes. When extracting the flavor from lobster shells, remember that the flavor and color in the shells is not soluble in water, but instead is soluble in fat. For this reason, making a lobster broth by simmering the shells in water does little to extract the flavor. Fat must be used to extract the flavor.
One method is to cook the broken-up shells in hot olive oil (assuming they haven’t already been cooked) with perhaps some shallot and some tomato. Once the shells are bright red, cream is then added to the mixture and the mixture simmered for an hour or so—liquid added from time to time to compensate for evaporation—so that the fat in the cream can extract the flavor and colorful components from the shells. During this simmering with cream, the cream typically breaks and separates into clear butterfat, at this point bright orange-red, which floats to the top where it can be skimmed off. This lobster butter can then be used to finish a lobster sauce or sauces for other dishes where a crustacean note is appropriate.
You can also extract the flavor from the shells by crushing them together with butter. Here’s the method: Take enough shells to come about 2/3 high in a home stand-up mixer bowl and combine them with 3 sticks of cold unsalted butter. Put the mixer on low (use the paddle blade) and grind together the shells and the butter until the shells break up and the butter turns pink, 20 to 30 minutes. Transfer the butter/shell mixture to a saucepan and bring it to a gentle simmer over low heat. Cook over low heat for about 15 minutes. The butter should sputter and by doing so let you know that it still contains some water. This water prevents the butter from getting too hot and burning so when it evaporates and you no longer hear the sputtering, remove the butter from the heat so it doesn’t burn. Add enough warm water to the pan so the butter is floating above the water. Chill the mixture until the butter congeals on top of the water and shells. Take the butter off the top of the water, melt it and strain it. It keeps for weeks in the fridge or even longer in the freezer.
Perhaps most important, the most intense flavor of lobster is contained in the coral (in female lobsters only) and tomally. When buying your lobster, ask for at least one female (it isn’t necessary to be greedy and have all females) to provide coral. The coral consists of miniscule eggs, dark green as to be almost black, that turn orange when heated. The tomally consists of the liver, is a dull green, and while it has an intense, delicious flavor, it retains its somewhat drab green color even during cooking.
There are a couple of ways of going about using the coral to flavor your sauce. Most typically it is used when the lobster is cut up alive. There are two ways to assassinate a live lobster. One is simply to split it lengthwise. Another is to make a cut into the head to kill it instantly and then twist off the tail and snap off the claws. The remaining carapace commonly called the head is then cut in half lengthwise and the gritty grain sack removed and discarded. Once the lobster is in pieces, it’s easy to get at the coral and tomally by simply reaching into the tail and into the sides of the “head” and pulling them out. They should then be worked through a strainer into a small container containing a teaspoon of cognac to prevent the coral mixture from clotting. This mixture should be kept ice cold—it’s very perishable—for up to several hours before serving the lobster and using it to finish the sauce (more about this below).
If you don’t want to cut up your lobster alive you can steam it, section it and remove the coral after cooking. This makes a lot of sense since when lobster is cooked correctly, the coral remains dark. It can be pulled out, strained, and used in a sauce based on the steaming liquid.
If you’ve gone to the trouble of extracting these various flavor sources from the lobster, you’re going to be able to create a fantastic sauce. There are innumerable variations but typically the cut-up lobster is either sautéed or steamed and the meat extracted from the shells and reserved while the sauce is being prepared. Cut up the lobster, brown the pieces in olive oil or steam them with a little wine, turning them around now and then with tongs, until completely orange. It’s imperative at this point not to overcook the lobster. Once the shells have reddened, the under-cooked meat is extracted and reserved. (Lobster flesh is impossible to remove from the lobsters while they’re raw because it’s gelatinous and clings to the shells.) The coral is removed and strained and used for the sauce.
The sauce should be constructed in phases. First, any liquid such as the steaming liquid from the lobster or liquid released during sautéing can be strained into a saucepan and heated. Flavorful ingredients such as tomato puree, cognac, various wines can be added at this point. Cream almost always comes into play as an agent to tie together disparate flavors. Once the base is constructed, you can use your lobster butter by simply whisking a tablespoon or two (to taste) into the sauce. Finally, whisk the hot sauce base into the coral in a bowl and transfer the mixture back to the saucepan (ideally the saucepan should have sloping sides to prevent curdling in the corners). Heat the sauce while whisking until it turns a brilliant orange. At this point you can add chopped herbs such as parsley, tarragon, or chervil. Consider garnishes such as wild mushrooms, braised fennel wedges, boiled French string beans (haricots verts), or sweated julienned vegetables. (I once worked at a restaurant where we made a sauce americaine by simmering Cognac with a little tomato and whisking in a little lobster butter. Simple and not half bad.)
One of the most complicated aspects of cooking lobster is the need for a lot of work at the last minute, especially if you’re serving the lobster out of the shell. Taking the meat out of the claws takes a minute and is messy. While no doubt heretical, I sometimes cook the lobster ahead of time (in any case I cook lobster much less than is customary) and reheat it just before it’s time to eat. To reheat it, spread the pieces out over a buttered sheet pan and cover them firmly with plastic wrap. Heat in the lowest possible oven. Keep an eye in case the oven is too hot.

A meurette sauce is a simple red wine sauce made with mirepoix (a mixture of diced carrots, celery, and onions, with onions prevailing), prosciutto and herbs. One of its great advantages is that it can be made without broth or stock.

There are a couple of secrets to success: careful and repeated caramelization of the wine and mirepoix and long simmering of the red wine to cook out its tannins and diminish some of its acidity.

Start by gently sweating the mirepoix and the diced prosciutto (you need very little, about a ¼ pound for 4 to 6 servings) until they start to brown. Add a cup or so of wine and boil it down to nothing and, in fact, allow it to caramelize on the bottom of the pan. This process can be repeated indefinitely. Once the first addition(s) of wine have been caramelized, add about 2 cups of wine, a bouquet garni (with thyme, bay leaf and parsley) and simmer very gently for about 20 minutes. Strain and reduce.

The question of how much to reduce the sauce depends on how you’re going to thicken it. Traditionally, it is thickened with a paste of flour and butter (beurre manié) but it can also be thickened with butter alone. When thickening with butter alone, the sauce should be reduced to about a half cup before any butter is added. Swirl in the cold butter with the sauce over the heat but not boiling. If thickening with beurre manié, you need only reduce the braising liquid down to about a cup.

For many poached egg dishes, including eggs en meurette, the eggs are placed on croutons—slices or rounds of bread that have been toasted or cooked in butter. Most of the time the crouton ends up soggy from the moisture attached to the egg. To avoid this, cook rounds of crustless bread in butter such that the bread absorbs the butter and becomes water resistant and crunchy. A further tip—use clarified butter to keep the croutons from being covered with specks of caramelized milk solids.

When the sauce and croutons are ready, you can go ahead and poach the eggs. You can also poach the eggs ahead of time if you’re cooking for more than a couple of people. To do this, put the eggs into a bowl of ice water as soon as they’re ready. When you’re ready to serve them, drain off the water, add boiling water, and let sit for a minute or so before scooping them out with a slotted spoon. Before placing each egg on a crouton, touch the spoon to a kitchen towel to absorb excess moisture.

There’s a lot of hocus pocus when it comes to poaching eggs. Some recipes call for adding vinegar (which does nothing except smell up the house) while others call for swirling the water so it forms a vortex, problematic since you can only poach one egg at a time. The best approach is simply to crack the eggs over a pan of simmering water, holding the egg as close to the water as possible when you open it. The eggs tend to sink and sometimes attach to the bottom—don’t try to detach them prematurely or you’ll tear the bottom of the yolk which will then leak out.

You can serve your eggs with a simple sauce or you can combine other elements such as you might a stew. Some recipes for oeufs en meurette call for mushrooms while others call for the entire Burgundian garniture of mushrooms, pearl onions and bacon lardons—not a bad idea, but one that makes a basically simple dish into a rather complicated one. Mushrooms alone, however, are easy enough to handle, and they add dimension to the sauce and another element to the finished dish. I look for the smallest mushrooms, break off their stems, and cook the stems with the aromatic ingredients before I add the wine, and simmer the caps—either whole or cut vertically in quarters—in a little of the wine, and return the resulting wine mushroom-juice mixture to the sauce during reduction. A few dried porcini slices, cooked with the aromatic vegetables at the beginning, add an almost magical earthy note, the origin of which few people will suspect (it will be attributed to your culinary genius).

Of all poached-egg dishes, eggs Benedict is the most famous, and perhaps deservedly so, the combination of melting egg yolk and the rich, mildly acidic hollandaise, while seemingly redundant, being hard to match. I make eggs Benedict with béarnaise sauce instead of hollandaise and substitute a thin slice of prosciutto for the usual Canadian bacon. I also like to prepare croutons, like those described above, instead of English muffins, which always seem too thick and doughy. Anyone who goes out to brunch with any regularity will have already encountered a collection of eggs Benedict variations, some delicious, some ill conceived. The better-known variations include replace the Canadian bacon with spinach (Florentine), chopped mushrooms, or asparagus. Classic French versions are extravagant and baroque—slices of foie gras, crayfish tails, truffles, rich sauces, all have their encounters with poached eggs.

The word strobe is just another way of saying “flash” but seems to be the term preferred by professional photographers. In any case, when dealing with strobe we’re manipulating very short bursts of light. The light is very intense and can expose film or a digital back in less than 1000th of a second.

There are several advantages to shooting with strobe. If you’re in a completely dark studio, you can handhold. This is because the exposure is determined by the duration of the light from the strobe (which is very short) instead of the time needed for your shutter to open and close. In fact, in a dark room or studio, the shutter speed is completely irrelevant–you need only think of aperture and of course your ISO. A good rule of thumb (for ISO around a hundred) is to keep your shutter speed fast enough–say 125th of a second–to eliminate or at least mute any stray light in the studio and then adjust the exposure by controlling the intensity of the strobe and the aperture.

Another advantage is strobe’s light color, which is daylight “neutral.” By neutral, we mean 5500 degrees Kelvin, which is about the color of the sky on a cloudy day. (The sun, which has a warmer color, and the cloudless sky, which has a cooler color, are shining together onto the back of the clouds.) This neutrality, while less important in this digital era when it’s possible to set custom white balance, was a great advantage in the days of film when tungsten lights typically had to be “gelled” to get them to have the right color. This often meant the loss of a stop or two of light.

Because strobe is instantaneous, it allows us to freeze motion. It’s perfect for drinks shots when the liquid is swirling around in the glass or even splashing out of it. It would be ideal for sports except that most strobe setups aren’t powerful enough to reach far out onto a playing field. When shooting very rapidly, when the burst of the strobe has to be as short as possible (such as when shooting a splashing drink), it’s helpful to use multiple low-power strobes instead of one high-powered one. The reason for this is that the low-power strobes’ duration is shorter, making them more effective at freezing motion.

Sometimes we want to combine strobe with continuous light. We may find hot lights perfect for providing hard warm light and strobes good for soft cool light. In a situation like this, we might set up a soft box with a strobe in it over the set and have the hot light off to the side. The easiest way to do this is simply to have the camera fire the strobe and then just hold the shutter open long enough to “burn in” the hot light. You may find it useful to take an exposure of the hot light(s) by itself and a separate shot of the strobe by itself to get a sense of what are the right settings.

One example of combining strobes with hot lights or natural light is when we want to show motion with a ghosting effect following a relatively still image. The strobe produces a still, frozen, image while ambient light, reflecting off the subject, shows motion. However, what typically happens is that the strobe fires as soon as the shutter opens and the ghosting effect follows the image that’s frozen by the strobe. Usually what’s desired instead is for the frozen image to follow the ghosting effect. To accommodate this, some fancier cameras have settings that allow you to open the shutter for a given duration and have the strobe fire at the end. In these situations the appearance of motion is controlled with the intensity of the ambient lights while the frozen image exposure is determined by the strobe.

Strobes come in various forms. The best known, of course, is the small flash attached to a camera. While often necessary in some settings where there’s no other choice, shooting with the on-camera flash is less than desirable. The light comes from the direction of the camera and creates a distinctive hardness and harshness that are unpleasant to the eye. There are a couple of ways to attenuate this problem. One is to “bounce” the light off of some larger surface such that the surface becomes the light source and provides softer light. The surface is usually a white ceiling or a wall. (Don’t try this with a colored ceiling or the shots will all take on that hue.) To accomplish this, your flash should swivel upward so you can aim it. Another half solution is to put a card or plastic reflector behind the flash so the card forms a larger surface area and creates a softer light. Third, you can attach your portable flash to a cord and hold it with one hand while firing the camera with the other. In this way you can adjust the light so it comes somewhat from the side of the subject instead of head on.

There is a time when shooting directly from the camera is advantageous: when providing fill flash. Fill flash is simply fill light used to fill in dark parts of the photograph, especially shadows. A typical scenario is when shooting a person in sunlight with the sunlight behind or overhead–in some postion from which it is casting strong shadows between the camera and the subject such that the subject, especially the subject’s face, is in shade. By hitting the front of the person with a strobe, the shadows are filled in (this is especially important when the face is in shadow) and a catch light shows up in the eyes.

There are times in professional photography when we have to adjust the light color of our strobes. In digital photography an overall color hue, warmth or coolness, is unimportant because the color balance tools in the camera (and, if need be, in post production) make it easy to make up for it with custom white balance. What you should keep in mind, however, are differences in light color since no overall balance adjustment can compensate for them. This is rarely important in outdoor scenes because the strobe is balanced for daylight, but what if you’re in a room lit with incandescent (tungsten) lights? Your first reflex may be to assume that the lights are irrelevant since you’re shooting with strobe. If you’re shooting with your on-camera flash, it is possible to eliminate the tungsten lights from the shot by keeping the shutter speed fast (set at a 125th of a second). The problem with this system is that it produces ugly shots, those typical deer-in-the-headlights kind of shots with the subject lit fiercely in the foreground and the background perfectly black. One way around this would be to light the whole room with flash heads placed in strategic locations. Unfortunately, this is often not practical. The best way to make the shot more agreeable, is to let in some of the ambient incandescent light by keeping the shutter open for a longer time, say a 30th of a second (assuming you have image stabilization and that you’re hand holding). This gives the tungsten lights time to expose the digital back. The flash then comes in and provides the extra light needed to light the front of the the subject. A problem with this system has to do with the difference in light color between the warm ambient lights and the relatively cool, daylight-balanaced, strobe. This difference can cause the picture to look artificial. To compensate for this we can gel the lights with blue gels so they match the strobe, but this isn’t usually practical since there are generally more lights than there are strobes. The usual system is to place an appropriately colored gel (in this case a warming gel) over the flash head so that it matches the color of the room lights.

While using fill flash for outdoor shots makes a lot of sense, indoor shooting with fill flash can cause red eye, the characteristic devil-like eyes shining red instead of blue or brown. Red eye is caused by the eye being dilated and by exposing the now-visible bright red retina to sudden unexpected light. The eye doesn’t have a chance to adjust to the light and shut down in time, which is why red eye rarely occurs outdoors when the pupil is made small and constricted by the ambient sunlight. To eliminate red eye, some cameras have flashes that flash once or twice before they actually expose the shot, the idea being that the light will cause the pupils to constrict. The problem is that this system delays the shot such that you may loose the photo’s potential spontaneity. Nowadays, red eye is usually eliminated with software, even in camera. If worst comes to worst, Photoshop will do the trick.

Other strobe systems are based on monolights, which are lights with their own power supplies and adjustments for light intensity. These are convenient when cords would get in the way (monolights are often battery powered and fired with a radio signal) and allow the lights to be adjusted individually for maximum control.

Most typical, at least for professional commercial photographers, is the pack-powered system of strobes in which a central power pack supplies the juice for more than one light. Power packs come with various features including the ability to adjust power to each individual light separately.

When using strobe with adjustable intensity (which is available on about everthing except, perhaps your own in-camera strobe), your first concern is what intensity to use to get the right exposure. Nowadays, it’s easy enough to fire off a shot with low power, check the exposure and make adjustments accordingly, but in the days of film, judging the exposure was much more critical.

Nowadays, many cameras have TTL (Through The Lens) metering which measures the amount of light emitted by the strobe as it reflects off the subject. The camera immediately shuts off the strobe as soon as it has projected enough light. In lieu of this, a flash meter comes in handy–if you’re buying a light meter be sure it has this capability.

When professionals shoot with strobe, they usually shoot in a darkened studio. The problem is that it’s impossible to see where the light falls from the strobes. For this reason, most professional strobe heads have modeling lights. Modeling lights are incandescent lights that are positioned in the same place as the strobe and thus give a good sense of where the light is going to land.

Unlike meats, which are braised for long periods to break down connective tissue and muscle, fish is braised only long enough to cook it through. (Octopus, cuttlefish, and squid are an exception.)
Braising, of course, is cooking in a small amount of liquid, the idea being that the juices of whatever is being braised are contained in the liquid and later converted to a sauce.
To braise fish fillets, pre-heat the oven to 375 degrees, put the fillets in a baking dish just large enough to hold them in a single layer. Add enough liquid to come halfway up the sides of the fish. Put the pan on the stove (if it’s glass, use an insulating pad) and bring the liquid to the simmer. Cover loosely with aluminum foil and slide into the oven for about 10 minutes per inch of thickness.
The real fun begins when it comes to improvising the braising liquid. The most obvious and classic approach is to use the fish’s head and bones to make a light fish broth which is in turn used to braise the fish, concentrating the fish’s natural flavor. When making fish stock, cook in a mixture of white wine and water for about 20 minutes, no longer, or the stock will get fishy.
Other braising liquids can of course be used. Various wines, fruit juices, the liquid released from steaming mussels or clams, lobster cooking liquid, meat juices, verjuice, vinegar or lemon (diluted) can all be used to create unique flavors.
One particularly delicious approach is to use the cooking liquid from mussels or clams to braise the fish. This liquid is much more sea-like than fish cooking liquid and lends a mysterious tang to the sauce. The mussels and/or clams can then be used as the garnish for the fish.
Once the fish comes out of the oven, it’s time to convert the braising liquid to a sauce. The liquid can be used alone, but it’s much tastier if something is used to bind it together somewhat. Cream is one obvious choice as is butter which can be swirled in just before serving. Other possibilities include egg yolks which can be used to thicken the sauce.
There are two approaches to using egg yolks. One is simply to combine the beaten yolks with the braising liquid (about 3 yolks per cup is about right) and slowly cook, without boiling, until the sauce thickens. Another approach is to whisk together the egg yolks and braising liquid over medium heat to form a frothy “sabayon.” The sabayon can be left as it is or, once the sabayon is established, butter can be added to the sauce in the manner of a hollandaise.
Once the sauce has been thickened, other flavors can be added such as lobster butter, herb butters, or sea urchin roe butter, either alone or in combination.

Hot Lights

Just a jazzy term for what are basically the same lights we use (or used to use) at home. Because hot lights have tungsten filaments, they are commonly referred to as tungsten lights or just “tungsten”. The advantage to hot lights is that they are continuous, allowing us to see what’s happening with the light without having to make a test shot. (We can’t see strobe lights until we see the developed picture.) The downside is that many continuous lights are hot which can cause food on the set to quickly wilt or for models to sweat. Hot lights provide a great way to learn about photography because we’re usually only dealing with a small number of light sources. By isolating these sources and seeing what each does, we learn an amazing amount about light.
When using continuous light, it’s helpful to model your configuration in a way that mimics nature. In other words, there should be a hard directional light that stands in for the sun (this is called the key light) and a soft light from a very broad light source (such as the ceiling, an umbrella or a soft box) that functions as a fill light. To take the mimicry further, the colors of each light can be adjusted such that the fill light is cooler than the key light in the same way as the sky is cooler than the sun. The easiest way to do this is to tape a colored gel over one of the lights to render it warmer (for the key light) or cooler (for the fill light). If you have a color meter, gel the fill light so it reads 10,000 or more. The key light may not need a gel (if it’s an incandescent or halogen light the light will already be warm—about 3200K.) depending on what kind of light it is. By manipulating the color of the light in this way, you can emulate the effects of daylight.
Keep in mind that light falls off as a function of the square of the distance. In other words, if you move the light twice as far away, you’ll end up with one fourth the light. If you move three times as far away, you’ll only have a ninth the light. For this reason, it’s often helpful to keep the lights as far away from the subject as possible so that the set will be evenly lit. (If the light’s too close, the light will fall off on the set.)
One of the least expensive artificial light sources is simply a light bulb with a metal reflector. Similar to regular incandescent lights, are halogen lights which burn even hotter but emit a slightly cooler light. Also used, especially in video and film, are HMI lights which are powerful fluorescent lights that can be aimed and used as hard lights. There are also fluorescent lights, color balanced as though they were neutral daylight. These often come in banks that unfold and can be used as soft lights.
There are several gadgets and methods for controlling continuous lights to produce either hard or soft light. To create a narrow beam of light, most “hot lights” have what are called Fresnel lenses that help focus the light and make it harder. Also in use are “snoots” which are long narrow tubes that fit over the lights and narrow the beam. To improvise a snoot you can wrap a strip of Cine-foil (essentially black aluminum foil) around the end of the holder for the bulb. The keeps the light from spreading around on the set and allows you to aim it at a very small area. Less restrictive than a snoot are “barn doors”. Barn doors consist of four panels that fit over a light and can be folded in various configurations to control the light.
In many situations we need to soften the light from continuous light. This can be done by putting something white and translucent (not transparent) between the light and the set. (I sometimes use those plastic flexible “cutting boards” but even a piece of paper will work.) The closer the piece of paper or plastic is to the set, the softer the light. This makes it easy to control the size of highlights and shadows. A more convenient device is a soft box or umbrella. A soft box is simply a large fabric box that’s translucent on one side and spreads the light out; an umbrella does much the same thing.

Even though it’s a fairly simple concept, the notion of contrast is sometimes hard for people to grasp.
Photographers are always talking about contrast or about an image being “contrasty.” What does this mean?
Contrast is the difference in the amount of light coming off different parts of a scene. Imagine, for example, an object—say a person—being lit on a cloudy day. The light will be diffuse instead of directional and there will be no shadows. Such a scene is said to be low in contrast. On the other hand, imagine an object being lit by the sun, say as the sun is setting so it casts a hard shadow. In this case the difference in the amount of light bouncing off one side of the subject is much different than the light bouncing off the other side, say the shadow side. In other words, the shadow will be very dark and the lit side of the object, very bright. Such a scene is said to be high in contrast or “contrasty.”
Either of these situations can present its own problems. The cloudy day shot may be too soft, with little difference between the darkest and lightest parts of the photograph. The high contrast shot is even more likely to be problematic because of the way cameras see.
Human beings are able to take in very high contrast scenes and see details in both bright areas and dark areas. This is, in part, because our pupils dilate or contract to adjust to the amount of light while a camera is set to one aperture opening per image. The problem facing the photographer is to get the camera to show detail in both “highlights” and shadows. In landscape situations, there’s not much the photographer can do except perhaps use a graduated density filter to mute the brightness of a sky or use a polarizer to decrease haze and increase saturation. (Black and white photography is a different matter.) The still life photographer, on the other hand, has many options for controlling light. If the shadows are too dark, she can lighten them with a fill card or use a scrim to filter the bright light so that the bright side is less bright. When the light area is less bright, the photographer can open up slightly and thus expose the shadow correctly.
I know this is a mouthful, but the point in high contrast situations is to decrease the difference between the bright areas and the shadows. If the difference is too great, the camera won’t be able to capture detail in both the bright areas and the shadows—one will have to suffer.
Photographers usually talk about contrast in terms of stops. A stop is relative unit of light. In other words, it always expresses a difference rather than an absolute. For example, one would never approach a scene and say “oh, that’s 2 stops of light.” But one would say “oh, that’s 2 stops of light darker than it was.” A stop represents either half the amount of light or twice the amount of light. In other words, if I say to open up 2 stops, I’m letting in 4 times the amount of light. If I say to close down a stop, I’m blocking half the light so the light is half as bright.
A brightly lit scene might contain a range of 11 stops while a camera can typically reproduce only 9. To reproduce the scene accurately, it’s necessary to reduce the difference in brightness between the “highlights” and the shadows by 2 stops.
Regardless of the contrast of the scene, most images need a contrast boost in Photoshop before they’re ready for publication.

When arriving in France after a long absence, three imperatives assert themselves: the need for oysters, a farm-made Camembert and sole meunière. Oysters are usually had on the first day and Camembert by that evening, but sole meunière awaits the first meal in a real bistro where it and kidneys are often the most expensive items on the menu.
Many of us are perplexed by the high price of sole meunière until we realize that it’s made with Dover sole, the only truly authentic sole sold on any commercial scale. The best Dover sole is said to come from the English Channel but it can be found throughout the east side of the north Atlantic up into the North Sea and down to the Mediterranean. In other words, it’s not found in American waters.
Unlike flounder, which is often sold as sole (in America virtually any fish called “sole” is flounder or fluke), authentic Dover sole has firm meaty flesh and holds together in the pan. It has a delicate flavor and aroma of the sea.
Most of us are used to eating “sole” or flounder filets, not whole fish since Americans don’t know how to eat whole fish, much less flat fish such as sole and flounder. But whole fish retain their flavor and juiciness during cooking in a way that filets do not.
When cooking whole flat fish, the white skin on the bottom is typically scaled and left on while the black skin on top is removed. Because Dover sole has such firm flesh, this top skin can be peeled off and away in one swift gesture. Cut all around the outside of the fish on top, just within the base of the fins and beneath the head. Make a little slit along the base of the tale and peel back a little lip of skin. Grip the skin in a kitchen towel (it’s slippery) and quickly pull it away. Don’t try this method with American “sole” or flounder or the flesh will tear. Instead, remove the black skin by sliding a knife under it and peeling it away in strips.
Once you’ve removed the top black skin, scale the bottom white skin. This is a messy job (I highly recommend a fish scaler but the back of a kitchen knife will also work) and one that you can conduct by working inside a plastic garbage bag to keep the scales from flying around. Continue scraping the skin until it feels smooth when you run you hand along it. This same method works for American sole, fluke, and flounder. Reach into the fish and remove as much of the viscera—mostly organs or roe—as you can. Press along the fish’s abdomen with a knife handle to push out any that’s remaining.
Once you have your fish scaled, skinned and gutted, you’re ready to cook. Rinse off the fish and pat it dry.
Cooking à la meunière means simply to coat with flour (“meunière means “miller’s wife”), sauté in butter, and then serve with fresh melted butter and lemon juice poured and sprinkled over. This technique of coating with flour is sometimes augmented by dipping the fish (or chicken, or whatever), after flouring, in beaten egg in which case it’s called “à la parisienne” and again in breadcrumbs in which case it’s called “à l’anglaise” or “à la viennoise.” Any of these coatings will produce a lovely dish, but to my mind the simple coating with flour is exactly right for a whole sole. When whole sole is grilled it is typically coated with melted butter and then breadcrumbs which is breading “à la française.” There is even a version in which grated parmesan cheese replaces the breadcrumbs (or half the breadcrumbs) and a dish that would have been followed by the words “à l’anglaise” is called “à la milanaise.”
Regardless of which of these methods you use to coat your fish, each, except à la milanaise, will create it’s own lovely effect.
Once you’ve seasoned your fish and dredged it in flour, it must be cooked in butter. You can cook it in whole butter, but unless you’re extremely careful and your sauté pan is ovoid and matches the shape of the fish, it’s better to use clarified butter, which won’t burn. Saute the fish for about 5 minutes on each side over medium heat. If you’re using whole butter, watch it closely for signs of burning and control the heat accordingly. If you’ve breaded the fish with breadcrumbs, use a lower heat than you would with just flour alone. After sautéing, the fish should be a golden brown.
When the fish is done, transfer it to a hot platter and sprinkle it with a little lemon juice. Put a chunk of butter—about 3 tablespoons per serving—in the sauté pan (make sure the pan isn’t too hot or the butter will burn) used for sautéing the fish and cook it until it turns frothy and the froth just begins to subside. At this point, immediately pour it over the fish. (Don’t ever pour over the butter that you used for sautéing, a trick common in lesser places and don’t make the common mistake of adding the lemon juice to the hot butter which can cause it to burn.)
At this point you can serve the whole sole (a sole per person) on hot plates with a plate to the side of each setting for bones, leaving the dissection to the diner. If you’re having your usual sophisticated friends, they’ll know what to do, but in the case of those who don’t, you’ll have to give a demonstration and remove the filets as shown in the photographs.
Sole and other flat fish can also be braised and the braising liquid converted to a seemingly infinite number of variations. The standard method is simple: some liquid, often white wine, fish broth, or water, is placed in an oval pan that fits the size of the fish. Often, finely chopped shallots are sprinkled over, and the fish set on top. The liquid should come about 1/3 up the sides of the fish. The fish is then loosely covered with aluminum foil or parchment paper, placed on the stove over high heat until the braising liquid starts to simmer, and baked for about 10 minutes per inch of thickness. The fish is then removed and the braising liquid manipulated into any number of sauces.
To finish the sauce in the easiest possible way, swirl in a tablespoon or two of the best unsalted butter and whisk until it emulsifies. You can also add a few tablespoons of cream (2 or 3 tablespoons per serving) and reduce it slightly to thicken. The braising liquid can also be thickened with whole butter, herb butters, or crustacean butter.
One of the most common braised sole dishes is sole bonne femme. The method is the same—the pan is prepared with shallots and white wine, but also some sliced mushrooms. The mushrooms release their liquid during the braising and augment the flavor of the sauce. The sauce is finished with heavy cream, reduced to thicken, used to coat the fish and then broiled for a few seconds to form a glaze.
In some classic recipes, the braising liquid is thickened with egg yolks which brings us to perhaps the most famous of braised sole dishes, sole Marguéry. Restaurant Marguéry was popular, in the late 19th century, with politicians and the ruling elite. As the story goes, Diamond Jim Brady was a fan of the restaurant’s sole Marguéry and convinced a friend of his to take his son out of Harvard and send him to Paris to learn the recipe. Eventually the friend acquired the recipe which when leaked out turned out to be little more than sole vin blanc made with sole filets: a broth made with the head and bones is used to braise the filets, the finished braising liquid is whisked with egg yolks over heat to thicken and butter is added to create a kind of hollandaise in which the braising liquid from the sole replaces the lemon. The sauce is then spooned over the filet and quickly gratinéed under the broiler.
If you want to avoid confronting a whole fish or of having to demonstrate its dissection to your guests, go ahead and cook filets. The method is the same and there’s even one advantage—being able to use the head and bones to make a fish broth which can then be used to braise the fish.
Once you understand the basics of braising flat fish such as sole, variations are easy to improvise. If you’re braising whole fish or filets, think first about the braising liquid and any aromatic ingredient you add to it at the beginning. For example, a classic French preparation might call for white wine and shallots while a Thai interpretation may call for braising with tamarind juice and using lemon grass instead of shallots. Other braising liquids could be fish broth, dashi, white wine, red wine fish broth (the bones and head cooked in red wine), chicken or veal broth, various fruit juices, crustacean broth or braising liquid, the steaming liquid from mussels or clams, verjuice or directly in crème fraîche, to name a few. One of the tastiest and most convenient ways to braise flatfish (or any fish for that matter) is to steam open a few mussels or clams with white wine and shallots and then use this liquid to braise the fish.
Once the braising liquid and aromatics have been chosen, the basic braising method is the same—bringing to the simmer on the stove, covering loosely with foil, and baking. Next, the decision must be made as to how best to manipulate the braising liquid. Classic interpretations may be finished with cream or various kinds of butters (herb, crustacean roe, sea urchin roe, etc.) but so-called ethnic versions may need other thickeners. It’s possible to use vegetable purees, cooked and pureed beans, cooked-down tomatoes, nut butters, coconut milk or cream, Thai curries, pureed stewed sorrel (a favorite of mine), and other sauces such as béchamel or hollandaise that are already thick.
Like other fish, sole filets can be fried. To accomplish this, they are best cut across diagonally to form strips about 2 inches long and ½ inch wide. Sometimes these are called goujonettes. Heat “pure” (non-extra virgin) olive oil to 350 F., flour the goujonettes, and fry for about 5 seconds, until the strips curl and feel firm to the touch. Don’t overcook them by a second or you’ll dry them out. Pat them dry with kitchen towels (not paper towels which will tear) and serve in mounds topped with fried parsley (toss a few sprigs of perfectly dry curly parsley into the hot oil for about 5 seconds.) Serve lemon on the side. (You can also concoct a sauce and toss the goujonettes quickly in the sauce before serving. In Paris in the 1970s, we made a green peppercorn sauce. Such a sauce will date you but it’s good anyway.)

No dish, except for perhaps cassoulet, French onion soup, or salade niçoise, invites so much polemic as bouillabaisse.
Bouillabaisse aficionados range from the ultra-conservative (bouillabaisse can only be made feet from the Mediterranean using only seven varieties of fish) to relatively liberal (bouillabaisse can be made in Paris with more varieties allowed). No one, at least no French person, would concede that bouillabaisse can be made far away from the Mediterranean, much less outside of France.
After awhile these arguments become silly because it becomes simply a matter of where you draw the line. If you insist on the traditional seven Mediterranean fish, then bouillabaisse in Georgia is pretty much out, barring drastic measures involving airplanes. If, however, you make your soup following certain principles, you may not end up with bouillabaisse that tastes like it was made in Marseilles, but you will have a more than acceptable fish soup/stew albeit one made with local fish.
The important thing is to understand the principles. In its most basic form, bouillabaisse consists of a collection of fish boiled up with fennel and saffron and served, broth first, followed by whole fish. The broth is thickened and flavored with a rouille sauce, a deep red sauce made with peppers and sometimes saffron.
The concept of thickening a broth with a sauce is a common one around the Mediterranean. A bourride is a fish soup, also from the south of France, made with fewer fish (often monkfish), and the sauce thickened with aioli; a romesco is a fish stew thickened with a garlic sauce thickened with nuts; and of course there is soupe de poisson niçoise which is a fish soup thickened with the pureed fish.
While a traditional bouillabaisse consists of whole fish, unless you carve them at the table (a laborious chore for a crowd), you’ll find that most people don’t know what to do with them. A better work around, and one that will give you a tastier broth, consists of fileting the fish and using the bones and heads to reinforce the flavor of the basic broth. The filets can then be poached in the broth just minutes before serving and the broth thickened at the last minute.
This last method is far more efficient and makes the soup much easier to eat. There is, however, one idiosyncrasy. When the filets get hot, the skin contracts and causes the filets to curl. Of course you can skin the filets but the effect of the often beautiful fish will be lost.
To avoid the curling problem, pre-sauté the filets, skin-side down for about 30 seconds to cook the skin. Heat a small amount of olive oil in a non-stick pan until it smokes. Place a filet or two in the pan, skin-side down, and press down on it with the back of a spatula to keep it from curling. Continue in this way until you’ve worked through all the filets. Keep the filets in the refrigerator (don’t stack them up on each other or they’ll cook) until you’re ready to serve.
Ideally, of course, the broth would start out as a fish broth made from the bones and heads of other fish (in Provence they sell miniature fish for this purpose) and then get its flavor reinforced by using it to simmer the heads and bones of the fish going into the soup. It helps to use a variety of fish. Since I live on the Atlantic side of the United States, I may use striped bass, black bass, black fish, cod, red snapper, grouper (remove the skin from grouper filets), red mullet (if I can find it), or bronzino. While variety is of vital importance, it isn’t as important as freshness. So if you have a limited number of very fresh fish, it’s best to stick with them rather than trying to introduce additional fish that mightn’t be in the same pristine condition.
Recipes and suggestions for the traditional rouille sauce vary from village to village and from cook to cook. Most contain some kind of red pepper, either dry or fresh, and often a red bell pepper, probably to contribute color more than anything else. The most traditional recipes are thickened only with breadcrumbs but more “modern” recipes contain potatoes (probably just since the 19th century) or even egg yolks which turn the rouille into a mayonnaise. There’s no problem with this except that the soup, once combined with the sauce, mustn’t boil or the egg yolks will curdle. Some versions of rouille contain saffron. My own version varies according to what I find at the market, but invariably contains fresh breadcrumbs (dried breadcrumbs will remain gritty), a grilled bell pepper (peeled, seeded, etc.), a couple of raw garlic cloves, saffron, and some of the broth from the soup to get the whole thing to turn around in a food processor. I work in olive oil, with a wooden spoon, not in a food processor which makes it bitter.
Makes your basic broth with fish heads and bones or, if you’re lucky, cleaned whole fish, some sliced fennel (the branch is fine), tomatoes, an orange zest, and a few tablespoons of olive oil. In classic cooking, you would gently simmer the broth, skimming off fat and froth. But when making bouillabaisse, the purpose is to emulsify the oil with the broth so that it acts as a sort of liaison. So boil away until everything falls apart, strain, and use this broth for poaching your fish. At this point, some cooks add potato slices, but I usually abstain.
When you’re ready to serve, spread your pre-sautéed filets, skin-side up, in a wide frying pan. Pour in enough broth to cover, simmer gently for a minute on up, (don’t boil here or you’ll end up with a pile of fish flesh) leaving the filets a tad undercooked since they continue to cook once served. Transfer the filets to heated soup plates and pour the poaching liquid into some of the reserved rouille sauce. Pour this mixture into the rest of the broth and bring to the simmer (unless you’ve added an egg yolk). Ladle around the fish.
I like to serve my finished bouillabaisse in soup plates with the fish filets and broth served at the same time. Other fish stews and soups are made following similar principles, just using different ingredients. To better help you understand how fish soups and stews work, I quote from my book, Glorious French Food: “Every region of France has its own fish soup or stew. The main differences, except for varieties of fish, are in the ingredients used to make the basic broth and the flavorful finishes sometimes added at the end. Again, the difference between a soup and a stew is simply a matter of the ratio of liquid to solid, less liquid being used to moisten a stew. To follow the continuum even further, a piece of fish with a concentrated sauce based on its head and bones is prepared in the same way as a fish soup or stew except that the liquid is highly reduced and perhaps finished, in the way of a sauce, with a little butter, cream, or beurre manié.”
Southern French fish soups and stews, bouillabaisse being the star, are among the most interesting, primarily because Mediterranean fish taste so good and because of the natural affinity of fish for other Mediterranean ingredients such as garlic, fennel, saffron, wild thyme, oregano, and tomatoes. The bourride is probably the best known of bouillabaisse alternatives and is made in much the same way without aspiring to the same level of luxury, since it includes a smaller variety of fish. But the real genius behind the dish lies in the fact that the broth is whisked into an aioli containing some extra egg yolks, and the broth is cooked gently on the stove—like the seafood equivalent of a crème anglaise—until the garlicky broth turns silky smooth. A bourride sètoise is a similar concoction except that the aioli contains pureed monkfish liver. Because monkfish are bottom feeders and toxins accumulate in the liver, this is a delicacy I avoid. A soup de poisson marsellaise is a fish soup that has been pureed through a food mill so that all the flavor is extracted from the fish but enough of the finely divided flesh works through to give the soup some body. The soup contains no solid pieces of fish, unless of course as a refinement one were to poach pieces of fish in it or use it as the base for a bouillabaisse. An oursinade is a kind of bouride except that the broth is finished with egg yolks and sea urchin roe.
On the Atlantic coast, the Basques make a soup, ttoro, similar in concept to a bouillabaisse but with a completely different flavor. In addition to plenty of garlic and tomatoes, ttoro is spiced up with hot pepper and contains shrimp and mussels, and often clams. To the north, the Bretons and Normans have their own fish soups and stews, often called “matelotes.” While the word matelote is used all over France to mean fish stew, virtually every region has its own variations. Matelote à la normande, from Normandy, is made with saltwater fish and cider, but most matelotes are made with freshwater fish and red or white wine. A typical matelote is a rather slapdash affair made by heaping aromatic vegetables—the usual onions and carrots—in a pot with chunks of eel, perch, or carp; pouring in the wine; simmering or even boiling until the fish is cooked; and thickening the liquid with beurre manié (flour and butter paste). Many versions are garnished the same way as for a boeuf bourguignonne—with pearl onions, mushrooms, and little strips of bacon. Heart-shaped croutons, their tips dipped in parsley, may surround the dish. The result is less than exciting. Neither wine nor vegetables have had time to cook by the time the fish is done. If red wine is used, the bones clarify and remove much of the color from the cooking liquid. The chunks of whole fish—bones and all—are hard to eat, surrounded as they are with the (usually overthickened) sauce. The bourguignonne garniture isn’t bad, but there are so many other possibilities.
Yet the idea of munching on thick chunks of fish surrounded with a velvety sauce is too inviting to ignore. While white wine matelotes have their own advantages, it is a red wine sauce with fish—especially full-flavored fish like salmon—that makes a startling and unusual treat. The trick is to make a red wine fish broth with fish heads and bones and let it simmer long enough to cook the raw taste out of the wine. Here is an exception to the rule that only nonoily fish should be used to make fish broth; the full flavor of salmon and members of the mackerel family, such as king mackerel, Spanish mackerel, and wahoo, is balanced by the concentrated red wine. Caramelizing the fish bones in the pot, adding wine in several stages, and caramelizing after each addition except the last gives the sauce base a meaty complexity and a deep, almost black, color. This rich, dark liquid can be thickened with beurre manié or with plain butter, and served as a sauce. (The liquid is now too rich, too sparse, and too intensely flavored to qualify as a stewing liquid.) The garniture can be as simple as some chopped parsley added to the sauce at the end, but you can get as elaborate as you want and sauté wild mushrooms, blanch whole garlic cloves, glaze pearl onions, gently warm diced tomatoes, sweat little cubes of carrots, or boil fava beans or haricots vets and strew them over the finished stew on the plates.

In the 16th century, it was noticed that if one placed a small hole to one end of a darkened room, an image would be projected, from the outside, onto the wall opposite the hole. Imagine it this way. You have a room, 10 feet by 10 feet, that you paint black except for the rear wall which is white. You then drill a hole through the front end of the room that gives onto the outdoors. You will see, projected on the white wall, an upside down image of your outdoor scene. No lens is needed. This is the same principle used for the pin-hole camera.
Some theorize that such a darkened room—a camera obscura—was used by such artists as Vermeer to establish the basic outlines of a canvas. In any case, a hand-held camera uses the same principle and typically uses a lens instead of a hole to project the image to the back of the box that is the camera.
Once you understand that this is basically all a camera is, it’s not much harder to understand how it works. The most important functions on a camera, and those you’ll access when you learn to use its manual controls, have to do with controlling the amount of light that hits the rear of the camera where it is turned into an image by a digital sensor or a sheet of film.
There are 3 basic controls for the amount of light hitting the sensor or film. First, is the shutter speed. Most cameras have a shutter that opens up for a relatively short period of time—anywhere from 30 seconds to 1/8000th of a second—allowing varying amounts of light to hit the rear sensor. If you look on the settings of a traditional manual camera, you’ll see that shutter speeds are either half as much or twice as much as the one next to it. In other words, say you start at a 1 second exposure but you want to cut the amount of light down by half (by controlling only the shutter), you’ll set the shutter to ½ second. If, on the other hand, you need twice the light, you’ll set the shutter to 2 seconds. These units, of half or twice as much light, are referred to as “stops” and are the fundamental unit photographers use to describe amounts of light. So, if we’re shooting at a second and I say to close down two stops, we’ll shoot at 1/4th of a second. Keep in mind that stops are not absolute measures of light but are relative. In other words, you can’t say “Oh, this looks like about 3 stops of light.” It’s always a relative measure or a measure of change. One can say “Oh, this looks about 3 stops of light brighter.”
Second, the amount of light can be controlled by the opening in the lens called the “aperture.” If you look at the lens of a traditional camera and turn the dial that sets the aperture, you’ll see the opening open and close as you allow more or less light into the camera. The aperture is measured in “f-stops” which are units of light controlled by the opening. For reasons I can’t explain, traditional f-stops come in units starting at about 1.4 (which is very wide, allowing in lots of light) and, going in stops, to 2, 2.8, 4, 5.6, 8, 11, 16, 22, 32, 45, 64, 90 on to very large numbers (denoting small openings) for pin-hole cameras. As you rotate the dial on a traditional camera, you’ll flip through the standard f-stops while on an electronic camera, you’re liable to end up with exposures that have nothing to do with the traditional f-stops or shutter speeds—readings such as f-8.3 at 1/13th of a second, settings that would have been impossible on a traditional camera. So, on a traditional camera, if I’m shooting at f-2.8 and I want to shut down 2 stops, what is the new aperture setting? Well, 2 stops is f-5.6.
Third, one can control the sensitivity of the sensor. This sensitivity, again based on numbers that make sense only to research scientists, can be adjusted in stops (or, on modern cameras, in any increment) by doubling or halving the number. Originally, this scale of sensitivity—the ISO value—was used to denote the sensitivity of film such that one can buy film at ISO of 50 (very slow, not very sensitive), 100, 400, 800 (very fast and sensitive) and even higher. The higher the ISO, the more sensitive the film or digital back. One of the wonders of modern cameras is that this ISO setting can be adjusted so that the camera can have varying sensitivities.
Once you know that you have access to 3 methods of controlling the amount of light activating a sensor, how do you decide which to use? Keep in mind several factors. Are you trying to freeze action? Do you want the image blurry except in a very small area? Is there a lot of available light or is it dim?
If you’re trying to freeze action, you’ll need a fast shutter speed, perhaps 1000th of a second or even faster. Because such a fast shutter speed lets in so little light, you’ll have to compensate by opening up the aperture or increasing the ISO or both. If you increase the ISO, the sensor will respond more to the amount of light you’re letting in, but the problem with increasing the ISO is that film or sensors using higher ISOs tend to have more grain or noise. In most cases, in an ideal world, ISOs should be kept as low as possible. So the other option is to open the aperture, perhaps all the way to 2.8 or whatever the largest opening on the lens. The only possible drawback to this route is that less becomes in focus as the opening (aperture) increases (the f-stop decreases).
To better understand how aperture opening affects an image, it’s helpful to understand the concept of depth of field. Depth of field describes the amount of the image that’s in focus. Say you’re shooting 3 apples, each varying distances from the camera with the camera focused on the one that’s neither the greatest nor the least distance from the camera. In other words, you’re focused on the one in the middle. Now the question of depth of field rests on how in focus you want the other apples to be. As you close down the aperture, the outer apples will slowly come into focus.
This ability to control depth of field is useful for creating soft-focus effects and bokeh, which is the soft focus that forms around those objects that are in focus.
So, how to adjust your camera settings is sometimes a kind of horse trading—you may have to take on a little noise to make your ISO higher and the camera more sensitive. Or you may decide to open up the aperture instead of tinkering with the ISO, but you’ll loose some of the focus in your scene. If you’re trying to freeze action in a dark place you may have to use a high ISO and a low f-stop.