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Professional Food Photography Tips
Food photography (also "food styling") is quite a new trend, and the main feature of the photographer is the so-called "taste of a dish".
Can we shoot everything we eat?
Generally we use eatable products when shooting the food. Though, of
course there are different kinds of food photography, when fake food is
most commonly photographed. For example, in certain commercials when
shooting an ice-cream ball: in order to get the best texture a special
gel is used, which is absolutely inconsistent with regular food.
 Then, we may see some really nice pictures with ice and snow - but
don't be carried away by admiration: sometimes they are also just a
fake. It can be understandable, because during a photo session of a
drink with ice you may face a real problem: the ice melts fast and
gives unpredictable results for shooting. But such examples are mostly
exceptions from the rule.
Instruments of a food stylist:
- brush for the oil;
- water sprayer;
- palette-knife;
- tweezers.
Graphic means:
1. Background: dark (in the old style), light or white.
2. Illumination: can be varied from strong contrasting up to soft and scattered illumination.
3. Color, form and composition: give you possibilities for numerous combinations.
4. Misfocus, shadows, reflections: make our eye follow the picture.
5. Food, tips of cooking and serving, dishes and accessories: give you a possibility to enrich your shot;
6. Object of shooting: in food styling it could be rather unusual, for example, a person, preparing or serving a table with food.
Notice some of the culinary peculiarities for food styling.
Cooking
has special methodology and thousands of means to make the photographed
object look really nice. Please check the following tips that might be
useful when shooting this or that kind of food product: 
- milk, if it is boiled up to 60 degrees C, makes solid and consistent
foam (even certain types of bear cannot compare with milk foam);
- sauce, if made from the commonly used classic recipe, looks great just by itself;
- dairy butter helps to create an amazing rosy and fried crust;
- if coffee is well-prepared, then beautiful foam appears on top;
- thick cream looks always appetizing in a photo;
- meat looks better if it is under-cooked or half-cooked;
- broth is prepared fat-free, and the oil drops can be added manually (the main thing when shooting broth is lighting).
And don't forget, that it's quite difficult to shoot and cook at the
same time, so you'd better have a helping hand in the kitchen, - in
this case your shooting will be a joint creation.
Food And Light
As a rule, photographed food is covered by a transparent film of
liquid, drops of oil or water. You may also shoot transparent or
half-transparent pieces of food. In such conditions front and side
lighting do not provide the expected illumination for your product. And
unfortunately, there's no any universal principle of lighting
arrangement when taking pictures of food products for wrapping or
commercials. But we can still highlight some of the key facts here:
1. The main principle of lighting arrangement is the presence of a plan.
In case your lighting scheme is arranged properly, then you will see it
at once, and as usual it will not require any additional adjustments.
If you make a lot of adjustments, it's the first reason to change your
lighting scheme entirely.
2. If the food is placed behind a piece of glass,
then you need to illuminate the photographed subject (food and what's
arranged close to it), but not the glass. If you put a front lighting,
then the only result you will see is the surface glare or the glass,
which is merged with the background. That is why it is important to illuminate the background with food and (upon necessity) to form the emerging glare into the all-in-one composition.
3. Making a nice illumination of a metal
object deserves a very hard work. The polished surface perfectly
reflects the light, so we need to think on how we can reduce the side
glares during the shooting. As the main trick here we can use a blurring lighting spot on a white surface,
which will reflect the flashing light and outline our metal object by
soft drawing glares. In this case you will get your metal object almost
as it is, and the lighting source would be meant to be "hidden". This
technique is widely used in commercials during the photo-sessions of
some expensive cars and exclusive watches.
4. Apart from that, correct glass and metal objects illumination can highlight and stress some complicated textures of other objects.
5. A good example of light arrangement could be taken from classical art,
especially from still life works. Of course, this technique has
developed a lot since the times of Rembrandt, but the essence of the
matter remains unchanged.
6. As the lighting sources we may use flashes with soft-boxes, foil-coated or silver umbrellas, honeycomb grids (as direct lighting sources) and different reflectors (for scattered light).
7. Use light brush to draw unusual lighting scheme, highlighting different objects.
8. Nice close-up shots with magical blur can be done with the help of 50mm 1.4 or 1.8 lenses. With maximum opened diaphragm (f/1.4 or f/1.8) you can even take good shots with the help of natural light.
Should we use Photoshop and how?
In
fact, the question is not whether we should use or not any digital
means of photo-editing. The most intriguing part is to define, when it
has to be used and when it is better to leave your shot untouched.
For
a professional photographer it is important to receive 99% from the
shooting, and only afterward your original idea could be edited on the
PC screen. In this case such additional editing can only be seen
essential, if you need to reach the desired effect of lighting and
composition, which are simply unavailable for your camera and studio.
 
But
if you made up your mind to edit your shots in Photoshop, then you need
to pay attention to the following tools: dodging/burning and
sharping/blurring of some areas. If you have mistaken with lighting
there can be problems with correct color settings. So it's possible to
change hue and brightness in this case.
Related Book
If you are intended to become a professional food stylist this book will help you a lot: "Food Styling for Photographers" by Linda Bellingham, Jean Ann Bybee.
We hope, these tips and tricks will be useful for you! We are waiting for your photos in our PhotoContests!
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