Friday Fotos: What’s a tablescape?

Just what the name suggests, like a landscape only on a table top.

I’ve been taking photos of my meals and posting them here since September of 2018. Since I eat my meals indoors where they’re arrayed on the top of a table, my food photos will often, though not necessarily always, catch the table itself. What I mean by a tablescape, however, is more specialized. Here’s a recent tablescape:

To get that shot I set the camera on the table, pointed it in an appropriate direction, and snapped the shutter. That means your point of view is about an inch or an inch-and-a-half above the table itself and that your angle of regard is parallel to the tabletop. Just as landscapes are photographed or painted from some location on the land itself, so a tablescape is photographed from a location on the table itself.

This, in contrast, is NOT a tablescape, though a table is quite visible:

But I’m holding my camera in my hand so that I can get a particular shot. In this case, I’m interested in how the glimpse of the placemat you see through the carafe is displaced relative to what you see through the air (due to optics). Couldn’t get that shot in a tablescape.

There is an element of chance in taking a tablescape. Why? Because you can’t line up the photo in the normal way, either through a viewfinder or viewscreen. I suppose you could try, but it would be difficult, not terribly successful and not worth the effort. Fact is, the chance element is one reason for taking tablescapes. You don’t quite know what you’re going to see.

I doubt that I would ever have deliberately taken this photo, but as a tablescape it’s fine.

Or is it? And that’s why I’m taking these shots, to force me to think about each photo. Is this an image I want to keep, to show to others, why? When you shoot, say, the Empire State Building, which I can do quite easily, those questions don’t arise quite so insistently. Why not? Because the Empire State Building is an iconic structure and, as such, is certified photo-worthy. Shooting certified photo-worthy subjects is a no-brainer.

Here’s another tablescape:

Notice the expanse of the table itself in the foreground. That’s a typical feature of table shots. I cropped most of the table out in that first shot up there. Notice also in that first shot, I’m pointing out the window, where you see street lights in Hoboken and tall buildings in Manhattan. This shot, in contrast is pointed at the interior of the restaurant. Look at the upper left; looks like shadows of some plants cast on the side of a column. What plants, where? Notice the reflection of the carafe on the shiny surface of the table. There are shadows cast across the table as well.

Here’s one last tablescape, without comment: