By Hernan Rodriguez
I recently was contacted by a well established Mexican food franchise in the hopes of creating appetizing images for menus and poster displays.
In the intial meeting all I had to show were beautiful images of people, both classic and commercial. The immediate response I received from the client was, “Where is your food photography?” I had shot some product and still photography, but my background in food photography was very limited. The honest truth I mentioned was, “ I'm not a food photographer, but I will guarantee the same quality as you see in my portrait work – and if you don’t like the work, you don’t have to pay. People always like that line. Lol. “ The job is yours,” she responded. My approach to the job was to treat it as I would a commercial client. First things first, I did my homework. I believe every job or endeavor gives us the opportunity to learn and broaden our horizons.
Though I was not a specialist, soon after the job I was on my way to becoming one. I did a lot of research in regards to food. I also asked a lot of questions to my client determining what her expectations were, what style or feel she wanted to capture. I even gave her homework to pull out tear sheets from magazines to show me what she liked. This also helped me study the images and see what approach I was going to take in regards to lighting and lens choices.
THE LOOK
In a second meeting with my client, she determined she wanted the viewer to be drawn to the front of the plate and blur the background. She also wanted festive colors, which was the style of the restaurant. The look also needed to be a bit classy. With this in mind, I got to work with Gary Parry, our stylist and studio manager. The first thing we considered was to propose a food stylist to our client. This secured a specialist to make sure the food would be at its most appetizing and freshest appearance to be photographed. From brushing olive oil on the food for shine to substituting half frozen mayonaise instead of sour cream were some of the tricks used by the stylist. Painted grill streaks on the chicken and steak fajitas were applied to enhance our images. In food photography, another point I quickly learned was, “timing is everything”. You have to be prepared with all lights in place due to the short life span of food. Melted cheese loses shape when it cools, lettuce will wilt quickly. Steak and chicken will also dry quite quickly. All test exposures should be done prior to your session. There will not be a lot of time to adjust your lighting once the food is ready to shoot. Other factors to consider is composition, plates, color, fruit and vegetables to help frame and enhance your shot.
LIGHTING AND LENS CHOICE
This is the most technical aspect in getting the food to look its best. Most food photographers use strobe using mainly a form of backlighting with some fill from the front, whether utilizing fill cards or grids for spot lighting the focus of the shot. I decided to use the same principles and applying them to natural lighting. I also was limited to shooting on the outside patio. I decided to setup a table with a white matte plexiglass sheet to stage all of the plates for the day. I placed the table making sure the light would be from behind. I placed another white matte sheet of plastic right behind the table to soften the light by about 3 stops from its ambient reading. This also created a very soft but crisp light. I finished my setup by placing the same sheets to the left and right of the table. In essence creating a large wraparound softbox with a more specular quality of light. This setup can also be done with hot lights instead of the sun. To get the detail and the fill from the front view of the plate, we used a combination of silver or gold reflectors, depending on the food and plate colors, and we also used mirrors and a flashlight on a few of the images.
As far as lens choice, I placed the camera on a tripod using two angles. One very low and one high. The fix position also helps to maintain a constant look for future advertising and menu design. The last thing the client wants is food shot from all different angles. I decided to use the TAMRON 17-35mm wide lens to add more interest to the perspective of the images. It also allowed me to get very close in on the images without having to omit most of the nice set design. I also used it for the final shot of all the plates laid out on the table with all the nice details. I was very impressed with the clarity and sharpness of this lens, being that my depth of field for most of the shots were on the shallow side. Considering that the client wanted to draw the viewer into the front of the image and gradually fade the focus, I decided my priority was to shoot at a depth of field of f4. This gave me a shutter speed of 125th of a second. The ISO was 125.
This setup, though maybe a less conventional approach, I found to be quite versatile. Consistantcy was of the utmost importance. For this reason I kept my f-stop the same and used the same two camera angles. What I did vary as the light changed (the sun moving throughout the day), was to move the physical table and add or subtract sheets of acrylic for diffusion.
All in all, it was a fun project and I accomplished this with a good team behind me. Could never do this alone. Not to mention we were all fed quite well.









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