Food photography is a great way to get started with photographing still life.A great food photograph can convey feelings of warmth, awaken fond memories, conjure up fantasies, or just plain make you hungry. With opportunities to shoot literally hundreds of different subjects, you can create lots of different looks fairly easily. And the biggest bonus? You get to eat the subjects when you’re done!
Best of all, there is no need for an expensive camera to be able to produce these photos :
-The Challenging Practical Limitations
Professional food photographs are normally shot at studios where the lighting condition is controlled. However, photographing photographs of food at restaurants requires you to tackle certain practical limitations that can no doubt be challenging. The lighting conditions in most high class restaurants are dim, while the average or lower class restaurants normally use florescent lights. When you come across these situations, what is there that you can do to overcome them?
-Use a tripod and shutter release
If you’re shooting in bright, natural light then you’ll probably be fine to shoot handheld, but there also lots of benefits of using a tripod and shutter release. Setting up your shot on a tripod will leave your hands free to arrange the food in the frame, which can work especially well if you want to shoot a series of images with the same settings and framing that will work well together, or as part of a triptych.
-Take Advantage of Natural Daylight
Whenever possible, it is best that you conduct your food photography attempts during the day. This enables you the advantage to make use of natural light. Natural daylight tends to be a brighter source of directional light that can be obtained from windows of restaurants. Your dish is best illuminated with ambient light and brighter sources of daylight when you pick a table that is positioned around the periphery.
-How To Get Food Looking At Their Best?
Try to get the food in your photographers to look sheen and somewhat translucent make them look at their best and absolutely mouth watery. A translucent effect gives the ingredients in your food photos an additional dimension. To achieve such food photos, get the food positioned where the directional light source comes from a 10 or 2’o clock position. Positioning food from this angle which provides that back lighting enables you to shoot the glistening sheen layer of oil on top of that slice of bacon.Shadows will also appear, thus making the meat fibres obvious. Food photographs like these make your viewers drool!
-Create the scene
It’s no good having an amazing photograph of a beautiful cake if behind it is a big pile of clutter. Again, professional food stylists will have the luxury of beautiful, pristine rooms to play around in. If you live in the real world, you can cheat a little by shooting close up. Get the whole cake in the frame and nothing else, and it won’t matter what’s going on behind it.
-White Cards and Fill Lights
You can also make use of a white card by placing it in front of the food you are going to photograph so that available light from the surrounding can be reflected onto the food. To reduce the visibility of harsh shadows appearing in front of the food, make use of fill lights.
