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.  

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

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 goes. Seeing as we had a ton of slides, I'll probably break it up into two or three posts.

This presentation was aimed at beginning food bloggers and photographers, so let's start with the basics of photography, then move on to Tools.
Next week I'll pick up with Techniques, then Accessories, Composition, Restaurant Photography, Smart Phone Food Photography and and some other suggestions.  Stay tuned!

This is where it all begins--understanding what all those numbers mean. You can't really get to the next level if you don't have a grip on the relationship and mechanics of these three elements.

Shutter speed (T) and aperture (A) work inversely--when you increase your shutter speed (from 1/250th of a second to 1/500 of a second), you have to open up your aperture (which, confusingly, means going to a smaller f-number). 

Just like film speed, the higher the ISO, the more "grain" and noise you have in your photos.

There are a lot of tools you can spend a lot of money on but some will do more than others to improve your photography. One of the best tools you can add to your repertoire, whether you are using a DSLR or a point-and-shoot, is a tripod. You probably even got one for free when you bought your camera. If not, you can get one for as little as $20 at Target. Trust me, you will see a huge improvement in your photos if start to use a tripod. So what do you get for dragging that bulky thing out of the closet? See above.

Even your point-and-shoot has a lot of advanced settings that can help you with your food photography. Try checking out the color balance settings, digital macro and whatever else you might find in those menus. Take the camera off auto if you can and see what else you can do. I found that my little Canon Elph has a digital macro setting that allowed me to get a great close-up of these almonds.

Get to know your DSLR, find out what all those letters mean--A, T and P? You can do a lot by taking the camera off Auto. Become the boss of your camera!

This little device allows you to release the shutter without touching the camera. It's especially valuable if you are shooting at a slow shutter speed--any little movement, even touching the shutter, can throw your photo out of focus. 
Don't fret if your camera does not have a port for a cable release, you can also use the timer feature. Simply set up your shot and turn on the timer, then take your hands off the camera. I noticed mine has several options—2 seconds, 10 seconds, multiple photos.

A fill card reflects light back into the darker side of your subject and they are about $3 at any drug store. Can be foam core, poster board, whatever you have sitting around that is big and white (not your husband though). This can help you keep your exposure more even across your food which means you don't have to choose between losing detail in the highlights or the shadows. If you are backlighting your food, it's a good idea to pop a little light into the front to preserve more detail. It's not always necessary, but it's a good tool to have when you need it.

A lot of blogger friends said that their biggest challenge is shooting at night or in low light since they are usually cooking in the evening. These two lights are an affordable way to solve that problem and will give you some pretty decent results. The Coralife revelation came as an accident when I was trying to demonstrate what fluorescent light looks like. Would you believe this light is designed for a fish tank?  I'll show you in the next post what it looks like in use, you'll be blown away.

Tapatio: What Isn't It Good On?

Tapatio Fritos

Whew. That's all I have to say. "Whew." Not even with an exclamation point. At this point it's too hard to muster even that. I feel like the year has steamrolled me, but in a good way. You might have noticed the blogs have fallen off since the year started and it's all my fault. But I think I'm coming back and hopefully with some good stuff.

So what have we been doing to cause this neglect? Well, let's catch up. The year started out on a sad note when we lost Buttercup, the best cat ever. One day I'll write a blog for her. A month later we decided to move a new apartment, just steps away, but a world away in terms of atmosphere. We thought it would be easy--we would just take everything from our apartment and put it in the exact same place in the new apartment. It would be easy! Famous last words, right?

Then there was a lot of photography work, birthday parties, friends visiting, a trip to New Jersey to see my blogger buddies, Casey, Stephanie and Garrett, a ton of food shows, gardening, a car accident, and somewhere in there I went back to work full time. But it was finding out that I would be speaking at BlogHer Food 2012 in Atlanta that has consumed me the last couple months and, ironically, kept me from blogging at all.

So last weekend was a welcome relief from the frenzy of the last four months when I visited my best friend, Kirsten, in Salt Lake City. She's an amazing writer (and I don't mean that in the Hollywood-everyone-is-a-genius sort of way, she really is great, you can check out her blog for proof), and I always feel like a better person after spending time with her. (I actually got a text from her the week before, while I was on stage at BlogHer waiting for my presentation to start, that said she had just booked our appointments for our pedicure-and-wine appointment. That's the kind of friend she is, she always talks me down when I need it.)

In keeping with our usual vacation tradition, Kirsten and I made a stop at the grocery store for provisions, and I came upon the Tapatio Fritos I had heard about from my former boss, Kyle. Could it be they really did exist?

Now, in case you haven't visited our house, you should know that Tapatio hot sauce plays a key role in almost everything Anson eats, so much so that we don't even bother with the 12 ounce bottles, we buy the 32 ounce instead. Yes, we buy it by the quart. Anson pours it on pasta, stir fry, burritos (of course), eggs, burgers, etc. I think the only thing it doesn't go on is oatmeal. I like Tapatio too, but not the way Anson does. He loooves it. I do however looove Fritos, but rarely allow myself to buy them anymore. So when I saw them there, in all their glory (Fritos with Tapatio!!!), I decided I had to try them, you know, for the sake of research.

We had a lovely little cocktail party with Kirsten's neighbor and yes, the Tapatio Fritos were right there in the mix. Cheese, wine, good conversation and indulgent junk food; I was finally starting to relax.

Photography note: I made it a point to set up a little food shoot, just using what was around Kirsten's house. In the first photo, all I did was use my point-and-shoot and some natural light, with Kirsten's couch as the background. Not bad. A lot can be done with the right light and selective framing.