Sometimes just one prop will inspire me to do a photo shoot. That's what happened here. I was on a great food and wine tour in Cambria, CA that a friend of mine was giving (future post), and one of the places we toured was an olive oil company. I found this beautiful olive oil dish in their tasting room/shop. The dish is from Mary Judge Designs. As soon as I saw this I just had to have it. She … [Read more...]
Shooting on Location – Fairfield Farms
I love seeing how our food grows. In southern California we are very lucky to have several farms all within a few hours of Los Angeles. Last week, Erika Kerekes of In Erika's Kitchen invited me to go on a blueberry farm tour near San Diego with other food bloggers. The farm is Fairfield Farms. Blueberries never tasted so good, picked right off the vine, warmed by the sun. The Process - How … [Read more...]
Product Photography Behind the Scenes
A friend hired me to photograph his yummy olive oil product line, the Arianna Trading Company. Photographing grocery products is extremely different from photographing food, as you will see below. Here I will show you what's involved with doing this kind of a shoot. Prepping for the Shoot My client, George, brought the products over to me the day before so I could see what they … [Read more...]
How to guarantee the best exposure
Learn how to see exposures I see a lot of blogs with pictures of their food that are too dark. Learning how to get the perfect exposure takes time. After a while you will start to see the difference in images when they are too dark or too light, you'll just know by looking at them. Look at food magazines - my FAVORITE is Donna Hay. You can see a few teaser pages of each magazine online for … [Read more...]
Behind the scenes of the “Merseyside Corn Field” shoot
Never heard of Merseyside Farms? Well, that's because it's my made up farm where I photograph really large produce. Merseyside is the name of my photography corporation. I was inspired to do this series of large produce farms when I was looking at old postcards from the early 1900's. In fact I did a post about - the post cards are called "Exaggerated Produce" and here's the post. I thought … [Read more...]
How to properly optimize images for the web using Adobe Photoshop
Every class I teach there are always questions about how to optimize images for the web. Once you learn how to do this it will become second nature. It's very important to learn this so that your website and blog perform quickly and load images fast. Not to mention, making your images nice, crispy, and sharp! Do not use WP or Blogger to resize your images I've seen bloggers uploading huge files … [Read more...]
What lens should you use to shoot food?
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 … [Read more...]
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 … [Read more...]
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 … [Read more...]
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 … [Read more...]
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 … [Read more...]
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 … [Read more...]
Camera modes – what do they mean? AV, TV, P, etc.
There's many food bloggers out there who always shoot in one of the "automatic" camera modes. I get told this in class all the time. I'm going to break down each of the modes here so you can understand what the camera is doing in each one. Different cameras might not have all these modes you see here and other cameras might have a few extra ones as well. If you see other icons for other modes … [Read more...]
Why You Might Need To Adjust Your Camera’s LCD and How
To get the right exposure you have to learn to interpret your camera's LCD. Your camera's LCD is not going to look exactly like your monitor when viewing the same image. In fact some camera LCD's are shockingly different from what your digital file will look like. The image above is of the set of one of our students, Patrick Evans-Hylton. He has a point and shoot camera and it did a pretty good … [Read more...]
When to change your ISO setting for exposure
By now hopefully you've seen the post talking about ISO. Its important to always shoot with the ISO at the lowest setting (usually 100) in order to keep the data in your image as clean as can been (with as little digital noise as possible). When you shoot using a tripod you will almost always be able to set your ISO at the lowest setting. However when you are hand holding (which I know you … [Read more...]
The Relationship Between F-Stop and Shutter Speed
Now that we have gone over the three crucial camera settings used to achieve the proper exposure, f-stop, shutter speed, and ISO, we need to talk about how they work together. To start I'm only going to address f-stops and shutter speeds first. I will address the third component ISO in another post The f-stop, shutter speed and ISO are completely tied together for exposure. When I'm … [Read more...]
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