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This is great, I have just got my first ever real photo assignment that could actually lead somewhere so following this thread avidly. I do agree that lighting is more important than just about anything, although it does depend on how beautiful the dish is as well as how long it can stand up to being photographed. Some stuff I have been working on, with foams and sabayons, lasts about 20 seconds if I am lucky. I usually have to photograph things on the "pass" at the restaurant during service, so you can imagine how tough that is. Trying to get any kind off off camera flash is basically impossible and so I usually just bounce or diffuse a fill flash and use the light from the heat lamps. Although on it gets harder on the Garde Manger pass with no heat lamps... I also did a shoot in the dining room, I had about 10 minutes to set up and then the chef carved in about 3 minutes and I was shooting frantically. Some examples  
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Dec 4, 2009 07:36
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noss posted:Some great shots there! I can see that as hurried as you must have been you paid some attention to detail (all handles and implements facing the same way unless that's some chef thing) the composition is good and the lighting is pretty decent. For the first shot I had quite a bit of time, plus the whole carving guéridon was set up for me. For the chef carving stuff I had no time at all, as he is a very experienced european chef he was blindingly quick. I had to keep telling him to slow down so I could frame some different shots. I wish I had been able to use off camera lighting, the shadows on the chef jacket and apron really bother me. He is carving a duck, it is one of his most famous dishes. A swiss magazine is writing an article about him and they wanted a few shots for it. Most importantly he was happy with them, so I am going to be shooting more of his food in the near future.
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Dec 5, 2009 09:19
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Some new stuff. This is going to be a framing shot for a magazine that the restaurant I shoot for produces to give out for its customers. The subject is poultry and this was a shot of a chicken liver mousse that they make. The idea is the recipe will be provided and printed in the white space of the shot. Hence all the white space. This was shot with a Canon 7D, 17-55 2.8 IS USM @ 55mm, ISO 100, 1/250 @ f4.0 with 550ex flash at 1/8 mounted off camera, diffused into an umbrella (camera right) with a reflector on the left (I improvised with some aluminum foil!). I do wish that I had a second flash to do maybe a 3:1 ratio instead of using an improvised reflector, but overall I am pretty happy with it. I used the camera's built in flash trigger, but set it to manual as I am still getting used to something other than a Cactus V4. The cool thing is as a result of this I pretty much have the gig to shoot all the food for them for the next 6 months. I am super happy as this is not just a lot of exposure but also a lot of practice.
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Dec 22, 2009 09:14
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brad industry posted:I would have moved the bread slightly to the left so that shadow doesn't fall on it, and it would be nice to see more of a specular highlight on that brown liquid to give a better idea of texture but that's kind of nit picky. It's a little to FLOATIN' UNTETHERED IN WHITE SEAMLESS SPACE with no sense of narrative for me, but if that's what they wanted it looks great. Congrats on the job. Yeah I was kind of against the whole white space thing, but I imagine when the editor puts the recipe on it then it will look a lot better. I have a ton of shots of the plate without even the bread on it, which I prefer, but the Chef called the final shot on which one he liked. I also totally agree on the bread, it's the one part which bothers me the most. Assuming i get the final page in some sort of digital format then I will post it here. It looks like I will be setting up a number of shoots in the new year to catalog the entire menu, which is a ton of work, but I am really looking forward to it. For info, the restaurant is Eleven Madison Park in Manhattan.
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Dec 23, 2009 09:07
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Maybe this is better for a specific thread, but here goes. A good friend of mine is a semi-finalist in the Bocuse d'Or culinary competition (think food Olympics). The semi finals are in February and he needs photos taken of the final platters before then. So I think this is fine, I will do this for him. He is a close friend and I am happy to help him out. But then I think about the future. What if he wins? what if he is suddenly in the limelight and these photos are published everywhere? I am going to put serious effort into this and I want them to be the best shots. What I proposed was that I will take the shots and retain all copyright. He is free to use them for the Bocuse d'Or competition. However any future use would be subject to .... and then I am lost. If he wins, then he could be everywhere, and if the shots are good enough they will be there as well. Even if he doesn't win, another friend who was the US representative, won a James Beard award and he is a very well respected chef. I guess I don't want to set a friend up to be limited by any sort of proposed greed from me, but also I don't want my photographs to be used and I don't get paid. Are there any sort of standard contracts that I can look over? Does anyone have any advice to give?
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Dec 27, 2009 09:44
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More food. This time with a two light set up. These are planned to be used in a national newspaper. If that happens then I will post a real link.   
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Dec 30, 2009 09:33
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So a couple of months ago I started shooting my friend practicing for the Bocuse d'Or USA finals. These are some of the shots of his food. The finals were on Friday/Saturday and he won, so next Jan he is off to Lyon to compete in the world finals. These are shots of his final practice session which was the sunday before the finals, so not the actual final dishes. His lamb plate  His salmon plate  James practicing with Daniel Humm (of Eleven Madison Park) and Gavin Kaysen (of Cafe Boulud) watching  His Commis Tom Allan putting the first quenelle of caviar on the salmon pave  I have about a million shots of all kinds of stuff, I am thinking of a sort of trip report post when I have everything processed.
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Feb 9, 2010 04:02
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somnambulist posted:What about cooler temperatures for things like Yogurt? Would you still shoot it a bit warm? I'm shooting an ad campaign for a yogurt company next week, and I'm a bit nervous about the lighting. Make sure you have a properly calibrated monitor. Shoot in raw so anything that goes awry with white balance you can fix later. Nailing the whites is key to making clients happy. Everything else grows from there.
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Feb 13, 2010 10:04
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evil_bunnY posted:Man that looks delicious as hell. Thanks, well I guess, I didn't make the actual food but it was delicious. I am really happy as this shot just got picked up by time magazine online for a write up on the bocuse d'or competition.
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Feb 17, 2010 08:28
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corkskroo posted:that's awesome! Congrats! The shots are really beautiful. I use a Canon 7D. It's a perfect balance between picture quality and speed. When I am shooting in a kitchen or at events the fast frame rate really comes in handy. Mainly for straight food shots that I have total control over then I use a EF-S 60mm 2.8 macro. It allows me to get as close as I want and it's not too wide to distort perspective, my feet do the zooming. However unless space dictates (which it does when shooting mainly in NYC kitchens) I will always use a tripod and set up everything before the food is finished. When shooting chefs at work I switch between a EF-S 17-55 2.8 or a 70-200 F4L, though the 70-200 usually is on my backup camera. For lighting I use two canon flashes, a 550ex and a 580exii. Set them to manual and usually 3:1 ratio to get some shadow on the plate, shot through umbrellas/soft box. Triggered with RF-602 wireless or the 7D wireless depending on location. I have a serious gear wish list but to be honest I am really happy with my shots, especially since I got the macro lens, it's almost the perfect lens for food. I will probably next invest in some studio strobes as I am working on a food and wine book.
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Feb 17, 2010 19:41
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Greybone posted:How is this? Obviously not staged and more a spur of the moment thing, but I need to start posting more for feedback anyways I realize you did this spur of the moment, but you have made the plate and its surroundings more interesting than the food, when the food has to be the most important part. Try re-plating with 4 rows of each item, instead of 4 items all grouped in 6 like it is now. Put the bread sticks at the back, they are the least interesting food item and are really just garnish. Right now: 11223344 11223344 (fish head plate front) 11223344 Try this: 111111 222222 (fish head plate front) 333333 444444 Then shoot with the front of the plate in the shot and then the front line of items in focus, very sharp. That way you see all 4 different food items perfectly. Have the champagne flutes in the background but try and avoid lighting them too much but don't cut off the tops of the glasses. If anything the cremant bottle label should be either in focus or at least discernable, but I would try and shoot with and without any of the glasses and bottle. Also change the runner to something simple and iron it so it has no weird folds on the sides. Keep it white though so there is contrast between the plate and the surface.
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Jul 15, 2010 09:16
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I did a shoot for a private chef I know. It's amazing what 2 cooks can do in a tiny manhattan apartment. All this was shot off a cardboard packing box in one of the tiny bedrooms.     As always plenty of stuff from the shoot I am not happy with but it was a good feeling to be consistently getting the light right. I was adjusting my flashes without really thinking about it. Now to spend a week post processing all the images to get them printable.
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Jul 23, 2010 17:31
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AIIAZNSK8ER posted:If you're going to post such interesting looking stuff, you have to label it. 1. Gnocchi hors d'ouvre 2. Caviar danish 3. Foiegarden (foie gras torchon with wild mushroom 'dirt' and garden vegs) 4. Uni Tapioca with picked radish 5. Chanterelle mushroom ragout (this was the garnish for a different dish not shown) All shot with a canon 7d, efs 60mm 2.8 macro (love this lens for food), 2 canon flashes (550ex and 580 exii) one with lumiquest softbox other with honiphoto honeycomb grid to give me enough light control so I could get a completely dark background.
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Jul 23, 2010 20:28
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Fairly ordinary stuff, but a mad amount of preparation went into this shoot - literally an hour of shooting and 6 hours of prep. This was great experience in logistics. This is some of the proofs for a shoot I did for Victorinox. They are doing a culinary school tour and needed layouts of all the different types of knife cuts for students.   I have to add captions and text to the shots before they are done.
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Sep 15, 2010 01:27
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Twenties Superstar posted:Six hours seems like a long time for what is for the most part pretty simple veg prep dude :/ Oh I didn't prep it, just had to get someone to do it for me, then I showed up for a 2 hour shoot.
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Sep 15, 2010 02:44
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LAchristus posted:Digging this thread as I really want to learn the art of food photography - kudos to OP. At f2.8 you will need to have the strobes on very low power. I have 2 lights on 1/1 and 1/2 when I shoot at f9 to f11 . For the style I like shoot I much much prefer a bigger depth of field that the smaller aperture gives me. I feel food needs more detail, not less. Pretty food is a lot more than cooking skills. I started because I knew some chefs who can cook great food and asked if I could shoot their food for free practice. Now I am working paid jobs for them and their friends, some of whom are the top chefs in the US. Also check out "Food Styling: The Art of Preparing Food for the Camera" which is full of great tips. Another tip is to just shoot ingredients in their raw form or being cooked. You can amass a lot of portfolio shots like that. It's not just about finished dishes but the process. A project I did for a kitchen which the chef got a whole pig and we shot it being broken down into different parts and then those being cooked. In the 25 shots there are only 5 dishes and they are all very rustic. Finally everyone should check out this book and be humbled at how good the photography is. http://modernistcuisine.com/
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Sep 24, 2010 17:52
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Cross_ posted:Please explain the sliced pots & woks. Those poor veggies are about to fall out.. not to mention the coals! I just spent the past day discussing with a fellow food photog how the hell they did that. It must be at least a composite of a few images or something. He is my mentor of sorts and he is totally humbled seeing some of the shots they have done.
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Sep 25, 2010 06:51
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Been a while since I posted anything. More stuff for a NYC based private chefs cookbook. Quite a few shots to look at, probably the most happy with this shoot than anything I have done before. I was a lot more confident with controlling how the plating went. Now I just need to buy a poo poo load of props, as I felt I was very short on those during the shoot. At least now I am not needing any new gear. Sea Bass.  Pan Roasted Lime Radish  2 shots of the Lime Radish dish   Beet Marinaded Trout with Pistachios and Mint  2 shots of the Sea Bass from above, with parsnip crust and puree, roasted poblanos and chives   Smoked Octopus head with tomatos and corn.  Pan roasted duck breast with hen of the woods mushrooms and baby bok choi.  Rabbit rack, loin, leg with heirloom carrots and baby romaine lettuce. This shot was more playing around with what we can do. I had this huge vinyl mat which we 'plated' on for effect. I need to spend more time controlling the light, it has too much spill with the softboxes I am using. I like the principle of the shot though. 
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Jan 18, 2011 07:06
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More food Lamb Rack with Napa Cabbage, Sweet Potato, Parsnip and Black Truffles. A dish by Daniel Humm the chef at Eleven Madison Park in NYC, shot for a Relais and Chateau event he is doing in Europe this year. 
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Mar 18, 2011 20:23
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LAchristus posted:Long time since I been in here. Just ordered the Food Styling book by Dolores Custer, hoping to get some good tips there. I tried making the tea egg some time ago, and it didn't come out too well, but I'm posting it anyway along with some other recent stuff. Good luck with the internship. I really like the stuff you posted, there is definately a vision in the last three. The only shot I don't like so much is the third, mainly because I have no idea what it is, therefore I don't want to eat it.
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Mar 18, 2011 20:27
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LAchristus posted:Looks delicious! Maybe you should brighten up the background in the bottom of the picture, it draws my eyes away from the food. It might work better if you 90 degrees counter clock wise - just a thought!
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Mar 19, 2011 19:51
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LAchristus posted:Weird he wants it that way, but I guess he decides. Yeah some of my pictures also get kind of weird when uploading small jpeg. All his plates and stuff look like that, it's becoming his signature look. Another shot a friend of mine did for him a year or so ago has that same mysterious darker edges shadow spots, which the chef pointed out to me he loved. So much I end up doing in NYC is like his food, white plates, clean plating, not sure what the garnishes are on the main protein (which many times is very mysterious). All the high end chefs are doing that or the 'Noma look' which is all over the place now. I assume you are in copenhagen if you worked with Paul Cunningham, so I bet that style is all over the place as well. I am doing a shoot for Union Square Cafe next week, their food will be a nice change to what I have been doing for the past few months.
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Mar 19, 2011 21:44
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LAchristus posted:
I compare Noma to what is in the Fat Duck book or Aliena which has very clean, precise, perfect plates with lots of almost macro close ups and reflections. I think the original pioneer of that look in books was probably 4 Saisons a La Table No.5 by Kasuko Masui (a stunning book) Yannick Alleno is one of my fav chefs in the world. Also check out the stuff in the Modernist Cuisine that has just come out for probably the most cutting edge food photography right now. That's a very popular style in the last 5 to 6 years. So for me the Noma look is taking that and just messing it up a bit, plating is deliberately random and maybe it's on an old muslin tablecloth, or a wooden bench. Everything also looks like it was shot outside on a sunny but cloudy day. Most everything is also shot from directly above the food. Rugged simplicity which hides what is a huge amount of work and precision.
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Mar 19, 2011 22:59
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All this food makes me thirsty. This is some stuff I was doing today with a bartender friend of mine for his and my portfolio.  
mysticp fucked around with this message at 02:38 on Mar 28, 2011 |
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Mar 26, 2011 22:48
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LAchristus posted:Nice pictures, like the feel of the two last especially. But whats up with the matcha drink, is than an egg on the side? Looks loving delicious though! It's an egg. After finishing the shoot I realized the egg was face on instead of side on, so it's not as obvious as it should be. The cocktail uses Cachaca, matcha and an egg white. Shaken and strained. The top shot I am happy with the style, but that was the only bottle of El Tesoro Anjeo we could get our hands on and really it should be full, it looks a bit crap being so empty. The lighting needs work as well, the stopper is way too dark.
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Mar 28, 2011 02:27
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LAchristus posted:Nice pictures, like the feel of the two last especially. But whats up with the matcha drink, is than an egg on the side? Looks loving delicious though! http://www.schonnemann.dk/ Check out this guy, a friend of mine represents him in London but he is Danish. His work is excellent. As far as I know he uses natural light almost exclusively.
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Mar 28, 2011 16:57
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LAchristus posted:Maybe we should create a thread about food photography instead of just posting on in this 'help' thread. Just putting it out there. Or if not then maybe a mod can just change the tag/title so what is in this thread doesn't get lost.
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Mar 29, 2011 05:00
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brad industry posted:edit: also changed the title to be general food thread Great thanks! So I finally managed to set up a studio environment in my apartment. Bear in mind I live in a small one bedroom manhattan apartment, so space is at a premium, but I do have a usable kitchen. Now I can really concentrate on shooting more and more portfolio/stock stuff, no more sponging off downtime in restaurants. I literally just got it set up, so here is a couple of test shots with some stuff I had lying around.  I was about to make a tuna sandwich...  Then I ate an orange... Now I need to get hold of some more plates and actually cook some food at home.
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Apr 7, 2011 02:44
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This weekend my apartment is a photo studio and I am cooking constantly. Lots of fun and I get to eat plenty of great food. Here are a few shots from today I am going to turn these tomatos into a sauce, for a shoot tomorrow.  I was annoyed I cut the top off the strawberry, but I had to straighten the angle which meant I lost it.   This is inspired by a BLT shot in the current edition of Saveur magazine, I wanted to figure out how they did it and how to light it. Was a good exercise in tripod management and improvised trickery, not to mention got to flex some photoshop skills.  The finished burger was delicious!!
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Apr 10, 2011 06:12
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LAchristus posted:The burger shot however is really nice - and very funny! How did you do it? Congrats on the internship, very cool. The burger is basically a composite of the 5 elements, the hardest part was getting the perspectives right so it looks like they are one image and also shooting everything except the bun at the bottom with no sign of a shadow on the base - I used a small piece of clear plastic pipe to stand everything on. Then lots of photoshop time to clean it up and align everything.
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Apr 11, 2011 18:10
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robertdx posted:More homemade bread: I really like this, I don't think the styling is perfect, but the light and color balance is spot on so it makes me want to eat it. Which is the goal in food photography. I would probably crop out more of the green background to make the sandwich take up more frame space. For styling it would be nice to see more of the mayo, it's barely noticable.
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Apr 20, 2011 16:41
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I get stuff from fabric stores, you can get end cuts from rolls of really cool cotton material for next to nothing. Perfect for a table top and way cheaper than even the cheapest table cloth. Also make double sided wooden table tops, paint them different colors, use sandpaper to age them, stain them, whatever. You can use really cheap wood as it's just for the shoot and not for a real table.
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May 13, 2011 05:46
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I did a shoot for this ultra modern restaurant in NYC on Sunday, these are a couple from the final edit. Their food is really out there, this is part of the dessert tasting menu - the total menu is up to 22 courses. Visually it's pretty much impossible to identify what the food is. It tastes good though!  
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May 13, 2011 05:53
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A quick shot from a shoot I did today, this I took while I was setting up a new lighting setup. 
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Jun 4, 2011 03:36
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Cross_ posted:I am not seeing anything in the OP- are there any must-have books on food photography/presentation ? This is the book to get for food styling, nothing else comes close, but it is more aimed at full on commercial shoots with assistants and dedicated stylists and chefs. http://www.amazon.com/Food-Styling-Art-Preparing-Camera/dp/0470080191/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1308104501&sr=8-1 There are a number of books dedicated to food photography, the best one I have read is http://www.amazon.com/Plate-Pixel-Digital-Photography-Styling/dp/0470932139/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1308104501&sr=8-3 It is written by a successful food photographer and is also aimed at people who shoot on a low budget, so is full of useful ideas. The best books to get are actually just recipe books, they have the best food photography and you learn more by seeing what makes an image work rather than being shown how to make it. Good examples are Noma Cookbook Alinea The Fat Duck Cookbook Momofuku Cookbook Under Pressure: Cooking Sous Vide India: The Cookbook I also recommend Saveur which has great photography, if a bit heavy with one photographer (Todd Coleman) though his stuff is still really good and I think having a specific style is very important. Food & Wine magazine is also okay, but less interesting photography. Also magazine such as Cooking Light have notable photography, most of the successful commercial magazines are worth a look for their food photography and you can get an annual sub for $10 or so.
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Jun 15, 2011 03:39
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Cross_ posted:I take your word for it- just ordered it. While you wait, check out her blog http://www.tarteletteblog.com/
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Jun 15, 2011 22:10
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I posed a while back about Modernist Cuisine (http://modernistcuisine.com/) which is an outrageous book with some amazing food photography. Here is a couple of behind the scenes blog posts covering the photographer and some of his methods http://seattlefoodgeek.com/2011/04/behind-the-scenes-with-modernist-cuisines-food-photographer-part-1getting-the-shot/#more-1454 http://seattlefoodgeek.com/2011/04/behind-the-scenes-with-modernist-cuisines-food-photographer-part-2photoshop-magic/#more-1483
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Jun 15, 2011 22:25
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For the last 9 months I have been covering the creation of a beer by Garrett Oliver at Brooklyn Brewery specifically for Eleven Madison Park in New York. As part of this beer launch, which was on Sunday, they also published a magazine that is specifically about Beer. I also shot everything for the Magazine. Here is the front cover of the magazine  Garrett Oliver in the barrel room where the beer was aged for 6 months  Barrel sampling  The brewery  Garrett and Daniel Humm (the chef at Eleven Madison Park) in the barrel room  All the beer was hand labelled by the staff at the restaurant  I have a ton more shots, they just got picked up by Food and Wine for an article that is being written about the whole thing.
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Jun 28, 2011 19:53
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AIIAZNSK8ER posted:I need help, I want to sell the hell out of these bowls of ramen soup. Took some quick snaps to get an idea of how they would look, but next time I want to really rock it out. You can reduce the "shiny" by diffusing the light, either from the window if it's natural light or use a softbox and a scrim at the same time. The posted pictures are a little flat, I would work on giving them some punch in post. All of these shots have one problem, they just look like a bowl of stuff. You need to spend time organizing the food and not randomly adding whatever is in the bowl. Use a little less broth so the actual ingredients in the ramen show better. Arrange the scallions in a smaller pile, so they are less scattered. Make sure you can see the main protein properly. Don't let the broth sit out too long. I can visibly see a skin on a couple of the dishes. You need some steam to come off the ramen broth. Ramen is supposed to be steaming hot and seeing that adds to the appeal. Also go to amazon and look up the momofuku cookbook. There is a great shot of ramen in the preview you can see.
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Sep 19, 2011 20:05
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Finally a day in the test kitchen. Not been in almost 2 months. Time for more portfolio stuff!    This last one was inspired by your post sk8r 
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Sep 25, 2011 03:33
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