Simple and Affordable Tools, Techniques & Accessories to Improve Your Food Photography: Part II

A lot of bloggers and even some friends who like photography asked to see the presentation I did with Alice Currah last month at BlogHer Food 2011. I promised I would put up an abbreviated version on the blog, so here is the second part. This is where it gets fun!


In Part II, Alice and I talked about techniques for improving your food photography. As you well know, technique is not something you can buy, it's something you learn and refine over time. A lot of these suggestions might make you groan, but if you are serious about stepping up the quality of the photography on your blog, the following are good places to start.

Shooting in manual is one of the best techniques for getting the photographs you want, but the idea of manual strikes fear in the hearts of new photographers. Trust me, I avoided it at all costs until I saw too many photos being ruined by uncontrolled exposure. By shooting in manual mode you are setting both the aperture and shutter speed and each shot will have the same exposure. Think about manual as healthy communication between you and your camera. Your camera can't read your mind, you have to communicate your needs to it, and that is by turning to that little "M".  Manual also makes editing your photos easier as the exposures are consistent. 

Flashes are great for paparazzi photos, but not for your food photos. Unlike the celebutante of the moment, food doesn't look good with a bright flash that removes all shape and leaves bright, specular highlights. It's any easy technique to practice though--simply disable your flash.

Shooting by a window with bright, open light coming in is a good place to start to improve the quality of light in your food photographs. It gives you a nice even light that is directional and gives your food shape. The next best choice is outside in open shade or subdued light. You will again get even light, but a little less shape to the food. Outside you can hold a white card over the food to give the light some direction. Try to avoid using direct sun unless it's part of your aesthetic.

Here is a shot of Alice's home studio set up using natural light.

Here is my home studio set up, also using natural light.

As I mentioned in Part I of the food photography presentation, a lot of people expressed that their biggest challenge is shooting in the evening in low light or no light. I showed you two different artificial lights that you can use to create light that looks pretty good. Here is what the final, unretouched photos looked like. 

Here is what the set up using the garage clamp light looked like. There is a piece of white vellum taped to the light (be careful it's not touching the bulb). The light and the reflector were directly across from each other and the other lights in the kitchen were turned off.

Your camera picks up on the color of light, even though your eyes adjust to it. Sometimes your camera balances for color correctly, and sometimes it doesn't. If you find yourself with an odd color cast in your photos try to use one of the white balance settings found in the advanced menu of most cameras. For instance, if you are shooting in fluorescent light you can get a green cast to the food. So set the camera on the fluorescent setting and you should get a properly balanced photo. Another quick and dirty way to get white balance is to put a white napkin or bowl into the photo. It helps your camera figure out what is going on with the light.
If you want to get fancy, you can put a white balance card in one frame, and then use your white balance selector in Lightroom (the eyedropper tool) to select the gray portion (your camera is looking for medium gray to balance) of the card in that first frame. You then copy that white balance setting to the rest of the frames. Let me know if you need some further explanation on this.  

Lastly, this is more of a matter of opinion, but shooting at the widest aperture (the lowest number) is not always the best way to show off your food.  A wide aperture gives you a really shallow depth of field and sometimes you want to show a little more of your dish than the narrow strip that f2.8 affords you. After all, our eyes don't see things in shallow depth of field, we constantly scan an object and put all the details together into one well-rounded image. For instance, if you are photographing a pie and want to show the details that you cut into the top crust, you might want to try using f5.6 or f8 to get as much of the crust in focus as possible. That being said, if you are writing about the sugar rim on a martini glass and want to focus on only that, then f2.8 would be perfectly appropriate. Just use your judgement and don't use f2.8 just because you are too lazy to get out your tripod. :) (What? Of course I don't know that from personal experience. No way!) 


Next post we'll talk more about the artistic side of things, focusing on accessories and Alice's personal approach to food photography.