Pureed Pears

The shot, to me is "off" color..with an overall blueish/magenta look to the whites, which I think goes against it, since it is a food shot. The whites and neutrals..Mixer and bowls should almost appear as if in black and white,(careful color correction) which would make the colors of the food stand out. I used to use CC filters over the taking lens for this sort of thing, when shooting on transparency film.

David this is awesome. Before I ventured into being a lab rat in NYC, I worked for a long time with Victor Scocozza. We shot all the boxes for Weight Watchers (the ones on the actual box) and a lot of food for those home type magazines.
He was one of the few that was still doing food photography with Hot Lights. I had a lot of experience with hot lights and I was quite fast with 8x10 Dorfs and loading film holders. It was quite a challenge but I LEARNED A LOT FROM IT. Hot lights/food/and 8x10.
There was a lot I learned from him such as:
Always use a stand-in for your composition. Afterwards, put little markers where everything is so you can put the real food in just about the same exact spot.

Always make it look like a lot of food (sometimes, pad the bottom of the bowl with marbles so you don't need to put more to fill it up

Use main lights for most of the stuff but use a lot (a lot!) of little lights to accentuate all the other small things.

You don't need to cook the food or make it even taste good, just make it look nice (use a propane torch on site to carmelize things)

Hot glue gun things that won't stay

I remember the best thing we did was a HUGE xmas graham cracker house for Good Housekeeping where a guy came in for a week to put it together. There was a lot of hot glue gun going on there! The guy was a blend of carpentry, food stylist and model maker.

All this food photography actually got me into a culinary school which I then did for a living for while. One of these days, I'll marry my 2 great loves again. I just need to get off my a$$

And I'll always remember my good friend Kyle who worked with him as well (a photog student) and we made up a verse: "The Scoze Knows!" Cause Victor had a prominant nose and he seems to always know how to do something right. He once did a portrait! A food photographer doing a portrait with an 8x10 Deardorf! And he did it via Hollywood style lighting. I was so freaking impressed.

(I'm actually working on some food stuff but mostly macro with obscure food and equipment stuff but I'm using my Minolta Bellows on a Canon digital so not appropriate for Apug).

I'll have to keep checking out your progress.

Oh, and if you see someone around NYC next week with 2 kids and a Hexar AF around his neck, that's me coming to visit from California. I'll be photographing some good street food digs that I used to go to when I was working as a chef.

Thanks for all the suggestions. The slide is neutral on a 5000K light box, but I don't have a calibrated monitor, so the scan may have a cast of some sort. Maybe I'll check it on another monitor and see if I can come to some sort of compromise. I've been using film from this batch for a while, and I usually rate it at EI 80 and use an 81A filter, since it tends a bit toward the cool side.

I'd love to hear more about your experiences, Eric. That sounds like it was intensive. Interesting to hear that he used lots of little lights. I was thinking that might make things look too artificial, but it might have been just what I needed.

Make sure you get to Cendrillon when you're in town. They'll have a special menu for Noche Buena, and are opening Christmas and New Year's this year. Alas, we're usually visiting family at that time, but we did catch the Noche Buena last year, since Melchi had just been born and we weren't traveling to Hawai'i. Info at www.cendrillon.com. Pick up the cookbook while you're there. It's an excellent book and has great photos. There are a couple of my photos from a shrimp farm in Hawai'i hanging up there as well (the shrimp farm is called "Romy's Shrimp Shack," and the chef is named Romy, so I thought he'd get a kick out of them).

Okay, I've updated the image with a better corrected version of the scan that should represent the slide a little more accurately.