Chili @ Chili's on a snowy day

My husband and I have a tradition of having chili at Chili's during the first snowfall of the year.  We missed the first snowfall, but made it today for the second.  Our excellent waitress, Sarah, didn't even mind the crazy lady with the camera.

The snow falling made the light outside the window super bright, so it took all my aperture to overcome the backlighting and get the chili to show up as well as it did.  I would have liked the chili to be a bit brighter, but I was traveling light and didn't have a flash along. 

What I really need was a bounce card, or a white piece of cardboard, to intercept the light coming in from the window and bounce it back into the bowl.  I would have placed it at camera left, just out of the frame to send some light into the deepest shadows under the bowl.  The other benefit to this is that I might have been able to close down the aperture a bit and blow out the window less.  Alas, I didn't have one with me.  It occurred to me as my husband was taking the last spoonful that I could have used my white paper napkin; because while the paper is a non-reflective surface, it could have helped a little bit. 

That's the thing about photography; you can learn something from every picture, and especially the ones that don't turn out as good as you would have liked. 

Ah well, it was a great lunch with good food and good company.  Cheers!

Canon 5D Mark II
75mm - ISO 200 
1/20s- f/5