Some Ideas About Food Photography

Some Ideas About Food Photography

by William Lulow

As a specialist in photographing people, I have also done my share of product photography from time to time including quite a number of assignments shooting food. A commercial photographer needs to know a lot of techniques in order to be able to service different clients with different needs. This article was inspired by efforts to teach several students some techniques of applying what they have learned about lighting for still life subjects, to the art of photographing food. The studios that regularly shoot advertisements, product illustrations or even food magazine articles employ stylists who know how to make various food items look good for the camera. Much of what you see in those ads, you would not want to eat. They are great because of the lighting or the techniques used to make them look mouth-watering. Some of these images call for using acrylic ice or Elmer’s glue instead of milk (it won’t make the cereal soggy) to make the food stand up to the rigors of studio photography.

The food photography I have done in the past has mostly been for a large catering company that used my services regularly for about eight years (mostly before the digital age). These images were used to sell the company rather than the food itself. I did employ many techniques that were also part of the mainstay of any food photography studio but lighting was always the most important part. Here are a couple of examples:

The effect that I am always trying to achieve is some highlight on the food items themselves that make them look automatically appealing.

This was a full shot of some prepared foods. The appeal here lies in the arrangement. Light from the top provided the illumination with only a small amount of fill-in. Here is a more detailed image:

This shot was made at a restaurant in Green Brae, California using just available light, but I positioned the camera so that the light would be coming from the back to create highlights on the food that made it look delicious. Here’s another example:

Notice the highlights and reflections of the natural light that just make the food items seem to “pop” off the page. Again, if you are aware of what light does to food, you can make use of this technique all the time, even when you are sitting at a restaurant. But you have to know what light makes food look the best and it is usually from the top.

There are times when you want to be able to capture food or kitchen tools in the process of production. Here’s an example of a tea kettle producing steam:

I let the water boil and then placed the tea kettle on a hotplate on my table top. The light came from a softbox placed just to camera left. A piece of black no-seam paper provided the background against which the steam would be visible. (Shot at f/22 @1/250th of a second, 1000watt/seconds)

Here, light was provided from below on a light table as well as from a softbox above. Notice the light on the lettuce leaf:

This shot was lit from the top with a large softbox, but it also employed some extra lights as accents or highlights.

Most of the food photography I have done has been of prepared foods that have come directly from the kitchen and not “doctored up” by special food stylists to make them look better. All of that comes from knowing how to light the items so that they really “shine.”

Another important part of food photography is that the main subject of whatever image you are making needs to be tack sharp so it can be seen easily and so all of the details are rendered very sharp. Here’s a little exercise I did with some cookies I just made. I put them on a plate and placed them on a stool in my studio with the sunlight streaming in the window. I placed my camera so that the sunlight would be lighting up the back of the cookies. This is what I got:

The detail was crisp enough and the highlights really made the texture of the cookies sparkle, but I wasn’t happy with all the dark shadows. The exposure was 1/30th of a second at f/22 with an ISO setting of 100. So, the next step is to fill-in the shadows a bit. I did this by placing one of my monolights fitted with a small umbrella, just behind the camera to provide some extra light. This was the result:

This image still retains the highlights from my sunlight at the back, but now the shadows are all transparent. I increased the exposure slightly, but not more than I needed to because I wanted to still have the texture quality to the cookies. Exposure here was f/22 @ 1/15th of a second, ISO 100, but the fill-in was from a bounced light source at 400watt/seconds of power, with a 60mm macro lens for the close ups. To me, this shot looks the best because it has all the qualities I was seeking in a picture of my cookies; the highlights, exposure values and texture that make me want to eat a dozen of them right away.

These shots were done very quickly without much fuss or attention paid to background or props. This was more of a lighting exercise than one in professional food photography. But these also demonstrate that you can achieve professional-looking results with a minimum of fuss, but attention to detail, lighting and exposure is a necessity for any images of food.