Food Photography - Part 1

A little over a year ago, I started taking food photos and posting them to allrecipes.com. Now, I'm no expert at photography, but I have taken classes and been encouraged by my dad, who also loves photography. At one time in high school, I thought I might like to be a photographer. I also thought I might like to be a chef, an interior designer, or a nutritionist, but somehow I ended up an engineer (scratch head....). Anyways, I hadn't done much photography in quite a while (since high school, basically). Enter in allrecipes.com. I've been using the sight for years, but never did much reviewing or taking pictures, mostly just printing off recipes. Since quitting being an engineer, I've had a lot more time on my hands, so I started my new hobby.

The first photos I took of recipes weren't that (ahem) great. Like this one......

(Yeah, I read the comics while I eat dinner, who doesn't?) I was just excited to get a photo uploaded, never mind the quality! I knew I could do better though, so I started experimenting and in no time I was taking better photos. Here are some tips that I've put together that I hope you find useful.

1. Lighting, lighting, lighting. It's the most important aspect of photography, and also the biggest pain in the butt sometimes! I've found that natural light works the best for me. I have a kitchen counter that gets great natural light from all around in the daytime (at night it's another story, but I will talk about that later). Find a room that gets great natural light, but resist the urge to put it right next to the window. It's best not to put the food right in the sun beams, but in a spot where the light is more diffused. My counter works great because I get light coming in from the living room in one direction, and even more light pouring in from the patio door in the other direction, yet the counter is far enough from either to get diffused light. This lets me play with backlighting or have the light bounce off the side of the food, like these photos.....

This photo of a brownie has good lighting from all around, but a majority of the lighting is coming from the back.

This photo of french toast has a lot of light from the side, making the strawberry shine. The brownie and french toast photos were taken from the same counter, just different directions.

Unfortunately, natural lighting isn't always possible, especially if it's Minnesota in the dead of winter, and it gets dark at 5pm, long before dinner is served. Sigh.....I was having the hardest time getting good photos. I tried different lamps, overhead lights, anything. If you look through my past photos, you can see me kind of experimenting with different lighting techniques. I was never satisfied because I always had shadows and I couldn't get the light to "bounce around," like I do with natural light. My hubby understood my angst and got me a wonderful birthday present. This.....A light box! It's a tent with two lamps. It diffuses the light so I don't get shadows. He bought it from http://www.cowboystudio.com/ It is one of the tabletop kits. It still isn't as nice and natural looking as sunlight, but at least I don't get shadows! Here's one of first photos I took with my new box. True color and not a shadow anywhere!

If you would like to take photos using artificial light, I would suggest using fluorescent daylight bulbs, which is what my setup uses.

Well, the topic of lighting is a long one, so I think I will continue my discussion in the bext blog. See you there!