In a restaurant, that may mean politely requesting a specific table; in your home, it may mean shooting in a room other than your kitchen. It can be helpful to take note of the quality of light you get in different rooms throughout the day and set up accordingly.
But if your home mainly gets tons of direct light, don't despair. You can make your own indirect light by hanging a white sheet over the window—this diffuses the light without adding the kind of tint you'd get from, say, a colorful curtain.
Once you've found your perfect spot, it's time to think about positioning your food in relation to the light source. Ideally, the light should illuminate the dish from a slight angle, like options B and C in the diagram above. If light comes directly behind you, it ends up casting an unwelcome shadow on your dish.
Another option is to backlight the subject option A , which yields a moodier and often more interesting image. In this case, the light should come from above and behind the plate, maybe even a little off to the side. But figuring out where light should hit your dish ties directly to the angle and frame that you're shooting with.
Composition is basically an umbrella term for the arrangement of stuff in your photograph. In a well-composed photograph, you can immediately tell what the primary subject is, whether it's a person, a plate, or a single sprinkle on an ice cream cone. In other words, composition is second only to lighting when it comes to taking a good photograph. One helpful tool, especially when you're starting out, is the rule of thirds.
It's a simple but useful concept, though we like to think of it as a suggestion more than an actual rule. It works like this: Imagine your frame is divided into a nine-part grid like sudoku. The rule of thirds says that your main subject—a plate, a slice of cake, an olive—should be placed either along those lines or at their intersections, like so:.
And sure enough, following those general guidelines does tend to yield images that are more familiar and appealing—our eyes are naturally drawn to those intersection points, which is why you'll notice that principle at work in everything from films and photographs to paintings and graphic design. Offsetting your subject from the center of the frame catches the eye and can even be to used communicate motion or activity away from the center.
See how it looks off when the rule of thirds is disregarded? Picking the main subject to place in the grid is often easy and obvious; at other times, you may want to pick a specific part of a subject to highlight—say a drip of melting cheese rather than a whole grilled cheese sandwich—in which case you'll want to adjust your frame accordingly.
But framing your food is just one element of composition—you'll also need to decide what angle best suits your subject. Meanwhile, a burger stacked tall with all the fixin's will look great directly at eye level, so bring your camera down close to the table. Just make sure you have something in the background like a wall or a board to block out unwanted items in your kitchen.
And remember, even food wants you to capture its good side. One side of a burger might look more appetizing than the other, and you might want to focus on the side or top of a roast turkey rather than, say, its backside. The best way to learn? Shoot from multiple angles until you've honed your instincts. One pitfall you especially want to avoid is the camera slant.
Some people think that rotating the camera slightly clockwise or counter-clockwise will create a more interesting composition, when it really just confuses the viewer and makes the plate look like a flying saucer.
Keep your camera level, and if there are any strong lines in your image, try to keep them as straight as possible. Finally, decide whether your photo might benefit from zooming in or out.
Will your image be better served by seeing the whole plate and some context, or just getting nice and tight into a specific part? Sometimes the single component of a dish is more exciting than the whole shebang.
Zooming in on one cute little dumpling rather than a distractingly busy basket of six can be much more compelling. At the same time, a zoomed-out bird's-eye view of a table filled with different cheeses can paint a more interesting and diverse picture than showing a single slice.
Once you've got the basics down, it's time to have fun. Getting creative with props and styling can bring your images to the next level. It's especially handy to have a few tricks up your sleeve for those particularly unappetizing dishes think chunky soups, messy sandwiches, and the perpetually tricky sausage.
Check out this bowl of chili to see our tips in action. In the first image, the dish is too boring and simple; frankly the chili looks like a chunky mess. In the second image, we added a yellow napkin, only to find that it looked too warm and didn't contrast with the soup enough to make it pop.
A blue napkin and spoon in the third photo delivered a more appropriate color and a sense of action—someone's going to pick up that spoon and dig in. Still, the top left corner looked a little empty, so for the fourth photo, we added a few little bowls of toppings to make the space more dynamic.
Then it was time to brighten the soup. In the fifth and sixth images we began by adding sour cream for contrast and then a sprinkling of cheese and parsley for additional texture and color. Just be careful of over-doing it with the accompaniments—the food should always be the main focus, and too many side elements become distracting. Starting to think about investing in more serious equipment?
Here are some common tools that we use, along with some easy hacks if they're outside your budget. A bounce card, or reflector, is just a white surface that can be positioned opposite your light source to literally bounce light waves back onto your subject and fill in any dark areas or shadows.
Sometimes you might actually want to remove some light from your subject to create a moodier effect, in which case you'd use a black board to absorb the light instead. It's very hard to get in-focus photographs without adequate light. So while most photographers we know prefer natural light to studio lighting, sometimes it's necessary to bring out the big boys. Our office, for example, has few windows and even fewer hours of daylight in the winter, so most of our photos are shot using studio lights with a softbox attachment to simulate a nice big window illuminating the dish.
Lights can be expensive, though. Hotshoe flashes, which slide onto the top of your DSLR, can work if you have something big and white to bounce off, but can be tricky if your kitchen is covered in honey-colored wood cabinets, which will cast an unwanted yellow tint.
As ftor those of you who do most of your shooting at night when there isn't much natural light to be had, a great and relatively low-cost solution is to pick up a Lowell Ego tabletop light.
It mimics daylight and is portable, easy to use, and won't take up a ton of room. Reducing camera shake is critical when you need your shots to be totally clear and crisp.
Even a slight blur is highly noticeable in a tight shot of a perfectly plated dish. By steadying the camera, you don't have to worry about an inadvertent movement causing a blur. Tripods are also useful when you want to keep the camera stationary for multiple shots and need both hands in between. That's why we highly recommend using a tripod whenever possible.
Back to Recipes Smoothies Autumn drinks See more. Back to Recipes Whole foods recipes Healthy dinners See more. Back to Recipes Vegetarian dinners Quick vegetarian See more. Back to Recipes Vegan storecupboard Vegan baking See more. Back to How to Roast timer Conversion guides. Back to Health Is air-frying healthy? Dairy-free diet Popular diets Healthy meal subscriptions Best vegan protein powders.
Home How to Guide How to photograph food. Choose props carefully. The simplicity of his setup is not to be taken for granted, as one cannot become a great food photographer without an extensive understanding of light, color palettes, and styling trends. The term was used in the s and s in other academic papers and some culinary news articles, but it was in that it spread to the masses when a Flickr photo group was created with that name.
I asked van Tonder if he thought food porn and the craziness surrounding it on social media made it harder or easier for food photographers to get their images out to the world and get noticed.
He agreed that the amount of food imagery out there makes it tricky to get the work noticed, but a beautiful, well-crafted image will always stand out. Social media has given many talented people him included an opportunity to turn a passion into a profession. One just needs to stand out with consistency. I have always wondered why food photography does not seem to have the same traction in the art world as other photography themes.
The masses and the professionals are quick to label a nude photograph as art, while food photography seems stuck in the illustration function. We have come a long way from that first snap, and van Tonder told me that there is a great move internationally from photographers to elevate food photography as an art form.
Let's see what happens. Is this genre of photography still to receive its full recognition? In the meantime, after browsing through Hein van Tonder's portfolio , I am famished and need to sink my teeth into a cake!
Check out the Fstoppers Store for in-depth tutorials from some of the best instructors in the business. When someone says "Art Photography" to me, one of the first names that comes to mind is Edward Weston.
You're welcome, although it was intended to be a counter-example to your claim, "The masses and the professionals are quick to label a nude photograph as art, while food photography seems stuck in the illustration function. I understand that but still feel comfortable with my claim.
It is a question of percentages and there will always be exceptions. If it's a question of percentages, then you may want to consider the number of photos of "nude" people on the internet and how many of them would be considered as art rather than pornography.
It is the intention, perhaps, that is the deciding factor. Analogously, most food pictures that we'll run across on the internet are intended as illustrations, with clever color choices and design, but with no artistic depth or greater meaning. Instead, think of ANY famous fine art photographer who has photographed food. Mapplethorpe has taken nudes that mostly are considered art.
0コメント