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One Light Set-Up For Food Photography

19 Nov

One Light Set Up Food Photography-Darina Kopcok-DPS

When it comes to food photography, the natural light look is highly sought after.

However, it’s difficult to create consistency with natural light because the sun is always moving.

Most pro food photographers use artificial light to really take control of their lighting.

Using artificial lighting doesn’t have to be complicated, though.

Unless you’re doing some types of advertising or food product photography, you can get away with using just one light.

One light is ideal for shooting food for blogs, restaurants, and the editorials you see in popular foodie magazines. You can easily mimic window light, with one set of shadows on your food.

One Light Set Up Food Photography-Darina Kopcok-DPS

Types of Artificial Light

You can choose from several types of artificial light sources.

The most common approach is to use a strobe like a mono head, which is a self-contained flash unit.

If you’re shooting advertising or product, you need to get to high number F-stops like F/22 to achieve the sharpness required without getting lens diffraction that usually goes along with it.

For these types of shoots, you will need a lot of watt power and most likely you will need to rent powerful battery packs.

However, for editorial type shoots, all you need is a 500-watt strobe. You can even use a speedlight with the right modifier.

Some food photographers like to use a constant light, like an LED light panel, so they can see where the shadows are falling before they press the shutter.

One Light Set Up Food Photography-Darina kopcok-DPS

Before You Shoot

Before you shoot, you should think about what you want your final image to look like.

Do you want the light to look soft and airy, or are you looking for deep shadows and striking contrast?

Do you want your light to be soft or hard?

The more contrast you have between light and dark, the more dramatic your image will be.

Your subject will often dictate the style you choose. For example, ice cream has the connotation of summer and is usually brightly colored, thus soft light or a bright and bold look makes sense.

Whether you choose soft light or hard light, your light source should be diffused to give you a nice blur in the gradations where the light and dark meet.

One Light Set-Up For Food Photography-Darina Kopcok-DPS

Types of Lighting Styles

Side Lighting

One Light Set Up Food Photography-Darina Kopcok-DPS

Imagine the face of a clock.

If you picture your light placed at 9:00, this is side lighting.

It can also be placed at 3:00.

However, in the Western world, we read from left to right. Our eyes first gravitate to the brightest part of an image, so it makes sense for our light to be coming from our left-hand side.

This is not a hard-and-fast rule. Each side will affect how the light looks in your photograph, depending on your composition.

The next time you shoot, try taking a picture with your light positioned at 9:00, and then move your light to take a shot at 3:00. Notice the difference in your final result.

Side lighting is a good approach for a lot of food photography, as it works well for most set-ups.

Place a large softbox close to your table. The bigger your light source, the softer the light will be. Soft light is a desirable look in food photography.

Place a reflector or bounce card opposite to the light to bounce some of it back into your scene. Move it closer or farther away, depending on how much shadow you want. Even when shooting white or bright scenes, you still want some shadows to add dimension.

One Light Set Up Food Photography-Darina Kopcok-DPS

Side lighting

Backlighting

Backlighting is when you position your light behind your food, at 12:00.

This is a great choice for beverages and soups, as it adds a sheen and highlights texture and the liquid properties of food.

It can be very flattering to food, but it can also be challenging to work with because your image might be too bright and blown out at the back and too dark on the front. Or it can just look too washed out, which is what happens when you shoot with too much light.

You can also end up with too much reflection on the top of the food.

Backlighting also emphasizes drastic color contrasts that can be difficult to balance.

So be aware of these challenges when choosing to use backlighting.

Backlighting emphasizes texture

Side Backlighting

This is a combination of the two previously mentioned lighting styles, when your light is placed at 10:00 or 11:00.

With this style, you get the best of best worlds; the surface shine of backlighting without the risk of overexposure at the back of the photo. You also don’t have to reflect as much light onto the front of the food because the light is coming from an angle.

The reflector is opposite your light source.

The key is to play around with the height of the light relative to your scene, depending on how you want your shadows to fall.

Side Backlighting

Other Lighting Styles

At this point, it bears mentioning that there are a couple of lighting styles that don’t work for food photography.

Front lighting is often used in portraiture, but it looks terrible on food. It can cast unwanted shadows and your images will look flat and lack dimension.

Lighting from overhead also creates flat images.

Lighting Modifiers and Tools

The most commonly used modifier in food photography is the softbox. The larger, the better.

However, the most used modifier in my own arsenal is a dish reflector with a 20 or 30-degree honeycomb grid.

A honeycomb grid cuts off the light and narrows it, which creates stunning contrasts in food photography.

You also need a large diffuser when working with artificial light. If you’re using a strobe or a speedlight the explosion of light won’t fall off as quickly as it does with natural light, and will give you hard shadows if not diffused, which is usually not ideal.

Also, you’ll need something to bounce and absorb light.

You can buy a 5-in-1 reflector kit, which will have diffusion material as well as a silver reflector to brighten the food and a gold reflector to add warmth.

Alternatively, you can use black or white foam core. White will brighten your scene, while black will absorb the light. I use black in my dark and moody food photography to create deep shadows.

One Light Set Up Food Photography-Darina Kopcok-DPS

My Go-To Lighting Set-Up

I mentioned that I use a dish reflector with a honeycomb grid for my food photography.

You may be wondering what results you can get from shooting that way, but all of the images in this article were shots using this set-up.

The key to success in using this modifier is to have a large diffuser placed at the edge of your table and put the light one to two meters away, depending on how much light you need on your set.

This set-up will mimic window light beautifully because the diffuser actually becomes the light source, not the strobe. The bigger the diffuser the better, so as to keep unwanted light from spilling over the set. My diffuser is 150×200 cm/59x 79 inches!

One Light Set Up Food Photography-Darina Kopcok-DPS

In Conclusion

If you’re just starting to shoot with artificial light for food photography, focus on using side lighting until you feel more comfortable tackling backlighting.

With a bit of practice and some tweaks, you’ll finesse your set-ups to work best with your style of food photography.

Share with us in the comments below your food photography images and any other tips you may have.

The post One Light Set-Up For Food Photography appeared first on Digital Photography School.

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How to Make Easy and Affordable DIY Food Photography Backdrops

16 Nov

In this helpful video by Joanie Simon of The Bite Shot, she explains how to do DIY Food Photography Backdrops that are both affordable and easy. Costing you less than US$ 30 per backdrop!

Before beginning, please be sure to use your spray paints outdoors and always paint in a well-ventilated area.

Things you will need:

Laminated plywood
Paint scraper/palette knife
Joint Compound (used for drywalling)
Oil-based spray paint
Chalky finish acrylic paint
Acrylic or oil-based metallic spray paint.

When you pick out your paint, ensure that you choose paint that has a matte finish to stop glare and reflection.

Stick to colors that are subtle so that your food is the star. For example, browns, topes, cool greys, mossy green, and robins blue.

Step 1:

Use the scraper/palette knife to apply the Joint Compound to the board. Allow it to be organic and textural. Explore cross-hatching and mixed textures for different boards.

Let it sit for a few minutes and drag the palette knife across the applied compound to flatten it a bit while still leaving interesting grooves and patterns.

Let it dry overnight (24hrs).

Step 2:

Apply your darker peak-through color first (oil based spray paint). There is no need to apply full coverage as the other colors will be overlayed.

Step 3:

Next, brush on your chalky finish paint. You can use a short blending brush. Brush, stipple, use circular motions to blend over the previous color so that the peak through color still shows through.

If you put too much on, you can use a damp cloth to wipe the acrylic paint back off.

Step 4:

Take your colored spray paint and just spray sections from a distance to give light coverage for extra tone and texture.

Step 5:

Spray a little water onto your board and spray your oil-based metallic paint over it. The paint won’t adhere to the areas of water. Wait ten minutes for the paint to dry and once it is dry, wipe the water off. You are let with a really cool effect.

Step 6:

Take your other boards and play around with these techniques using your different tones and textures.

Step 7:

Apply a matte finish spray to your boards to protect the surface. 2-3 coats will do the trick.

Please share with us any of your DIY food photography backdrops in the comments below.

You may also find the following helpful for your food photography:

Food Photography – An Introduction

5 Tips to Seriously Improve Your Food Photography Techniques

Are You Making These Five Food Photography Mistakes?

Household Items to Bring to Your Next Food Photography Shoot

The Secret to Finding the Hero Angle in Food Photography

The post How to Make Easy and Affordable DIY Food Photography Backdrops appeared first on Digital Photography School.

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The Best Camera Gear for Food and Still Life Photography

04 Jul

I get a lot of questions about the gear I use in my food and still life photography, particularly from those just starting out in these genres. Buying the wrong equipment can be an expensive mistake. This is a list of the best camera gear I have found to work for me and a lot of the still life photographers that I know.

That being said, take the time to research what works for you and your budget. Also, think about your end goal. If you’re a blogger, your needs will be different than those of a photographer shooting product advertising.

still life of cake and coffee - The Best Camera Gear for Food and Still Life Photography

Cameras

First, you need to decide if you will use a camera with a cropped sensor or a full-frame camera. This will likely be determined by your budget.

A cropped sensor is cheaper for a camera manufacturer to make, which makes decent digital cameras available to a wide variety of consumers. Keep in mind that the focal length of your lenses will be different on a cropped sensor camera. For example, on a full-frame camera, a 50mm will behave like a 50mm. Put that same lens on a camera with a cropped sensor, it will behave more like an 80mm. Your shots will be nowhere near as wide.

Also, make sure that the camera you choose can shoot RAW images–not just JPEGs. If you intend to shoot professionally, file size matters. If your work is going to be printed, you need at least a 12-megapixel camera.

I shoot with a full frame Canon 5D Mark II.

As a food or still life photographer, you’ll find that you won’t need most of the bells and whistles that the modern digital cameras on the market offer. Look for the detail the camera will provide, especially if you’re shooting professionally. The camera should have several focus points and handle noise relatively well. It should also have a tethering feature. If you can afford a full-frame camera, I would invest in one right off the bat.

Lenses

Every camera manufacturer has a series of lenses for the amateur and another for the pro photographer. However, if you are a pro shooter, this doesn’t mean that you should only stick to a pro series, such as the Canon L-Series, for example. There are some good options without the hefty price tag that a pro series brings. That being said, lenses are where you should spend the majority of your budget and you should look at them as a long-term investment in your craft.

Your most pressing concerns when shopping for a lens is the sharpness, so your focus should be on prime lenses. Prime lenses are sharper than zoom lenses.

The Best Camera Gear for Food and Still Life Photography

An excellent lens to have in your kit is a 100mm macro lens. This lens is not just for macro or close up shots, although obviously, it’s great at this. By pulling further away from your set, you can get very nice portrait-style shots as well. The focal length will give you that lovely blurred background that is so coveted in food photography.

I have the consumer grade 100mm f/2.8 from Canon and it’s razor sharp. If you can only get one lens, this is the one I’d recommend.

I also recommend a zoom lens, such as a 24-70mm f/2.8 or 24-105mm f/4. I have both in Canon’s L-Series and find the 24-70mm much sharper than the 24-105mm. The 24-105mm is the kit lens when you buy a Canon 5D.
Although the 24-70mm is a zoom lens, I find it very sharp.

Lenses I use.

The 50mm can also be a useful lens, especially if you don’t have a zoom. This lens is good for overhead shots and tablescapes. For food and still life photography, 50mm is considered a wide angle lens. If you’re shooting only an item or two straight-on or at 45 degrees, you will likely have too much of the background and surface in your frame.

You will need to have large backgrounds if you use the lens this way. If you get a 24-70mm, then you can shoot your overhead shots by setting it at 50mm.

If you’re not sure which lenses you should get, try renting a couple. Check the sharpness and focal length before spending a large sum of money. Photographers have their own style and thus tend to shoot within a preferred range of focal lengths. For example, I am usually between 60-80mm on my full frame camera.

This food image was shot at 50mm (left) and another shot at 60mm (right). You can see the 50mm leaves too much negative space and the background is not big enough. These were shot with the camera in the exact same position, close to the scene, etc.

Studio Lighting and Modifiers

If you want to shoot food or still life professionally, you’ll need to master studio lighting. You can rent studio lights or buy your own. Even if don’t have your own studio, you will benefit from having your own lights if you can afford them. Many studio rental places don’t open early enough to allow you to transport and set up your camera gear before the arrival time of your client.

If you’re a blogger venturing into the world of artificial lighting, you may want to start with a continuous light, like an LED. I recommend that you do not get a set of those Lowel EGO lights that so many bloggers are crazy about. They are too bright and at the same time, don’t have enough spread.

You need to be able to work with strobes if you want to shoot professionally for clients. These are expensive lights, so try to make a good choice initially with these. Make sure they have at least 400 to 500Ws (stands for Watt-seconds, is a measurement of flash output) power and that you are able to modify the light with grids and softboxes.

An example lighting setup using a large softbox as the light modifier.

Great lights at a medium price are the Hensel Integra Pro plus 500, or my personal favorite, the Elinchrom ELC HD Pro 500w set. The Elinchrom monolights have clean and consistent light from shot to shot, and they fire fast enough to freeze motion or liquid splashes, a feature found in the high-end and pricey lighting systems.

For a cheaper system that is great to start with, check out the Bowens Gemini 500. The big benefit of using Bowens is that its S-mount is a common modifier mount, which allows you to use a variety of inexpensive modifiers with your strobes. In terms of modifiers, get at least one softbox in the largest size you can find and afford. The larger the softbox, the softer the light.

When shooting food and still life, you will also need a large diffuser to soften the light as it hits your subjects. I use a 59×79-inch diffusor placed right up against my set. This creates a large, soft light source and prevents any unwanted light from spilling onto the set.

Get a good reflector as well to bounce more light into shadowy areas when needed.

You can also use plain white boards as reflectors in tight spots. Get some clamps to hold them in place as I have done here.

Shot with a large soft light source.

Tripod

A tripod is necessary when shooting food, product, or still life images because the objective is very sharp photos. This often means shooting at lower shutter speeds, which can introduce camera shake into your images if you are hand-holding and working in natural light.

Shooting in these genres is about creating a scene, which is a process of building and assessing. You’ll find yourself constantly adjusting your set-ups, adding items or taking them away, or otherwise moving them around to get the perfect shot. This type of photography is not about catching a decisive moment, but about deliberately creating a visual story through the placement of objects. You need to compose to the camera.

Working with a tripod is also important if you are doing a series of shots and need consistency in your set-ups, or if you’re focus stacking or using scripts in Photoshop.

A tripod is essential for framing your shots.

Software

You will need a professional grade image editing software program to get the most out of your food or still life pictures. Adobe’s Lightroom can give you most of the tools you need to create awesome images at a relatively low price. It’s a powerful program that is intuitive and user-friendly. Not only does it have great editing capabilities, it also acts as an archive for all the image files you have on your hard disk.

Lightroom functions best as a global editor. It helps you make adjustments globally to the whole image. In contrast, Photoshop is a pixel editor. It helps you work with the actual pixels in a given image. There is a lot you can do in Photoshop that you can’t do in Lightroom, such as compositing (combining multiple images into one).

As a professional photographer, I do most of my editing in Lightroom. Then I take my images over to Photoshop to do what Lightroom cannot, or doesn’t do as well. Photoshop has the powerful tools that I need to give me the refined look I’m seeking.

Read my other article: How to Edit Food Photography Images Using Lightroom

The difference between the before and after images is subtle but processing your food images is important.

If you’re just starting out, Lightroom will deliver everything you need to make great pictures.

If you’re working on professional packaging design, Capture One Pro is mandatory. With this program, you can upload an overlay of the packaging artwork to determine where the elements in the image should sit on the packaging. It will make the shooting process go a lot faster and a creative director will likely expect you to work this way.

Shot and processed to be dark and moody.

Tethering

If you’re serious about food photography, you’ll need to shoot tethered.

Tethering is when you connect your camera to a computer via a USB cable so you’re able to view a larger rendition of your image in software such as Lightroom or Capture One Pro. Being able to see your images on the computer as you shoot them is hugely advantageous.

Photographing food and still lifes is a detail-oriented process. A misplaced sprig of basil can ruin your image or create hours of work for you in Photoshop. Such errors can easily be avoided when you can see your work brought to life on a much larger screen than your camera LCD can provide.

If you’re working with clients, they’ll expect you to be shooting tethered. Shooting food, in particular, is a collaborative process that often involves a creative director and a food stylist, who both play a role in the final composition of an image.

To tether to your computer, I recommend a gold-tipped USB cable called a High-Speed USB cable Type A to Mini B. The gold tips prevent them from corroding. Make sure that the cable is no more than 10-15 feet long. The longer ones tend to have problems transferring data. Always have at least a couple of them in your kit so you don’t get stuck, as things don’t always last as long as you’d hope.

Shooting tethered setup. You get to see the image on the computer screen shortly after you shoot it and it appears automatically when tethering is on.

Other Miscellaneous Items

Besides extra memory cards and batteries, there are a few other items you will need to invest in if you’re serious about food and still life photography. Here are the basics:

Shutter Release – This is a device that you connect to your camera to depress the shutter. Even if you’re working on a tripod, pressing the shutter can cause a small vibration that can introduce camera shake that will make your images less than sharp.
Backup Drives – Always back up your work to an external drive. Preferably more than one. Hard drives fail all the time, so you need at least two if not three copies of your files, kept in separate places. You should also be backing up while you work.
Backgrounds – Food and still life photography require backgrounds and surfaces to enhance the subject. These can be purchased expensively online, or you can make your own. One of my favorite style of backgrounds that I use repeatedly in my work is painted canvas. You can buy a large canvas painters drop cloth at a hardware store and cut it into pieces, which you can then paint to suit your needs. You can buy paint samples at the hardware store too. These painted pieces of canvas make inexpensive backgrounds that can be rolled up and put away without taking up a lot of space.
A Level – Another purchase from the hardware store is a small level, the kind you use in construction or when hanging pictures. A level placed on your camera once it’s set up will show you if your camera is straight. This is very important when taking overhead shots (like the one below).

pizza margherita_darina kopcok_DPS

In Conclusion

It’s easy to go crazy with equipment. Don’t fall into the trap that you need tons of the best camera gear to shoot properly. At the same time, don’t buy the cheapest version of what you need.

Quality is important and will take you a long way in getting the best shots you can. Start out with the bare necessities and invest as your budget allows.

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How to Create an Exploding Sandwich Food Photo

29 Jun

Here is a fun tutorial to try if you enjoy food photography. Anyone can photograph a sandwich on a plate, but you can you make it explode and capture all the layers in a photo? Here’s how it’s done as shown by photographer Skyler Burt.

How to do it

If you enjoyed that and want to brush up on your food photography in general, check out these dPS articles:

Are You Making These Five Food Photography Mistakes?
Five Essentials of Doing Dark Food Photography
4 Tips for Beginners to Food Photography
Household Items to Bring to Your Next Food Photography Shoot
The Secret to Finding the Hero Angle in Food Photography

The post How to Create an Exploding Sandwich Food Photo appeared first on Digital Photography School.

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How to Edit Food Photography Images Using Lightroom

22 Jun

To edit food photography it requires a bit of a different approach than you might take with other types of photography, like portrait or landscape. The objective is to keep the food looking as fresh and appetizing as possible, which can take a subtle but considered hand.

How to Edit Food Photography Images Using Lightroom

Before and after a subtle edit of a food photo.

Although there is always room for style and artistry, the more real your subjects look, the better. Lightroom is the program of choice for most food photographers. It’s intuitive and relatively easy to use and offers most of the tools required to make great food photos.

For this article, I will walk you through how I make global adjustments to a food image in Lightroom’s Develop module. Workflow is something that is individual to each photographer. This is how I approach editing my food photography, however, you may opt to do things differently. Hopefully, you will find some takeaways that will help you edit your own images.

I’ll be editing this image of an apple pie. This is the shot straight out of the camera. Like all RAW images, it lacks contrast and needs a bit of pizzaz.

Final image.

The Histogram

It’s important to have a basic understanding of the histogram in order to make adjustments to the exposure and tones in your image. The histogram is one of the key tools available for analyzing your image. It provides a graph of the density values of a given image. The histogram shows the relative quantity of pixels at each density value.

The far left point of the histogram is pure black and the densest, and the far right point is pure white with no density. A big peak in any of these regions means that the image has a lot of pixels at that particular density. An open gap in the histogram means that there are no pixels at that density.
How to Edit Food Photography Images Using Lightroom - histogram

The distribution of these tones will tell you about the overall exposure of the image. Most images look best if they contain both dark and light values. Generally, without some dark and light values, the image may lack contrast and look flat.

If you have a strong peak at the black or white end of the histogram, your image could be under or overexposed. However, it really depends on the individual image and the desired aesthetic. For example, blown out whites has become a “thing” in recent years. A dark and moody shot will have a lot of pixel density at the dark end of the spectrum.

Cropping

Before you can start making global adjustments to your image, it makes sense to crop and straighten it first. One tip is to shoot a bit wider than what you want for your end result so you can tweak your composition in post-production. You also may want to crop it to a certain aspect ratio – say 4×5 or square for Instagram.

First, make sure that your horizon line is straight.

My horizon line in the apple pie image was already pretty straight. I used the crop tool to check it and also brought the crop in slightly on the left-hand side to cut off a little bit more of the pie. To access the Crop Tool in Lightroom, click on the grid symbol under the Histogram in the top panel (or just hit R, the keyboard shortcut). This will allow you to crop your image by bringing in the corners with your cursor.

While this tool is activated you can click “O” for the shortcut to bring up several compositional overlays like the Phi Grid or Golden Spiral to help you get the most out of your composition.

How to Edit Food Photography Images Using Lightroom - crop your image first

Lens Corrections

How to Edit Food Photography Images Using Lightroom - lens corrections panel in LR

The Lens Corrections options fix optical distortion caused by the position of your subject in the frame, or where your camera is positioned relative to your scene. Lightroom supports a variety of lenses to automatically calibrate with this function.

I always check off Enable Profile Corrections before I start making adjustments to my image. Checking this box automatically brings up the camera profile for the lens used to create the image, in this case, the Canon EF 24-70mm.

White Balance

I recommend setting your White Balance in-camera or shooting with a gray card and adjusting it in post-processing. This removes incorrect color casts and ensures that your whites and colors render accurately.

How to Edit Food Photography Images Using Lightroom - eye dropped for WB in LR

You can correct your White Balance in Lightroom by taking the eyedropper tool (circled in red below) and clicking on an area in the image which appears neutral. This will the adjust the color temperature in the whole image, and you can tweak afterward if it’s not quite as you desire. It’s not as precise as the other options but can work well for food your food images.

Also, in food photography, White Balance can be used creatively, depending on your image. I tend to favor a cooler approach to my food photography. Cool colors give a crisp and fresh feeling to the image, which means I tend to edit more towards the blue or cyan.

Using the white balance eyedropper tool in Lightroom to color correct

Keep in mind that the goal is to make the food look as fresh and appetizing as possible, so you don’t want the food to look blue. Food photography looks best when there is a balance of tones. I keep my surfaces and props on the cool or neutral side and work with my food subjects individually to keep it as realistic looking as possible.

When composing my apple pie image, I chose a vivid blue background to complement the golden tones of the pie. Not only does this create a balance of tones, blue and yellow are opposite on the color wheel and are a great combination of colors for food photography.

After White Balance color corrections.

Exposure and Contrast

The next slider is Exposure, which affects the brightness of the range of tones in your image. To see bright or dark details, pull the Exposure slider to the left, or the Blacks slider to the right. If the bright areas look muddy, or the shadows still need more light, move the sliders to points where the image looks good overall.

I often make this adjustment initially and then may scale it back once I have made some other adjustments.

Contrast can be boosted in the Basic Panel or in the Tone Curve panel, which I will get to in a moment. It’s important to add some contrast, as RAW digital files are flat by nature.

After slight Exposure and Contrast adjustments.

Highlights, Shadows, Whites and Blacks Sliders

How to Edit Food Photography Images Using Lightroom - basic panel sliders

This panel is where you may end up doing a lot of tweaking before you settle on a look that you’re satisfied with. It will give you a more precise balancing of tones than simply relying on the Exposure slider.

In my shot of the apple pie, the highlights were too bright, and the shadows too light for the look I was aiming for, which was a darker mood. My style tends to be dark and moody with bright food. I brought the highlights down and boosted the whites, while also bringing down the shadows and blacks to create the ideal balance for the aesthetic I was going for.

After Highlights and Shadows were tweaked.

Clarity, Vibrance, and Saturation

Clarity is a most important slider in Lightroom when editing food photography. Clarity gives your image contrast in the mid-tones (edge details more specifically) and adds detail. You probably wouldn’t edit a portrait with +50 clarity, but you can easily do so with food photos. Keep in mind that overdoing the clarity can make food look dry and unappetizing. For this edit, I put my clarity at +42.

Vibrance is also an important slider in food photography post-processing. It’s a better tool for your edits than saturation because it’s is more subtle. It tends to adjust the less saturated colors without intensifying the ones that are already saturated.

The difference between Vibrance and Saturation is that it affects the intensity of the colors. Red becomes redder, green becomes greener, and so on. Vibrance will first boost the saturation of the muted colors and then the other colors. It adjusts the less saturated tones without over-saturating the ones that are already saturated. Whether you use Saturation depends on the image and the look you are going for, but in general, a conservative approach is what works best when editing food photography.

Clarity, Vibrance and Saturation adjusted.

It’s easy to quickly overdo the Saturation and make your image look ugly. If I use the slider at all, I might only nudge it up a tad to about +5 or +6. You’ll notice that I actually brought down the Saturation slightly in this image, so the blue looks a little less intense.

Tone Curve

The Tone Curve is often challenging to new users, but it’s one of the most powerful tools that Lightroom has to offer. Getting in-depth with it is beyond the scope of this article, but let’s look at the basics.

The Tone Curve is a graph that maps out where the tones in your images lie. The bottom axis of the Tone Curve starts with Shadows at the far left side and ends with Highlights on the far right end. The mid-tones fall in the middle, in a range from darker to lighter. The tones get darker as you move lower, and brighter as you move up the axis.

Assess the mid-tones in your image. Are they bright already? If not, click on the middle of the tone curve and bring the point up. If they are already bright or too bright, bring the curve down slightly. Move on to the rest of your image. Typically you will find that your curve looks somewhat like a soft S (see screenshot below).

You can control the lightness and darkness of your tones by adjusting the Point Curve itself or by Region Curve. The Region has sliders for each part of the tonal range. As you drag each slider, the curve and the image both change.

To make adjustments with the Point Curve, click on the area you want to affect to create an anchor point at which to control the tone. Dragging the point up lightens that tone; dragging it down darkens the tone.

After Curves.

You will also notice that there is an RGB option in the lower-right portion of the point curve. This helps you to individually edit the Red, Green, and Blue channels. It performs the same types of adjustments to brightness and darkness, but on each separate color. This can be utilized if you want to edit a color individually, or give your image a certain type of color overall.

To choose tones directly from the image, there is a handy tool called the Targeted Adjustment Tool. This is located in the top left of the Tone Curve.

Click on it and move the cursor over the image. The tool shows you the tones under the crosshairs. If you click and drag it up and down the image, you will affect the tones like those under the crosshairs. For example, if you drag vertically on an area with light pixels, all of your image’s highlights will be adjusted.

If you’re getting started with learning the Tone Curve, play around with the Region sliders and take note of how the various sliders affect the curve. Whichever approach you choose, be sure to watch the histogram as you make changes, to ensure that you are not losing important detail.

HSL Adjustments

HSL stands for Hue, Saturation, and Luminance. This is where you balance the colors in Lightroom. However, color adjustments are usually more subjective than tonal adjustments, as color gives a photograph a sense of mood.

There are two ways to make color adjustments in this panel; you can adjust them all at once under HSL/All, or each color individually under the Color tab at the top of the panel.

The Hue tab or section is where you choose how warm or cool you want each color in your image to be. For example, I find that greens almost always look off, so I slide the greens slightly more towards the left or right to get them looking more realistic. To add more warmth, that is, more yellow to your greens, slide it to the right. For a cooler hue, sliding it to the right will add more blue.

Whereas the Saturation slider in the basic panel adjusts the color of the whole image, the saturation sliders here adjust each color individually.

If you adjust a color to be more saturated, then it will affect the saturation of that particular color throughout the whole photo. Whether you’re working in the basic panel or the HSL panel, saturation requires a light hand.

In the image of the apple pie, I thought that the blue looked a bit more on the magenta side, so I slid it towards the left. This hue gave me a blue that worked better with the orange tones in my picture.

Lastly, Luminance affects the brightness of the color. I find these sliders more valuable than the saturation sliders and work with these first.

After HSL adjustments have been applied.

Working in Lightroom is all about balance, and the same goes when working with the Hue, Saturation, and Luminance adjustments.

Noise

Noise is the grain that can appear throughout an image. It’s not often a problem when you are shooting with artificial lights, but when working with natural light, grain can appear in your images if you are shooting at a higher ISO or you didn’t get enough light onto your sensor.

Working with the Noise slider in Lightroom will minimize the grain and give your image a smoother look. But, be careful not to push the slider too high, as it can result in a plastic look. For the apple pie, I set the Noise at +20, as it was shot in studio with a strobe.

Post-Crop Vignetting and Dehaze

If you are editing a darker, moodier image, Post-crop Vignette is a must. By darkening the outer corners of the frame, you draw the viewer’s eye towards the center of the image and your subject.

To darken, move your slider to the left. The midpoint slider controls how far in the dark edges get to the center of your photo. Feather controls how soft or hard your vignette will look. A softer vignette looks more appealing than a hard, “spotlight” effect.

Vignette applied.

Sharpening

Sharpening should be the last editing step. It adds contrast between pixels and edges, thereby adding definition and creating a more refined look.

NOTE: It’s not meant to make a blurry image look sharp!

Also, sharpening should not be applied to the whole image. In food photography, there is not much of a point in sharpening the props and the background, etc. The focus is on the food, therefore, this is what we sharpen.

To do this in Lightroom, mask out the image to select the areas of the image you want to sharpen rather than sharpening the whole image. You do this by holding down the Alt/Option key (it will show you where the sharpening is being applied, the white areas) while clicking on Masking in the Sharpening panel. Slide it to the right. The farther right you go, the less of the image it will sharpen. For my image, I left it at +76.

Also read: How to Make Your Photos Shine Using Clarity, Sharpening, and Dehaze in Lightroom

In Conclusion

So here is the final image! Not drastically different than what I began with, but overall a more balanced and refined looking photo and consistent with my style of food photography.

Before and after editing. Note how subtle the differences are here.

When it comes to post-processing your food photography, the best advice I can give is that whatever your style, strive for a natural look for your subject. Ask yourself this question, “Looking at this image, do I want to eat that food?”

The answer should unequivocally be yes! If so, you’ve done a good job.

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Are You Making These Five Food Photography Mistakes?

03 May

There are some common mistakes photographers make when starting to shoot food. Are you guilty of these five food photography mistakes?

There is a saying that if you can shoot food, you can shoot anything. Some would disagree with this, as every genre of photography has its own challenges. However, food can be very difficult to shoot purely for the reason that it dies in front of the camera so quickly.

One minute your towering stack of pancakes causes your salivary glands to go into overdrive, the next minute you wouldn’t feed the pancakes to the dog. Despite what many an Instagram account would have us believe, a lot of food is not really that good-looking. It’s up to the photographer and usually a food stylist and a whole team of people to create the drool-worthy images you see in cookbooks and magazines.

peach tarts - Are You Making These Five Food Photography Mistakes?

Great food photography is about planning and considering all the details up front. It is also a process of constant problem-solving. Thinking through the key aspects that make up a great food photograph before picking up your camera will go a long way towards helping you get the best results.

#1 – Bad Light

As with any form of photography, the most important principle is light. Without light, you’d have nothing. This is why photography is often referred to as “painting with light”. Whether you are using natural or artificial light, the approach you take with your lighting will make or break your photographs.

Often what separates the professional food photographers from hobbyists is their keen understanding of the physics of light and how to manipulate it to get the effect they want. If a client wants you to shoot their orange juice product to look like it was taken early in the morning on a sunny day and you live in rainy London, you will have to know how to recreate that light.

Are You Making These Five Food Photography Mistakes? - breakfast sandwich

Lighting is not just about getting enough light onto your subject. As long as you have some light, you can get a decent shot with a longer exposure. Good lighting is also a matter of correct light.

For example, a common issue is restaurant photography where the indoor lighting contaminates the scene, creating unwanted color casts, particularly in the highlights. This can be difficult to fix in post-processing but can be avoided by overpowering the ambient light with a flash system, such as a speedlite, or flagging (blocking) the top to keep the unwanted light from hitting your set.

#2 – Poor Composition

Image composition is an art form in itself. Apart from light, it’s one of the most difficult aspects of food photography to master. It can take years for composition to become second nature to you. Going in-depth on this is beyond the scope of this article, but there are some things to be aware of that can help you improve your compositions right away.

To start with, keep it minimal. Your main subject with a couple of supporting elements, like a prop and a square of linen is all you need. Use three to five elements in your composition. Using odd numbers while composing your scene will add more symmetry and balance than even numbers, which can create competition between the elements and divide the viewer’s attention.

Are You Making These Five Food Photography Mistakes? - cinnamon buns

Think about the textures in your scene. Adding texture in terms of your props or surfaces and backgrounds, or even supporting ingredients such as seasonings or garnishes can really elevate the simplest food image.

Another tip is to keep your surfaces and background neutral. Bright colors will detract from the food and even cast unwanted tones onto the food.

#3 – Incorrect Angle of View

Before beginning to shoot, it’s crucial to decide on the best angle to shoot your food scene. The right choice will depend on your subject.

Foods with several layers, like burgers or stacks of pancakes, look best when shot at eye level, so every element can be seen. On the other hand, flat foods like pizza and cookies look best shot from overhead or at 90 degrees, as this angle puts everything on an even plane and brings a graphic element to the subject.

This is a great angle for tablescapes or other scenes where there are numerous elements that might not otherwise fit into the frame.

Are You Making These Five Food Photography Mistakes? - pizza shot

Another popular angle is forty-five degrees or three-quarters view. This angle works in many situations with many types of food. It works with most focal lengths and the main subject’s shape, height and texture are displayed.

fettuccine with peas - Are You Making These Five Food Photography Mistakes?

One angle I would rarely recommend is a low camera viewpoint, where the camera is aimed slightly upwards. You sometimes see this in burger advertisements, but it rarely works for most types of food subjects.

#4 – Incorrect Focus

When approaching a shoot, you also need to be aware of where the sharpest focus should land. Typically this will be more toward the front of the food. In addition, think about how much of that area should be in focus. This will influence the f-stop (aperture) you choose.

I rarely shoot any lower (wider) than f/5.6 for my food compositions, as I find not enough of my subject will be in focus otherwise. When shooting food, the objective is to show off the food and make it look its best, which won’t happen if most of it is blurry.

Once you have taken your shot (preferably with your camera tethered to your laptop) check your focus at 100% magnification. Make sure focus is where you want it and the depth-of-field is not too shallow.

chia pudding_darina kopcok_DPS

Also, calibrating your lens to your camera will ensure that you are not missing focus due to technical issues.

#5 – Cropping Incorrectly

The beauty of digital photography is that you can sometimes address issues that you have encountered during your shoot in post-processing. One example of this is using the crop overlay tools in Lightroom or Photoshop to finesse your compositions. However, image crop is a point that needs to be addressed when shooting.

Common mistakes new food photographers make is shooting the main subject too close, to the point the viewer doesn’t understand what is being portrayed. Or the cropping is too tight to show the food in its best way.

In the image below, the Indian-spiced prawns look much better when the scene is shot wider and includes a couple of elements that they’d be eaten with, like naan bread and chutney. The closer shot lacks movement and flow and is overall less appealing.

indian prawns - Are You Making These Five Food Photography Mistakes?

When shooting, try a couple of different crops and see which looks best. Also, a good tip is to shoot your scene wider than you want it to look in the final image so you can use the crop guides in your post-processing program of choice to improve your composition.

croissants - Are You Making These Five Food Photography Mistakes?

Hopefully, these tips will help you plan for your next food shoot. Let me know in the comments some of the challenges you’ve faced with your own food photography and how you’ve overcome them. What food photography mistakes have you made?

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How To Cook Great Tasting Food Like A Pro

01 Mar

Whether you’re a brand new cook or an experienced one, there are plenty of sources of frustration in the kitchen. No matter what your cooking skills are like, little annoyances can make preparing a meal much more stressful. Here are some cooking tips that will help preparing your meals go a little more smoothly.

When cooking any recipe, use the best ingredients that you can afford. Splurge a little on imported cheeses or better quality meats when you can, so that you can experience a restaurant, quality-tasting meal at home. To enhance the experience even further, try to creatively plate up the meal with a little thought, for something different every now and then.

Being properly prepared is key to success in cooking for your family and friends. Make sure you have everything you need to make your food. Plan out your cooking the day before. Make sure all the necessary utensils are clean and ready to use.
This will limit the amount of stress you experience when cooking the meal and help to ensure that you are able to cook the masterpiece you want.

Olive oil is one of the most important investments that you can make during the course of your cooking career. Find a high quality brand of olive oil and add this ingredient to a variety of different foods. This oil will help bring out the taste in pasta, fish and meat.

When you are seasoning a salad, add a small dose of olive oil in addition to natural sea salt. This will help to give your salad a crunchy appeal even after you add the dressing. Keeping your salad as crunchy as possible will create a feeling of freshness upon consumption.

There are plenty of things you can do to take the stress out of cooking. Now that you’ve read this article, you have plenty of advice you can apply the next time you head to the kitchen. Now that you have these tips, you may find you’re willing to try cooking something a little more challenging.

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Five Essentials of Doing Dark Food Photography

23 Jan

Over the last several years, several identifiable trends have developed in the world of food photography, including one towards dark, moody images, often with a rustic feel. These photographs call to mind the interplay of light and shadow in the paintings of the Old Masters, such as those by Vermeer and Rembrandt.

The style is often referred to “chiaroscuro” photography, a painting term borrowed from the art world. It means “light-dark” and refers to the contrast between the shadows and light in an image. The technique guides the viewer’s eye to a specific area in the frame and creates a dramatic mood. Mystic Light is another phrase used to describe this dark and moody style.

However, a dark style won’t necessarily suit every image. Sometimes a dark, shadowy approach is not appropriate to your subject. Developing strong food photography requires thinking about the purpose of your image. Your lighting, props, styling, and camera settings all work together in service of the story you are trying to convey.

Chili - dark food photography

For example, in the image above, I imagined someone sitting down at a farmhouse to eat a bowl of chilli on a cold winter’s day. I envisioned that the light was spilling in from a window onto my scene. This food story is one that I often use in my work, in one form or another, and chiaroscuro is the perfect style to bring it to life, as it arouses the emotions of the viewer.

So let’s take a closer look at how you can apply the chiaroscuro style to your food photography.

Dark Props and Backgrounds

The idea in dark food photography is to keep the background in shadow and draw the viewer’s attention to the main subject—what in food photography we call the “hero”. Therefore, a selection of dark or muted props, surfaces, and backgrounds is vital. White or light dishes and props will draw the eye away from the food and create too much contrast, which is distracting and can also be difficult to expose correctly.

Utensils - Five Essentials of Doing Dark Food Photography

When sourcing props, look for vintage utensils with a patina, which will not reflect the light as much as new ones. Matte dishes will also be less reflective, and are best in darker, neutral tones. Reflections can be hard to manage and cause a lot of problems in food photography.

Some good places to look for these items are thrift shops and vintage or flea markets, where you can find them for a fraction of the price you would pay for them new. Many food photographers use old, mottled cookie sheets in their work, which create a stunning surface or background, which subtly reflects the light without being to bright.

Wood is also a great material to utilize, both in the background and as props. It is easy to work with and lends a rustic feel. You can use weathered items such as an old cabinet door or tabletop. Ensure that whichever wood you use isn’t too warm toned. It will look quite orange in the final images and therefore unflattering to the food. A deep espresso color always looks great.

Charcuterie - Five Essentials of Doing Dark Food Photography

Food Styling

You will most often find the dark food photography style in editorial as opposed to advertising work. Advertising photography is meant to look perfect, with highly stylized food. Anyone who has ever seen a fast food burger ad and compared it to a real burger knows what I’m talking about.

But editorial food photography, such as that found in cookbooks and foodie magazines, has a looser, more candid style. The food is often perfectly imperfect, with scattered crumbs or artfully placed smears and drips, as if it has been freshly prepared or someone has just begun to tuck in.

This is not to say there is no deliberate effort in the styling because there is. The line between rustic and real and downright sloppy is a fine one. It takes a practiced hand to make food styling look casual and random.

Carrot Ginger Soup - Five Essentials of Doing Dark Food Photography

In the image of carrot ginger soup above, I gently swirled cream on the surface and carefully placed the croutons off-center to create a focal point. I garnished it with pepper and thyme leaves, which I also scattered on my surface with a thought to the composition.

In reality, one’s dinner table would hardly look like this, but for the purposes of food photography, such extra touches give an honest, storytelling quality and enhance the main subject, which in this case is the soup.

When approaching styling, think about the ingredients used in the recipe you are shooting. Ask yourself how you can incorporate some of them into your image in a way that makes sense and complements your hero.

Lentil Soup

Carving the Light

When producing darker images, it is imperative to carve and shape the light to bring attention to your main subject. You will need to determine how you want to light your image and where you want the shadows to fall. For moody images, I often use side and backlighting. My light placement is at about 10:00 if I am imagining the face of an analog clock as my set.

It’s best to use indirect lighting so no lights pointing directly at the set or food. In the case of natural light, placing the surface at an angle to the window.

Use small black reflector cards, like black cardboard or poster board cut into squares, to kick in shadows where you want them, and place them around your set depending on where you want to cut down the light. Alternatively, you can roll up pieces of black poster board and staple the ends together; these rolls can stand on their own and do not need to be propped up against anything.

Mushroom Toast - Five Essentials of Doing Dark Food Photography

In the images above, I wanted the mushrooms to be bright and catch some of the light, especially as the look was monochromatic, yet I wanted shadows to fall on the plate. I used side backlighting and a black card from the front, angled into my scene to create shadows in the front and absorb some of the light that was coming directly into my scene.

You will have to play around with different sizes and placements of the reflector cards to get the shadows where they work with your story.

Exposure

Typically, with chiaroscuro food photography, you want to slightly underexpose the image in the camera. Chiaroscuro can have very bright treatment of food with very deep shadows, or the image can be low key with not a lot of contrast. Whichever approach you choose, the main subjects should be placed in the brightest part of the frame, which attracts the eye first. Make sure the highlights are not blown out and the shadows are not too black with no detail.

Olive Oil -Five Essentials of Doing Dark Food Photography

It is best to work with a tripod, especially if you are shooting in natural light in less than ideal conditions. Instead of boosting the ISO and risking a high amount of noise, you can increase the exposure time when using a tripod. As long as you have some light, a long exposure allows you to take a properly exposed picture.

Using the timer or a remote shutter trigger will prevent camera shake and an image that is less than sharp. The focus should be on the main subject, however, the image needs to be exposed for the concept, mood, and story.

Post-Processing

The right post-processing for dark food photography will really make your image pop.

Using the luminance sliders in Lightroom or Camera RAW to brighten colors individually. Use global and local adjustments to bring out the best in the food, instead of bumping up the exposure in the whole image, which can cause your shadows to fall flat.

Lentil Soup - Five Essentials of Doing Dark Food Photography

And remember, warm colors bring elements forward, whereas cool colors recede. The best food photography has a balance of both, as it gives a three-dimensional feel to your image. With chiaroscuro food photography, white balance and tint can be used creatively, since you are not using white dishes and backgrounds. Split-toning can also be used to great effect, as long as it is done with subtlety.

Finally, no matter how you carve the light, a bit of a vignette adds a bit more mystery. It also prevents the eye from wandering out of the frame by bringing you back to the brightest part of the image — the food.

Conclusion

So there you have it, my top tips for making dark and moody food photography images!

I’d love to hear if you’ve had a chance to experiment with this approach to food photography. What were your struggles? Please share your experience and images in the comments below.

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How to Make Food Photos Look Tastier with Luminar

05 Dec

When it comes to food photography, photo editing is at least half of the battle. Sure, there’s an art to styling and shooting food so that it looks yummy right out of the camera. But more often than not, it pays to spend a little time sprucing up that photo in post-production. There are lots of popular photo editing tools out there, but lately, I’ve been preferring Luminar by Macphun, soon to be Skylum.

Simple and straightforward to use, you can enhance any food photo in Luminar right out of the box. Here’s how to get started. I should be clear that this is my personal food photography editing workflow. Feel free to make adjustments and edits to your own taste (pun intended) and preferences.

How to Make Food Photos Look Tastier with Luminar

The final image, edited in Luminar.

Get Started

First, open a photo in Luminar. You can open an image three ways; by clicking the blue Open Image button on the welcome screen, by going to File > Open, or by dragging and dropping an image on the welcome screen.After your image is open, take a look around at the software’s interface.

The top bar contains a variety of useful tools such as crop, transform, and undo, plus unique features like clone and stamp, erase, and a handy history menu which lets you scroll back through every edit you’ve made to an image. There’s also a button to give a quick preview of changes made to your image, and even a compare slider showing the image before and after editing.

1. Apply a Luminar Preset

On the bottom row of Luminar, you’ll find a menu of presets, which are essentially filters, with predetermined settings. (Note: if the presets are not showing click the icon third from the right in the top toolbar.) There are dozens of presets to choose from and they’re sorted by category. In the default version of the software, there’s not a specific category for food photos, but the Basic presets will do just fine (and as you go, you can create your own custom presets).

Selecting a preset automatically applies the edits intended by the designer of the preset. In the sandwich image below, the Fix Dark Photos preset has been applied. Directly over the preset is a slider that allows you to adjust the intensity of that preset. On the right side, a panel opens up showing what aspects of the photo have been edited. You can go in and fine-tune the adjustments to taste using the sliders.

Luminar Apply Preset - How to Make Food Photos Look Tastier with Luminar

2. Open up the Filters Catalog

Applying a preset will get your photo off to a great start, but you’ll often need to make a few micro adjustments to your image.

To do this, click on the Add Filters button in the right-hand corner. This will open up the Filters Catalog, offering you tons more editing tools. Hovering your mouse over a filter will result in a pop-up window that explains the filter’s effect and shows an example thumbnail image (as seen below).

Luminar Add Filters - How to Make Food Photos Look Tastier with Luminar

Here I’m adding the Dodge & Burn Filter.

Finding and Sorting Filters

There several tools in the catalog that will help you find the filters you need. First is the search bar where you can type in a filter name. Below that is a drop-down menu that lets you see filters according to their usage, such as Issue Fixers, Essential, and Creative. Finally, you can star or favorite your most-used filters to make them easier to find. For food photos, I stick to pretty basic filters that add minor adjustments.

Below, I’ve applied a Dodge and Burn filter to darken (burn) some of the sandwich bread. I also added a Denoise filter to reduce some of the grain in the black background.

Luminar Dodge and Burn - How to Make Food Photos Look Tastier with Luminar

3. Crop the Image

After applying a preset and fine-tuning with filters, I’m feeling pretty good about the color and lighting of my image. All that remains is cropping the image. To do this, click on the Tools menu in the top bar and select Crop. This will reveal a cropping interface with guidelines, a collection of crop preset,s and the ability to rotate the image if you like.

In this case, I cropped in just a bit to put more emphasis on the sandwich and remove the bit of food on the right.

Luminar Crop - How to Make Food Photos Look Tastier with Luminar

The Crop tool in Luminar.

4. Clone and Stamp

Almost there! Now that I’ve cropped the image to my liking, there are a few messy spots that I want to erase. Time to clone and stamp! This feature is also in the Tools drop-down menu where you found Crop.

In this workspace, Clone & Stamp works very similarly to other image editors such as Photoshop and Lightroom. Simply hold down the Option key and click on an area you want to copy pixels from. Then click (paint) over the object you want to remove or replace. In the photo below, a few messy spots on the bread have been clone stamped, as well as part of the black shirt background.

Luminar Clone Stamp food editing - How to Make Food Photos Look Tastier with Luminar

Clone tool for fixing a few messy bits.

5. Save, Export, Share, or Open Image in another platform

When you’re done editing your food photos in Luminar, you have several options for saving and sharing images.

One option is to go to File –> Save As. Just note that this will save your image in a Luminar 2018 native format (.lmnr) so that you can continue to fully edit and adjust the same image later. If you choose you can save all the layers and the history for this image in the .lmnr file.

Luminar Save As - How to Make Food Photos Look Tastier with Luminar

Saving as a .lmnr file.

If you want to save in another file format such as a JPG, you’ll have to Export. This brings up a dialogue box where you can specify file size, format, quality, and the location of the saved image.

Luminar Save - How to Make Food Photos Look Tastier with Luminar

Your final option for saving images is to share them directly to online platforms such as Facebook or 500px. It’s necessary to sign into your individual accounts to connect them to Luminar, but once you do so, sharing them directly to other websites is a snap.

You can also open the image in another image editing platform such as one of Macphun’s many other programs (i.e. Aurora HDR).

In Conclusion

Whether you’re trying to fix or spruce up a food photo, Luminar by Macphun, soon to be Skylum, is a great photo editing platform. Not only does it have a wide range of adjustable presets, but it also has basic and advanced tools that both amateur and pro photographers will appreciate.

Download a free trial of Luminar and give it a go! Post your food photo results in the comments below.

Final, edited photo.

Disclaimer: Macphun, soon to be Skylum, is a dPS advertising partner.

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Weekly Photography Challenge – Play with Your Food

04 Nov

Your mother may have told you not to play with your food, but this week you have our permission.

Shot I did in New Orleans – very famous coffee and donuts.

I recently shared some video tutorials with food photography tips – check those out if you need help.

Here are some other dPS articles on the topic if you want more tips and ideas:

4 Tips for Beginners to Food Photography
The Secret to Finding the Hero Angle in Food Photography
8 Tips for Food Photography Newbies
How to Take Cool Food Photos in Your Refrigerator
Household Items to Bring to Your Next Food Photography Shoot
5 Tips for More Professional-Looking Food Photography
5 Tips That Will Make Your Food Photos Stand out from the Crowd
Using Focus Creatively with Food Photography

I used to do food photography commercially – a long, long, time ago! Here are some of my tips:

Don’t forget your fruit and veggies – even still in the tree or on the vine.

Food in its raw form including still on the tree works!

Not quite on the tree. I added the hands here to add interest and show scale, as well as the inside of this nut.

Add a human element or photograph the preparation of the food as well as the finished product.

The making of the iced coffee.

Add a human element for interest. Yes I did drink it and yes it was amazing!

Get the light right. The most common placement or direction of light with food photography is to have the light actually coming from behind the food. It makes it look shiny and more appetizing that way. Like this Colombian ajiaco soup.

Play with angles, light, and composition. Don’t just take one shot.

I wanted to show how full the table was here so I used this overhead angle. This is shot I did for a hotel in Nicaragua showcasing the breakfast they serve.

I took a lower camera angle here to show the setting of where the breakfast is served.

Here I added the human element and motion with the juice pour.

Now it’s your turn!

Weekly Photography Challenge – Food

Simply upload your shot into the comment field (look for the little camera icon in the Disqus comments section) and they’ll get embedded for us all to see or if you’d prefer, upload them to your favorite photo-sharing site and leave the link to them. Show me your best images in this week’s challenge. Sometimes it takes a while for an image to appear so be patient and try not to post the same image twice.

Share in the dPS Facebook Group

You can also share your images on the dPS Facebook group as the challenge is posted there each week as well.

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