Hi shutterbugs, welcome to my first blog. I am a big foodie! I can easily satisfy my hunger with some good food but the thirst for amazing food pictures can't be quenched so easily! Here, I am going to share some of my food photography experiences and quick tips for all young shutterbugs. I wanna start with some famous sayings about food and photography in a way so you can ascertain the true essence of food photography... "People who love to eat are always the best people!" and "The camera is my tool. Through it, I give reason to everything around me."
Thousands of lines can't even describe the joy of clicking photographs of food. It's simply one of the best feelings in life. Everyone can click photos of food with their mobile phones, point and shoot cameras and with professional DSLRs. But what makes you different from others is your ability to make food look as scrumptious as humanly possible. Everything is fair in Love and War, and in Food photography! You just have to make food look mouthwatering in every picture...You can use any sort of illusion by using the right kind of lights, create a strong contrast, play with shadows and go wild with your camera and try shooting food in HDR. You can always experiment and try all sorts of things to make food look really really delicious... If it's not appealing it's just a photograph of food, not a Food Photography Product!!
Here, I am sharing some pictures from my food photography collection and I am also going to share some food photography tricks below...
This image was clicked at a 5-star hotel in Lucknow. Clicking pictures of food is no different from other photography genres and it's quite alike product photography. Apt use of lighting can really add to the attractiveness of food photos. However, I didn't use any artificial light source in this photo. I clicked it using natural light present in the dining hall.
Here is another quick tip, it's always a good idea to crank up saturation so that all those reds and greens can become more prominent in your photographs. Highlights are also important but too much highlight present in one area can often result in photographs with fewer details. I edited this photograph on Adobe Lightroom and once I came home I realized that use of on-camera flash resulted in strong light reflections on the corners of this metallic dish. I tried to eliminate extra highlights in editing software.
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One type of settings won't always work for all shooting scenarios. You should always try to shoot food near a window or you should take Bokehlicious photos so that you can ensure that background is not cluttering your photographs. Another idea is to burn the background only if it's possible like in this picture, it was just a grey wall and it was perfectly all right to burn the background in this picture. I used a dedicated flash in this picture and bounced the light from the ceiling. I used a telephoto lens for taking this picture.
Here is another picture of the same dish. I used one of the modes on my camera dial. I switched to macro mode and shot this with a telephoto lens of 55-250mm range. I clicked it with a focal length of 135mm. Aperture was really small and what I really liked was this quite visible shallow depth of field in this picture!
It was a maiden attempt for high key food photography. For this picture, I used two LED lights and a dedicated off-camera flash. I wanted to pop colour of cherries and I was trying to have a great depth of field so I cranked up the aperture to f/11 and shutter speed of 1/80 of a seconds... When I was editing this photograph in Lightroom I increased color saturation of green and red. I also had to do some minor noise reduction as a result of ISO 1600 and a bit of sharpening too.
It's a fact that there are no hard and fast rules for photography but there are some that really add stars to your photography if you can apply them perfectly in your photography. You don't need a tonne of food photography equipment but having good knowledge of the types of equipment and gears you already have pays off. You can also watch some food stock images on the internet to get an idea about how professionals view food and what post processed and edited images look like after getting editted by professional food photograph editor and also watching some online food photography tutorials can also help you learn some nuances of the food photography.
First rule is Rule of Thirds, an image is divided into 9 equal blocks by two vertical and horizontal lines and those four points where these lines intersects are the areas of interest. Usually, our mind is accustomed to quickly see or grab what's in those four points.
In a nutshell, placing the most prominent part of your object/subject in those 4 points will really add life in your image!
There is a rule for handheld shooting that says if you're shooting with a focal length of lets say 100mm so your shutter speed should not be less than 1/100 second so you can eliminate camera blur. For this, you often have to crank the ISO to 1600 to 3200. And later do some post processing to remove noise in your pictures. In modern lenses, there are some features like IS and VR. You can drop 1-2 increments in shutter speed when using those features. Focal length of your lens = Shutter speed you will be shooting.
It's important to learn some basic composition rules.
Rule of thirds won't work in every scenario. Often we need "Balancing element" in images. It's like filling dead space in your photographs especially if you're shooting food from it's level.
Leading lines is another important rule, it's mainly used in street photography. But it can also be used in food photography to add depth in your photographs.
We can also rely on Symmetry and Patterns. It's often a good idea to click pictures of a giant food dishes in symmetrical patterns. We can also click photographs of food with paying most attention to the texture of food. Often photographs should be less focusing on the whole dish but rather focusing and revealing the texture of food in the first place.
10 quick tips for food photograph-
- Pick the freshest ingredients
- Food photography is a game of lighting
- Keep it simple
- Simple props are always best and also try adding raw ingredients to your shoots
- Always show a contrasting shot of the same dish
- You can always add a human element to it
- Cleaning utensils well before shooting will actually save a lot of time while editing the images
- Play with various camera angles
- Add a bit of vegetable oil on food to make it look glossy
- Always take pictures of your favorite food in restaurants and cafe.
Best way to learn food photography is to learn through experiences that comes with lots and lots of experiments. The more you will shoot the more you will learn. Not a single weekend should end without clicking lips smacking food pictures! I will see you soon with more elaborated pieces of writing on Food Photography Lighting, Food Styling, Shooting and Post Processing. Take care folk. Ciao!
