Playing with Food

I attended a short half day food photography crash course. The concept was most interesting.

You attend the course in a restaurant. There is a quick thirty minutes talk on what are the best techniques to apply  when shooting food from different angles. They showed some fine examples of good photos with food photos and show you how you can shoot like that.

They would serve a  selection of food in various intervals. You can take as many photos of the served dish as you can, eat it and wait for the next course. In the process,the instructors would go around giving tips to improve your shots and there is a competition at the end to see who took the best pictures.

There was about a twenty five participants.

Man. This is where I realised food photography is so different from landscape, candid or architectural shots.  As you shoot, sometimes in marco mode, everything is shown very clearly. Any hints of pepper, salt, sauces  can be clearly seen. Any "blemish" would be vividly shown on the photographs.

Let me share with you some of the takeaways from the session:

1) No flash

Never apply flash when you take pictures of food. In a photo,the flash kills the texture of the food you take.

2) Light must be coming from behind the dish

Make sure the source of the lighting is coming from behind the food/dish. This is how to make sure the subject (fo0d) gets plenty of light so the photos taken would not be too dark.

3) Organise the food

Make arrangement to the food. Eg. Make sure everything on the plate is in place and neat.

4) Never take the entire picture of the dish

Focus on the part you want to convey a message. Most of the time the most delicious part.

5) Provide balance

For example, if you are taking pictures of a nice burger, dont forget to include the fries in the frame.

6) The photo must tell a story

They make the picture look more delicious!

7) Crop

Take away empty spaces if you are doing post processing

8) Dare to experiment

Play with different angles and arrangements to get the best effect

Have fun shooting and eating!

 

 

Comments

[FangFang]

That's really helpful information, I'll try that the next time!

[Elisa]

Helpful, thanks :) I recently switched to EOS 500D aswell, so photographic experiments are fun² now.

[Shanghai Halfpat]

Hey, where did you take the short half day food photography crash course (what a mouthful!)?

[joan]

that's interesting that the lighting should be from behind the food.. i'll have to try that next time! :) sounds like it was a fun course.