Lighting is key in all aspects of photography and shooting food photography isn't any different. The goal is still to capture the food in the best way, and lighting can help. What can you do to help make your food photography look even better?
Silverware can be really pretty, but it can also be a complete pain in the you know what when it comes time to photograph it. This great video tutorial will give you numerous helpful tips to deal with distracting reflections on silverware.
It might appear to be an innocuous plate of sushi, until you take a closer look: not everything in these photographs is edible, but all of it can be found in the ocean.
For me, flat lays are the king of food photography. Telling a story with a large flat lay is a challenge, here is how I approach it.
Composition can be one of the hardest aspects of photography to master. Rule of thirds, leading lines, rule of odds, and frame within the frame are just a few of the many composition techniques. Some are easy to understand and comprehend while others are a bit more difficult. This video from The Bite Shot provides an excellent, straightforward introduction to composition.
Does winter have you climbing the walls looking for something to do? Do you need some new or more interesting backgrounds for your food or product photography? Well then perhaps this DIY project is just the thing for you.
Lately, I have been watching more food recipe videos. Some of them are well made and others are kind of boring and flat. What can you do to make sure your videos are not the latter?
Any burger advertisement makes it seem like, for just a couple of bucks, you’ll get a juicy stack of meat piled high with vegetables on a crisp bun. Reality never meets expectations, of course, and so, if you’re wondering why your limp burger with wilted vegetables never looks like that advertisement, this video will show you why.
After building up a scene in your food photography, do you find yourself questioning where to place the utensils in the shot? Maybe the silverware ends up looking awkward or out of place in your shot. Don't get frustrated; here are eight simple tips on where to place them.
If you are looking for something a little more sturdy and flexible than your standard tripod with a horizontal center column for doing overhead camera or video shots than this set up is a great solution.
Are you looking for a way to add more excitement to your food photography? Well, have you tried making your food float or even go for that exploded-view of the dish coming together or apart in the frame?
Food photography takes a lot of nuanced artistry and technical know-how to make the product look delectable and appetizing, and because of that, you might decide that taking more control with artificial light is the way to go. This great video will tell you what you need to know when purchasing lights for food photography.
You don’t have to stand on the table to get those beautiful overhead photographs of your latest fabulous food creation. Forget the tripod and pull out the multipurpose C-stand.
When I started food photography I was in awe of the beautiful backdrops. It took me a good 6 months to work out where to get them from.
I am trying to brush up my photography skills in areas I am not overly familiar with. This week it was beer photography, and boy did I learn a lot.
Photography can get very expensive very quickly. Once you've invested in a body and a couple of lenses, don't expect it to stop there. For those interested in artificial lighting, the who process starts again with lights, stands, modifiers, and triggering systems. But is it all necessary?
When shopping for lenses, you may notice that certain lenses are classified or even recommended for a certain genre of photography. You might see sports, travel, wedding, or even wildlife as the typical use of some lenses. What if you are looking to get into or already shoot food photography, what lenses should you be looking at?
I take a trip to White Castle once a year, against my better judgment usually. This time, I tried (and Instagrammed) their new “Impossible Slider” which is a burger that isn’t made from animals, but tastes and looks like it came from something that mooed.
Most of my food photography is lit with only one light source and after a few years of taking a special interest in shooting food and drink, I know exactly where I want the light to be and why.
Whether you're shooting your favorite dish to add something casual to your Instagram or Facebook account and still want it to fit the aesthetics of the rest of your photography work, or you're trying to get started in food photography, here are a few tips from Jacs Powell, a food photographer and a "foodie at heart."
In a saturated market of incoming photographers each holiday or tax season, it is easy to get discouraged when you are trying to get paid clients in the door. When we think of photography sessions we generally tend to lean on the idea of photographing only people in portraits. Families, boudoir, fashion, and even underwater sessions. With so many other creative ways out there to get paid why not tap into another resource for marketing?
When it comes to food photography, your goal is to capture the dish as well as possible while making sure it looks appealing. You want to entice the viewer to order or crave that dish. If you are new to this genre, here are a few tricks that may help you craft a better shot.
Jahla Seppanen of The Manual, which touts itself as “The Essential Guide for Men,” recently published an interview with Elliot Clarke aka the “Apartment Bartender” with tips and tricks for taking great cocktail photos for one’s Instagram feed. Although the interview is aimed at casual photographers, there are a few useful nuggets of info for anyone wanting to improve their product or cocktail photography.
Food photography is ever present in our society. From billboard advertising to culinary magazines and, let's not forget, Instagram. Of course, the photography found in these mediums varies in style and quality depending on its intended audience but, in general, the goal is to make food look pleasing to the viewer. In this concise clip, LensProToGo gives us a long list of actionable tips to improve our food photography.
For over a year now, I've been the lead freelance photographer for Stock and Barrel Magazine, a food and beverage publication here in Columbus, Ohio. Often, assignments get thrown my way with not a lot of time to get them done before deadlines hit. That means I get to shoot a lot of places in a very short amount of time. Oh the joys of the print world! In this article, I'm going to share with you how I shoot food on location quickly. No assistants, minimal gear, during business hours, and without pissing off the chef. Let's get started.
If you've seen our latest comparison between the iPhone X and the Panasonic GH5, you see that the iPhone suits the run-and-gun type of shooter who makes videos on the go where you want the gear to get out of the way with a small and light form factor. In this video, the team at AmnesiArt made a professional video for Elise Lepinteur, the protegee of Christopher Adam, a worldwide famous pastry chef based in Paris, France.
Inspired by a recent photo book I purchased, "Creative Flash Photography" by Tilo Gockel, I set out to create a series of food photos this week as part of a Thai dinner theme my wife and I decided on. The principle here was simple: create a great image using a single speedlight and a bounce card. That’s it.
Food photography is great fun and really easy to get into. All you need is a camera (which if you own a smart phone, you already have) and some food.
Sean Tucker started his career as a food photographer and had the chance to work alongside with some of the best food stylists in the industry. Thanks to this experience, he’s learned quite a few secrets one needs to know in order to capture the most stunning food pictures possible. Through this 15-minute long tutorial, Tucker shares some of the fundamental knowledge every photographer and foodies should acquire. So if you’d like to improve or get started with this genre, be sure to check the full video and take notes.
Here we have food tutorial videos inspired by Wes Anderson of "The Grand Budapest Hotel", Quentin Tarantino of "Kill Bill", Alfonso Cuarón of "Children of Men" and "Gravity", and Michael Bay who gave us "Transformers" and "Armageddon". Take yourself out of your regular industry and client mindset and envision yourself in another niche, shooting something you wouldn't normally do. How would you make a food tutorial? How can you use your influences and own unique style to make a video about something different to your usual niche?
We all know the pictures on the packaging of food you buy usually is a lie. It's not how it's going to look when you open it, and it's not going to taste as good as your imagination was telling you it would based on the photo of the package. But it surely works to get people interested and buying one product over the other. How do they do it? This video shares 10 tricks food advertisers use when shooting the images to be used in advertising and packaging. A picture of a piece of bread being broken open, hot and steaming out of the oven, sure looks delicious. Did you know wet cotton wool will steam longer than bread would? Yes, me neither.
Back in 2010, I was commissioned to do a photo of some spices for a family friend. I had never done anything like that, so I wanted to do a good job, and invested in my first off-camera flash setup. It was daunting at first, but I’ll never regret dipping my toes in the water and starting to learn about one of the most important things about being a freelance photographer: learning to control light.
Tokyo's Tsukiji fish market has been my favorite spot for many years. The subtle differences between fish mongers is what adds vibrancy to the colorful characters that make up this market. Most of them have been working here for generations. Located just a two minute walk from Tsukiji train station, it’s a great place to spend the morning taking photos, followed by a very fresh sushi lunch. This has been my routine for the last eight years. The variety of closed and open spaces — from the auction houses to the narrow lane-ways — depict an ambience unlike any other fish market in the world. The bad smell of fish is not really apparent, which confirms the freshness of the product.
A while back, while on a shoot for Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art here in Northwest Arkansas, I was asked to get a shot of the museum’s executive chef and the Director of Culinary for their members magazine. Time was short, the kitchen was starting to prep for dinner service, and every second I was there I was inconveniencing someone. I had to get in and out quickly and create a dynamic image in the process. Here’s how it happened.
Photographer Lois Bielefeld has always loved food; she notes that one of her chores as a child was to make a meal for her family on the weekends. After seeing the way food can bring families and people together, she was inspired to create her series, "Weeknight Dinners," which showcases the various circumstances and family dynamics that bring people together to share a meal.
Nice lighting and a controlled experiment can yield some pretty cool results, and luckily there are folks like the ones behind the brand Beauty of Science who just released a video showing exactly that. Simply put, they dissolved some M&M candy in a dish of water. And it looks amazing.
The art of making food product shots appear mouth-watering and appealing on camera is certainly a well-honed skill. This gift, referred to as food styling, is commonplace on film sets, cooking shows, and food photography. This video by RocketJump Film School explores just how you can improve your own food photography in five simple steps.
Nikon has teamed up with sports photographer Tom Miles and world champion martial artist Tom "Fire Kid" Duquesnoy for its new #MomentOfImpact campaign – which largely involves epic action photos of the latter smashing watermelons, cakes, and pumpkins. Check out the intense photo series here, and learn more about how it was lit and executed.
A couple of years ago I was tasked with getting a shot of grape stomping for a local food magazine, Edible Ozarkansas, who were doing a story on the history of local wine production in Arkansas. Right away, images of Lucy and Ethel of "I Love Lucy" stomping grapes in the giant barrel came scrolling through my mind. Challenge accepted.
For me, food photography has to be one of the most complex and technical types of photography in the industry. The ability to bring life and attraction to something you need to convince other to eat is pretty impressive. Steve Giralt has done the impossible by creating one of the most outstanding examples of a deconstructed burger I have ever seen.
Have you ever gone out to a restaurant and seen a chef slaving away in the back for hour after hour, producing one delicious dish after another, and asked yourself, “Do they even enjoy cooking once they get home?” Well the answer to that is “Yes!” and photographer Ben Sassani takes viewers behind the scenes (and refrigerator doors) of some of the top chefs around with his personal project Shoot My Chef.
Overhead recipe videos are so hot right now, but shooting them can be challenging. This setup is perfect for shooting products, food, or even an unboxing (they're still a thing, right?).
Finding the best quality of light is most of our job as photographers, and a great place to start looking is window light, especially north-facing window light. This type of light creates a soft transition from light to shadow, and can be very flattering on our subjects. Sometimes, however, we need to get consistent results all day, as in the case of this menu shoot, and using a window will cause too much variation in the light.
The mania surrounding food photography is a pretty recent phenomenon. In the last decade, what used to be a niche in photography took social media by storm and ever since has been one of the favorite topics for a huge amount of accounts. It is supposedly the second most popular subject of photography fanatics on Instagram after the selfie tsunami. I sat down to talk with Hein van Tonder, a food photographer carving his way into the food royalty.
This short but awesome behind-the-scenes video from Adrien Veczan shows his setup and technique for capturing a product photo of a bottle of cranberry vodka. Check out the video and then read on to hear a little bit more about his approach and method, which utilizes different lights to paint different parts of the bottle for his final image.
Nothing makes for a great photo like an equally impressive moment. Whether it’s an outpouring of jubilation, a solemn, tearful lament, or the grasping of victory, a one-of-a-kind moment is a photographer’s best friend. So, why not make some great moments for yourself, even if it pains you (or some of your friends) to do so? Enter Photographers Ofir Abe and Ben Saar.
Food is a part of our everyday lives and yet something a lot of people take for granted. How often do you stop and look at food, noticing how produce changes throughout the seasons? Not many of us do, unless you are a food photographer or have a chef in the family. Artists Caitlin Levin and Henry Hargreaves got up close and personal on their most recent collaboration, "Food Scans," cutting up produce to reveal its patterns and scanning them to create beautiful, intricate imagery.
Last week, we asked the Fstoppers community to submit their best pictures of food to be reviewed by the Fstoppers team for our next episode of "Critique the Community." To change things up a little for this episode, we had a local commercial photographer, Andy Hagedon, join us to give some fresh perspective. A total of twenty images were selected to be reviewed. Check out the selections and add your thoughts and critiques in the comments below.
To celebrate the holidays and all the delicious meals that are being prepared around the world, we invite you to share your best looking food images for our next episode of "Critique the Community." We will be critiquing the pictures from a commercial standpoint so submit the pictures that you think sells the food itself. Please get in your submissions by the end of Wednesday, December 2, and you'll have the chance to have your image critiqued by the Fstoppers team. For this episode, we will be giving feedback to 20 pictures. To qualify, you must follow the submission rules below.
Every year we see the same old senior photos again and again with each year passing a new wave of train tracks, and in my case, corn fields. Though each year finding just a sample of photos that truly stand out and push the limits of where we can take the genre becomes even more difficult. Thanks to Brendan Batchelor Photography, we have what could be the very first session taken at local Missouri Taco Bell.
