What Is A Prop Rental House? This particular prop rental house is a special collection of fabulous plates, glasses, bakeware, flatware, ephemera, linens, serving piece, surfaces, and backgrounds that are rented out for film, tv, and photo food shoots, that are in great condition. We are talking about The Surface Library. It is run by my good friend and prop stylist, Amy Paliwoda and Alicia … [Read more...]
How To Calibrate Your Monitor – And Why You Must Do It Now!
This is something that is so important, but very few people do - monitor calibration. YOU MUST LEARN HOW TO CALIBRATE YOUR MONITOR. If you don't, you are blindly making images without any idea of what the true color, contrast, saturation, and brightness is. Did you also know that your camera's LCD screen is very inaccurate? This means if you are judging your images on your camera, your images … [Read more...]
The Downside of Working On Laptops And The Best Monitors For Your Food Photos
This is not a sponsored post and I'm not being supported or endorsed by X-Rite. They have great customer support and have helped me with calibrating my systems for years and have also helped with my research for this post. Originally I was just going to make a post about calibrating your monitor as it's so crucial, and I learned that most people are not doing this. I decided to run a poll in … [Read more...]
What is a Bogen Super Clamp and Why It’s Awesome
Today's post is about the unsung hero that's been around for at least 25 years, the Bogen Super Clamp. No studio is complete without a few of these sets. You hardly hear about it. It's not sexy and it's certainly going to test how coordinated you are when you set this up for the first few times. So what is it? It's a piece of what we call, grip equipment. Grip equipment is for rigging stuff … [Read more...]
Vintage Recipe Cards From the 1970’s
Yep! Fruitcake! Welcome to my post on vintage recipe cards. It's December, so there couldn't be a better time to show the dry, brick-like dessert know as Fruitcake. This image is from the Betty Crocker Recipe Card Library from 1971. That's right, the one we all grew up with in the US, having our mom's cook from. Many of the Betty Crocker recipes are actually very good, basic recipes (not … [Read more...]
How To Focus Your Camera Using Focusing Points
Even with our fancy new digital cameras, sometimes getting the image in focus where we want it to be is a challenge. In this post, we'll talk about how to focus your camera using focusing points. What is a focusing point? The image above is from a Canon camera. Those squares represent the 9 focusing points that camera has to choose from. The camera controls how many focus points are possible to … [Read more...]
Food Photography Q and A on FB Live Oct 29th 2016
In this first video I cover 30 questions from folks all around the world. I cover equipment, lighting, white balance, restaurant photography, how to get work and what to charge, shooting outside, focus issues, using utensils in our shots, food styling resources, and so much more! In the very beginning the sound was a little choppy. Don't worry, it's only in the beginning :) It's a FB Live … [Read more...]
How To Prepare For Your Food Photo Shoot – Make A Shot List!
When I started teaching food photography classes several years ago I saw that many of my students were completely overwhelmed with how to put a photo shoot together. They would say to me in frustration, "I don't even know where to start". Even if you've been shooting for a while now, or just starting out, this post is about how to organize your thoughts and your plans for you next food … [Read more...]
Equipment Review – Artificial Light – Are the Cheap Soft Boxes Any Good?
I get equipment questions emailed to me weekly. The most recent was from a reader asking if the cheap soft boxes available on Amazon are any good. (Affiliate Disclosure: Some of the links below are affiliate links, which means we will earn a commission if you make a purchase. This commission comes at no additional cost to you. Contact us if you have any questions.) I've written about a … [Read more...]
Food Photography Lighting – Easy Artificial Side Light Part Two
If you saw my other post about food photography lighting, you'll remember that it covered shooting with an overhead set. This post is about shooting on a tabletop with the same artificial light. Shooting food with natural light can be quite difficult at times because the sun is always moving on us AND changing it's color temperature. Not to mention, the whole getting dark at 4:00 pm issue in … [Read more...]
How To Crop Your Food Photo
I always gravitate towards shooting my food images in a vertical format. When I'm teaching classes, this is when I notice almost everyone is holding their camera horizontally when shooting their food photos. The first time I taught a food photography class this shocked me. So I asked the students why they were all holding their cameras horizontally. Each student looked at me and said they had … [Read more...]
Food Photography Lighting – Easy Artificial Side Lighting
Many people are intimidated by artificial food photography lighting, but it really can be easy and necessary when we start losing light early in the evening. If you are trying to shoot food and you're only able to use natural light, this getting dark early thing can be a real drag. This shot above was taken at 7pm with one light. Easy! Artificial Food Photography Lighting I tell all my … [Read more...]
Compositing Tricks with Photoshop
In this post I will show you how I created this image using layer masks in Photoshop. This image looks simple, right? Just slap 9 scoops of sorbet on a platter and throw some food accents on it. Easy! Yeah, no. This final image is a composite of 10 images - each image was of one scoop of sorbet with its food accent, plus an image of just the marble platter. This is just one of many … [Read more...]
Behind the Scenes of the Lobster Bake Shot
This image is from a shoot I did to create some promo images. I often have to create what's called test images to make promotional material to get new work. These images are showing the weathered wood surface that I found at a wood salvage yard in Los Angeles. I go over how I found those in detail in that post. The Food A lobster bake is a traditional New England thing to do in the … [Read more...]
How to find beautiful wood backgrounds for food photos
Aged wood backgrounds really bring character to a food photograph. Sometimes I make my wood backgrounds and other times I hunt high and low for perfectly aged wood planks. In this post I will share with you my hunt for beautiful wood backgrounds. Now, please keep in mind I live in the Los Angeles area. This means I can't just go to the horse barn down the road and rummage around behind the barn … [Read more...]
How to Pick the Perfect Plate for Your Food Photos: Five Tips from a Prop Stylist
A note from Christina: Those of you that read this blog have heard me talk about my good friend and prop stylist, Amy Paliwoda. Amy is also the owner of The Surface Library, (this is not a sponsored post) where you can rent all kinds of beautiful props and backgrounds for your shoots. Amy's post is in response to a poll I did on the blog asking what kind of info you would like me to write … [Read more...]
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