This post was updated April 13th, 2017 I get asked, "What lens should you use to shoot food", all the time. These beautiful little purple carrots are perfect for doing a lens test to show you some different lenses to help you pick your perfect lens. Does your camera have a cropped sensor? I have to mention something about cameras here. This is extremely important. I've learned that most bloggers do not know if they are using a camera with a cropped sensor. This mean that any lens you put on that camera will act like a much longer lens. For example, if you put a 50mm lens on a canon Rebel T5i camera, that lens will act like it's an 80mm lens. This is a huge difference! So keep in mind when reading this article, you need to google your camera to find out what the crop factor is of your camera. If your camera has a crop factor of 1.6 then, take the focal length of your lens and ...
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What is the best time of day to photograph food?
I often get asked what is the best time of day to shoot food when using natural light. This really depends on where you are shooting and how much natural light you are actually getting at certain times of the day. I always use a tripod so for me I am not limited by the quantity of light that is coming through the window. If you are not using a tripod (and you should be by now!) you are totally at the mercy of the sun and when it is the brightest in your house and that all depends on what room you are shooting in and how bright it can get. In the two images above there is a big difference in lighting as they were taken 4 1/2 hours apart from each other. You can see how the sun moved around from the left to the right. Also with the image on the right side there is more detail in the back part of the background because the light is stronger on the right side. The exposures were identical ...
Behind the scenes of a food shoot – Angel Meringue Cake
Every month we do what we call "test" shoots for ourselves. These are images that we will use for self promotion, for our websites and well, really - its just a fun day to shoot food where we are the clients and we can do what ever we want! The "we" being Amy (prop stylist extraordinaire), Alise (food stylist extraordinaire) and myself. We figure out what day we are all free and then discuss what we want to shoot for our test day. So our day starts with Amy bringing loads of her awesome props and Alise gets the food that we are going to shoot and brings it to my studio. Amy will set up all her beautiful props on a table and then we'll go through them and figure out what we want to shoot. We place props on the set, take some pictures with them, move them around until we come up with what we like. We'll put the food in before its ready to make sure it will all work together then ...
Food shoot behind the scenes for Dulcinea foods
I like to create images that look like they are outside but were really shot in my studio. This was shot for Dulcinea. We were creating a scene as though these were just picked off the farm. I have a garden center right near my studio so we'll get these kinds of grasses you see in the background from there often. I had the help of my good friend and prop stylist Amy Paliwoda. Amy and I also teach food photography classes together. So as I'm looking through the camera Amy will move the grasses around, then we take a shot, have a look at the image on my large monitor, then keep moving things around until it's just how we want it. Notice how much room we need behind the set in order to give the appearance of the grassy field in the background in the main shot. The green fabric is used to fill in the areas of white that might be seen through the plants that could be ...
Shooting Tethered with Adobe Lightroom for Your Food Shots
This post was updated June 28th, 2020 What Does Shooting Tethered Mean? Shooting tethered means that your camera is attached to your computer. As you are taking pictures, the images come into your computer via a usb cable - or wirelessly, but that is much slower and I never take pictures that way. As a professional photographer, if you are in a studio environment, your clients will expect you to be shooting tethered. Downloading images from cards while your client is standing right there waiting is extremely unprofessional. If you are taking pictures for yourself, you are spending a ton of time downloading images off of cards. Shooting tethered will speed up your work flow AND give you the change to see your mistakes while you are working so that you can instantly correct them! What Is Needed To Do A Tethered Photo Shoot? Camera that will work with the software that ...
Do I need to calibrate my monitor? Yes!
This post was updated December 15th, 2016 - and I'm happy to say that the prices on the calibration equipment has gone down quite a bit since this was first written. If you are serious about your food photography (or any photography for that matter) one of the things you are going to have to get comfortable with is calibrating your monitor. Monitor calibration is a process you do with a device and software you install on your computer that comes with the device that very quickly analyses your monitor's current color profile then it creates a new profile that has more accurate color, contrast and brightness. The goal is to have your monitor show you as accurately as possible what your digital files really look like with accurate color, contrast and brightness. Knowing your monitor is accurate will then enable you to correct and edit your images accurately. If you are working on a ...
