This cider bottle looks nice and cold, doesn't it? well.... it's not, it's actually at room temperature - that is around 30°in Sydney at the moment. 

To make a drink look like this, is a simple styling trick often used for editorial and advertising food photography: one coat of adehesive spray + water mixed with glycerine - balance is the key, as usual ( and better to spray in a well ventilated area ).

I have always adopted this styling technique: the drink will look like frozen for enough time to wrap the photo shoot.

Hit me in the comments if you know a better trick! 

 

From Sydney, Dario Milano, professional food photographer and stylist.

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Posted in food styling, d photographyood, food styling sydney, food photography sydney, dario milano, food pixels, drink styling, glycerine, water droplets

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An image titled " pomodori secchi " by Alessandro de Leo, from Italy. I can appreciate the reference to the italian flag in this ingredients shot - nicely done.

 

At first I have mixed feelings about it; it's like a glass half filled and I can't decide if it looks half empty or half full - in short, I quite like the lighting and the camera angle, but I'm not convinced about composition and styling.

 

But let's proceed with order.

 

Composition: while I do like the close up on the tomato and the low, tilted camera angle, I feel the depth of field is still too big and the frame too busy with loads of elements partially cropped.

 

It's difficult to keep a clean, balanced composition when doing macro.

 

The close up, together with the use of lighting, brings out the interesting texture of the dried tomatoes - and in part that of the wooden board. But unfortunately, the flat leaf parsley in the foreground looks reallyâ?¦ flat, not fresh; and this is both a styling and a composition issue.

 

Ideally you always want to use only the freshest ingredients for your food photography; however you can get away sometimes with something not as fresh, if it's a nonessential element that you can place somewhere in the background, mostly out of focus.

 

Talking about lighting: the colour temperature of your light source is warm, which is appropriate for the subject.

 

The quality of the light is hard and the angle of the light is pretty low; all this translates into long, pretty dark and neat shadows which create lots of contrast with the highlights; as a consequence, the mood of the image is quite intense and dramatic. I am not sure this is the right mood for such a subject; I would have probably tried to achieve a more natural feel.

 

But the main issue, I think, lies in the styling of the shot: this is clearly an ingredient shot, the hero being the split open dried tomato in the foreground right? Cool, in my opinion then an ingredient shot serves the purpose of telling a story - without the story, the image is less captivating.

 

That's my problem here, no action, no props, nothing to suggest a story; you could have had as little as an unwashed knife to tell the story of the tomato being just cut, or you could have had a bit more, like a grilled piece of bread on the side with some tomato, parsley and oil, to tell the story of the tomato just about to be eaten. Either way it would still have been an ingredient shot about the dried tomatoes, but there would be a story behind to keep the viewer stimulated.

 

 

If you like this series contribute your images by emailing them to me at dario@foodpixels.com.

 

And please VOTE for me in the Malaysia Kitchen Summit competition.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Posted in sun, dried, tomatoes

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