A Disappointing Night Out

Do you know how it feels when you get soooo excited over something and then it ends up being much less than what you had hoped for? Yeah, that's what happened to me on Thursday night. I am a member of a photography meetup group here in Raleigh. They posted a meetup for food photography about a month ago and I have been looking forward to it every since I saw it posted. The organizer said they would have lighting set up for us to use and the chef would bring out a bunch of different entrees for us to take pictures of. I figured this would be a great time to test out taking pictures of food with good backgrounds (brick walls in the building) and props with fantastic lighting.

That didn't happen.

We had the meetup at 518 West - an Italian restaurant in downtown Raleigh. It's an old building and they have some really neat features like brick walls inside, super high ceilings and fun nooks and crannies throughout the interior. We were taken upstairs to the loft area that was sectioned off for our group for a couple of hours. I started to worry as soon as we got up there because there was no lighting and the area was set up for people to eat dinner. The tables were soon fixed so we could use some of the outside light (what was left considering it was now 6:30pm) and some were pushed up against the brick walls. I tested the lighting we had in the room and knew unless a miracle happened, I was going to be disappointed. I don't have a tripod, so I can't set my camera settings super low and take pictures without them turning out blurry. I guess I should be thankful I took my prime lens with me because I tried to use my other lens and wasn't able to get one good picture from it.

All that excitement turned into such a let-down. I can take pictures like this when I'm at a restaurant eating dinner. I really wanted the chance to take some really good photos. Hopefully next time we get the chance to do this, we'll do it when we can have some natural light coming into the building! One good thing did come out of this meetup, though. I found a new restaurant for Hops and me to try!