Hi guys, greetings from Brisbane; this post is about product photography, with a focus on the use of props.

This time we leave the lighting stuff on a side as we talk a bit more about how we approach a food shot. Bare with me.

I loooove product photography because it allows me to be creative and to give my own representation of the item I am photographing. Which may be unique; or at least that is what I try to achieve.

The process leading to a finished image is exciting and stimulating, and it is made of many steps, each of them equally important.

Once the shooting has been scheduled, I go shopping; this is when I let my curiosity get stimulated by what I see around me.

I wander around in search of beauty, and beauty could come from anything  : colour, shape, texture, contrast, etc.... It's a kind of  " passive " mental mode through out which a series of ideas begin to form, and others are discarded, which will eventually develop into actions aimed at translating those ideas into images.

After I have decided what to shoot, I then start thinking of how to shoot it. What props will better suit my subject?

Just for your reference, be aware that sorting out the props is in itself a job : on a typical food shot, a prop stylist buys the dishes, the napkins, the flowers, and any other objects required to complete the scene.

Depending on the assignment I either do this myself or I hire a prop stylist.

But as far as we are concerned here, the role of props in product photography is not as important as it is in editorial photography; keeping it neat and simple is the way to go, don't overdo things.

So when I was at the shops a few days ago my attention got caught by this tropical fruit called mangosteen; I had never seen or tasted mangosteen before and to be honest I didn't quite know what to expect from it; neither I cared too much: I just thought it looked great and wanted to take some pics of it.

I mean, there are plenty of photos of strawberries and blueberries out there...... Some pics are great, but 99% of them are just boring photocopies of shots we have already seen a milion times.

So remember these tips if you are planning to take some product shots to add to your portfolio:

when choosing your subject, look for something a little " different ", something unusual; and if you really have to photograph an eggplant or a pumpkin, sometimes you can find one with a " strange " shape, or an interesting pattern ; pay attention to the details.

Try to visit farmers markets, it's more likely you'll find something interesting there; big shopping centres tend to display only  " perfect " looking fruit and veggies. Standard is really a standard to them.

Choose your props accurately, be original without making people laugh. Props can really make or destroy a shot

There is no need to buy expensive kitchenware all of the time, renting and borrowing are sometimes a cheaper option; invest your money in knowledge and education instead, go to workshops and seminars.

Use some imagination and be inspired by others; magazines and books can also be borrowed, you don't have to buy everything.

When you see or think of something you'd like to try out, write down your idea or draw a quick sketch; bookmark interesting web pages and keep your favourites well organized.

Experiment as much as you can, carry a point and shoot to take reference shots for your own records.

The wooden container I used for the pic above is actually a tea bag box; just something I had in my kitchen, didn't cost me any money and it worked great!

The table cloth is purposely plain, because I didn't want to subtract attention from the fruits; but it does have that subtle squares pattern that adds an element of interest to the scene.

I used the same props and lighting for another shot  and still haven't decided which one I prefer; here it is



I think the chestnut shot works better compositionally: the framing and the angle deliver a better image here.

See how everything comes into play? Always take as many shots as you can to give yourself the chance to choose your winning image.

Before I close, I just want to give you a few notes about the mangosteen, since it's been an interesting discover for me and I want to share it with you all:  a tropical fruit native to Southeast Asia, Thailand being one of its largest producers,  that is touted for its antioxidants. Mangosteens are the size of an orange and have orange-like segments of deliciously sweet and juicy fruit, though the taste is very different. Also, and despite the name, mangosteen is not related to the mango.

Like oranges, mangosteen fruit segements sometimes have small to medium-size pits. If the pits are small and soft, you can eat them, otherwise it's best to spit them out. To get the full health benefits of this fruit, one should try juicing the purple skin which is where most of the health benefits lie.

Just be aware that the taste of juiced mangosteen peel is extremely sour and astringent and you will need to juice lots of carrots and apples along with the mangosteen to make it drinkable

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Posted in Food, Photography

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Hi all! welcome back to Food Pixels blog guys; something a little different in this post, although still related to food....

Last week my son Marco was born and I decided to have a little play with him; it was lots of fun..... no, really! I'm kidding.

Soooo, if you reeeeally wanna try this...... there are a few things you need to know.

It's all about being well organised here; first thing you need a baby taking care of the mother: a bribe has to be arranged; and this is just to gain permission doing the shot.

Think smart ! for some extra creative flexibility make mummy your "assistant"  for the shot; this way she will keep the creature calm till needed and will stress less knowing that she is there to save the baby's life at any given time.... you kill two birds with one stone!

Use a tripod for this one: you can't bring the baby in till the very last minute, so you have to pre-visualize the final image, set up lights, take meter readings and adjust focus as if the baby was there.

Having the camera firmly set up on a tripod, will also reduce chances of camera shake and give you a couple of extra free hands; which is always a good thing.

Talking about focus, once you have set your focus exactly where you think the baby's head will be, switch to manual focus, or else you'll most certainly end up with a blurry image.

For exactly the same reasons, either use a remote shutter trigger or set the camera to self timer mode.

If you choose the second option, go through your camera " custom setting menu " to adjust the self-timer delay; my camera allows me to set the delay  to 2, 5, 10 or 20 seconds. If I am holding a reflector or a " flag " I'll choose a 10 seconds delay, otherwise I'll generally go for 5; in this specific situation, because I knew I probably would have had only 30 seconds to a minute, I set the delay to 2 seconds.

Remote shutter triggers can be cable or wireless; the second ones allow you to be at a certain distance from the camera which is recommendable if your room doesn't have a sturdy floor .

Going to talk about the lighting, here is the lighting diagram

I set my main light ( a SB900 ) on a stand, at 10 o'clock camera left; the flash is pretty much at the same height as the baby, and I also used a grid and a snoot to constrain the light beam to my subject without flooding the backround. A gold reflector is filling the shadow from camera right.

For some frontal fill I have a bare flash, at low power,  on a light stand bouncing light off the white ceiling; this also brings the background to life and can be upped or downed 2/3 of a stop without affecting the exposure.

Talking about the backdrop I used a roll of white seamless paper; this one's just 1 1/2 metres wide, perfect for my food shots, and relatively cheap ( around 70.00 $ ).

If you decide to get one, just go for the white one; and you know that, depending on the amount of light falling onto it, you can easily turn your white background into grey ( like in the picture above ) if not even black. Or you can use a gel to make your backdrop any colour you want; I'll talk about this in a future post.

Then, remember to fill the frame with the subject; you want the baby to stand out. Choose the right type of lens; a wide angle wouldn't be the way to go here. But you do have choices: either you get very close to the scene and use perhaps a 50 mm or 85 mm prime, or you step way back and use a zoom lens.

I went for the zoom lens as I didn't want to upset Marco too much.

Post processing : I tend to get the picture right in the camera as much as I can; I do very little retouching, mostly cropping, sharpening and spot healing; here I also " photoshopped " away Marco's umbilical cord, as it wasn't nice to see it.

Very often I can do all of my retouching in Adobe's Bridge camera raw, without even opening PS.

Shoot raw to capture as much info as possible and always keep an eye on the histogram to make sure you keep your highlights under control.

Here is another shot where you can see a tighter crop.

Have fun, and if you decide to do something similar please post your photos to the blog.

God bless!

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Hey everybody!

We saw, in the previous post, how we can successfully mix natural light daylight and flash to photograph food, and how we have a choice as of which one to use as the main light and which one as fill; this is of course valid if we are shooting during the daytime, but WHAT IF.... we were to shoot at night??

Well that is my case : I shoot at night...often ; I work at home and I have 2 children so I let you imagine what a challenge it would be to get done with my assignments if they were not both sound asleep. So, I often shoot late at night and I can't count on any daylight. And this is too bad!

Still, I frequently need, or want, to recreate that " natural " look that food has when it's photographed at daytime, by the window or outdoor.

Food just looks good when it's captured in that warm and soft light that has a kind of morning or late afternoon feel; it's about the mood, it's about the story we want to tell.

Good news is: in the studio, we do have the possibility to " fake " daylight; sometimes the result is so good you could not tell the difference.

Now, before we go on and explain how this is done, we need to introduce the concept of colour temperature and talk about the Kelvin scale.

The idea of colour temperature originated with Lord Kelvin in the 19th century: because colours look different under different light sources (which have different color temperatures), the colour variation is referred to as the colour temperature and is measured in degrees Kelvin.

Technically, colour temperature refers to the temperature to which one would have to heat a theoretical "black body" source to produce light of the same visual colour.

The kelvin unit is the basis of all temperature measurement, starting with 0 K (= -273.16° C) at the absolute zero temperature.

The scale ranges from the flame of a candle at around 1900K to deep blue sky at around 10,000k.

The colour next to the average noon daylight (5500K) is white. This is the colour temperature that colour film is balanced to which means that when shooting using daylight film the photograph will record white objects as white and all the colours in an image will appear natural on the film.

What's interesting to note here is that electronic flash units emit light which is very similar to photographic daylight; and it's even more interesting to observe that battery powered electronic flash ( speedlights ) measure 6000 K which is precisely the same measurement as that of a overcast sky.

Which is why we can't sometimes tell the difference between daylight and flash.

I took this picture late at night     a few days ago; it's 100%            artificial light. The same  exposure could have been taken   at 12.00 a.m. using daylight.

You wouldn't know the  difference.

The lighting diagram reveals why :

one light source, coming from the rear, diffused , actually double-diffused ; if I was to shoot the same scene at noon I would do the same thing : diffuse the light coming from my big window.

It depends what the weather is like outside and how the light is falling into the room : if it's a fine day, the light is strong and I can't back up into the room away from the window, I will use a white linen to soften my source; it's a very cheap trick and it works. It's just like a huge soft box.

For this particular shot I also needed to have a very soft light source so to properly expose my subject without loosing details on the shiny lemon skin. I like to keep my highlights under control.

The reflector does a very good job of filling the shadows, although you can notice how the shadow of the lemon in the background is darker than the one in the front; something to take into consideration when assembling the scene.

One could always use an extra reflector.

From a styling point of view, just take into account the use of a basically duotone kind of  colour palette: both the flowers and the tablecloth main colour is yellow. Yellow on yellow we could call it.

They add to the scene without taking the attention away from the main subject; this is how props should be used.

And there is just enough red in the flowers so to create a " balanced " contrast. Lovely !

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Posted in Food, Photography

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