Still Photography, Career Starter!
Are you interested in learning how to photograph food as a “Still Photographer”? The Department of Occupational Job Titles “DOT,” identifies Still Life Photographers as earning between $12.00 to $25.00+ p/h based upon experience. You may find out occupational information regarding the DOT classification for Still Photographers by getting online at www.occupationalinfo.org. The DOT Code is 34023A.
Most apprentice photographers learn by working inside an existing business or for a single professional photographer who needs an assistant. If you are interested in still photography, we suggest you head to your nearest book store; gather up a few popular cook-books, and focus in on the still photographs. With these added introductory tips, we can help you get started on a new career in Still Photography!
The most important opportunity to learn fascinating new tricks-of-the-trade in still photography, is to learn by doing. If you have never worked with a DSLR Camera before, but have some experience in food styling; you will want to purchase a DSLR Camera with a manual focus mode. Some point-and-shot DSLR Cameras, will give you nice photographs if the lighting is perfect, the props are all prepared and ready to shoot, and the food doesn’t lose its color, texture and shape due to the hot lights bearing down upon the table setting. In professional or commercial still photography, there is usually a team of working professionals who all work together to quickly prepare and shoot food, as it doesn’t have a long shelf-life under hot lights.
The team of professionals typically includes an “Art Director”, a “Food Stylist”, The “Still Photographer” and two or more “Photography Assistants”. If you plan to start learning how to shoot food, we suggest you become familiar with the typical camera equipment necessary to properly shoot still life and then get a job working as a Photography Assistant.
Know your Camera Equipment !
Knowing your basic camera equipment and how to adjust the camera and lens settings to capture a perfect representation of the food you are photographing is a pre-qualification to becoming a still photographer. This is just as important as being able to create fascinating food subjects.
The following list of camera equipment is essential in working with food photography:
1. For the professional photographer, it is common to own at least 2 DSLR Cameras with a Manual Focus Mode; at least an 8.0 megapixel sensor on the DSLR Camera is adviseable. Also an Electronic Flash Attachment and 2 additional Lenses; a 35 – 85 mm lens and a 85-300mm lens.
2. Tripod with a Bubble Level; once you have your camera mounted on a tripod, with an attached bubble level to ensure the camera is focusing on the table setting and food in a level and locked position, it is much easier to work without being forced to handhold the camera.
3. Remote Shutter Control Switch is an inexpensive cable with a shutter control to enable the photographer to stand away from the camera and lights to take the shot.
4. Computers with Printers and Camera Memory Cards are essential to manage the amount of photos you will need to take within a commercial shoot. Of course, the computer and printer, with its photoshop programs will enable you to send picture files to clients and consumers.
5. Lighting Accessories include the following: Speed light, power packs, Small Medium and Large Softboxes, light stands and reflectors. However, if you purchase a really good DSLR Camera with a Manual Focus mode, some professional food photographers, do not even use any of the lighting accessories, because the camera and the lens does all the work!
HELPFUL TIP: It is far wiser to purchase a new DSLR Camera every few years, than have to trade in all the accessory lenses you purchase, because you want to switch from a Canon to a Nikon, or from a Sony to an Olympus. Remember this tip, the additional lenses you purchase may not be interchangeable between camera models. Be careful to purchase universal lens types or you will be forced to stay with one camera manufacturer, because that is who you purchased all your lenses from.
Steps to Prepare for the Shoot
If you are preparing a commercial shoot, where the client provides you with food samples to photograph, you only have to prepare the room in which you are going to perform still photography in. If you are trying to sell food photography for mass market book publishers, or for a web-site client; it is possible that you will need to prepare two rooms, one for preparing the food and one for shooting the food subject.
We advise you to use fake food props for practicing only, or else prepare the food yourself ahead of time, if you do not have a client ready to provide you with their own prepared food samples.
STEP 1 – PREPARE THE TABLE & LIGHTING:
The best opportunity to avoid the use of accessory lighting is in a well-lit room with a window which provides a lot of natural light. You may have to have a flash bounced off a wall or ceiling, if you have to get rid of un-wanted shadows. Natural daylight versus hot fluorescent lights help to keep the food for longer periods of time and provide a more natural looking appearance to the food product. However, shadows can be creative if used correctly in the food setting. Shadows hovering over the food product produce a darker, bleaker image of the food. Shadows above and below the place setting can create great contrast for the appetizing food product itself.
STEP 2 – SET UP THE TABLE SETTING AND FAKE PROPS FOR PRACTICE
The objective for shooting food that appears tasty and ready to eat, is to not overwhelm the table settings around the food product. Having a full place setting for a dessert food product can give a too-busy look for the overall appearance of the photograph.
When photographing desserts, iced drinks, hot drinks, or appetizers, it is better to prepare the table setting with just one or two extra food prop accessories, to give the food subject a highlight in appearance to the rest of the picture.
Remember, eating food, gives the consumer, an emotional response. We want that to be a happy, excited or romantic emotional response, not a down-in-the-dumps, dark emotional response.
STEP 3 – GET READY TO SHOOT
BE QUICK! Prepared Food does not keep its tasty appearance for very long, even without hot fluorescent lighting. Once everything is in its position, it is time to start shooting for all you are worth. Food loses its luster within a few minutes, once it is placed into the photo setting. You may only have 10 minutes to capture at least 50 shots of the food product.
Real Food products typically last only 1 to 4 minutes with additional lighting, especially cold drinks, etc. With natural light, you may get an additional 5 minutes to actually shoot the food product without any damage, sweat or condensation beginning to appear on the product.
Tips to Shooting Food
When preparing food for photography purposes, there are tips we can provide to help you keep your food product in a perfect, tasty appearance. The most important tip is to first adjust all your camera and lens settings with a fake food prop to get the lighting and camera mounting correct and ready to shoot. Also have your tripod with camera mounted and use a remote shutter control so that when it is time to operate the camera; it is set and ready to go.
1. Next, start with a regular lens mounting and have your camera adjusted to Manual focus, with a Macro setting to get in close on the food product and shoot from up-close, at first. You want to come in up close with the MACRO setting to fill-the-frame with the food product for an enticing appearance.
A few adjustments you can try out with your DSLR camera are the following:
| Shots with a lot of Natural Light | Shots with low or diffused lighting |
| Use an ISO setting of 800 or more
Set your Camera mode to MACRO Use a 50mm lens with approx f/1.4 Exposure is typically 1/100th of a sec. |
Use ISO setting at 100 or 200
Use the 50mm lens with approx f/5.6 Exposure is 1/10th of a second Focal length is about 50 to 80 mm You may need an electronic flash |
2. Be sure to add a thin coat of vegetable oil over a fruit or vegetable dish to give each element of the dish a highlight to the individual food products in the dish. Another trick to keeping food shiny under lights is to purchase a bottle of glycerin from a pharmacy and always keep several sizes of artist brushes in your camera bag of tricks to apply the glycerin or oil.
3. To add professionalism to your photography use plates, bowls and chargers which have geometric shapes to the construction of the dinner-ware. Also be sure to use cutlery which is gold plated or silver with an intricate design on the handle of the cutlery. Be sure to use matching cutlery.
4. If you are preparing hot food to photograph, se sure to keep cotton balls in your camera bag of tricks. Soak the cotton balls in hot water and microwave them for a few minutes. Carefully place them behind the bowl of hot soup or the plate of hot roast beef to give off 1 to 3 minutes of steam. Also you may want to keep a small propane blowtorch, which is great for melting butter.
5. There is a “Truth in Advertisement” law which states that the food product you are advertising must be the real thing. However, any garnishments, accessories, or other items in the table setting do not have to be real. Make sure you fully understand the laws surrounding your craft, to ensure you never come under scrutiny for violation of law.
6. Some photographers use mashed potatoes instead of ice cream, or they might use white glue instead of milk for cereal. Pies often have glue holding them together with toothpicks. As you begin to learn how to photograph food, you will build your camera bag-of-tricks to include many of these items and more.
7. The typical safe shot for food products, expected by most clients – is shot from overhead, straight down, directly over the food product. Be sure to take some of the digital shots in that manner – then, come down to standing height, and at last take shots at table height. But first, start in close in MACRO mode to the food product. All of this must be accomplished within 3 to 5 minutes and then you are forced to start again with another food product.
8. Epoxy glue, super glue, and tweezers, cotton swabs are all great to keep in your camera bag. The tweezers and cotton swabs are great for moving small items and for picking up crumbs. The super glue is also great for holding food pieces together.
9. Dry ice is also great for keeping foods cold and helps them to hold their shape longer, For example take an ice cream scoop and hollow out the inside from the bottom of the scoop. Fit a small cut piece of dry ice inside the scoop and place the scoop in the freezer. Within a few minutes, the scoop of ice cream will be hard as a rock and ready to shoot for at least 20 minutes or more.
10. Have you ever looked in a recipe book for a luscious turkey to make for the holidays? What you see may appear delicious and ready to eat, but in reality the bird may be frozen raw and painted with brown shoe polish and several coats of food coloring, then blasted with a blow torch for a few minutes to give it that just roasted look. Remember to keep lots of tricks up your sleeve, when seeking to become a professional food photographer.
11. Another great tip is to keep red lipstick on hand to paint your strawberries red. This way they look ripe and appear in season longer. I will never forget the Shoney’s hamburger my father was photographing for a commercial. I was only six or seven years old and had no idea the hamburger was really help together with toothpicks and painted with mayonnaise which gave it its glossy appearance. It looked perfect and ready to eat – at least until I screamed from the toothpicks piercing the roof of my mouth! My dad was so proud of his food styling efforts, not that I had destroyed his food product, but that it had looked good enough to eat!
The Lens is the Thing for Stills
MACRO photography is perfect for food stills. A more classical definition of macro photography includes the photography of a subject, where the image projected is the same size or half-the-size as the actual subject. So, what we are really talking about with food photography is the method of shooting food products, which are magnified in the photo to a larger-than-life image; where we can visually observe each minute detail of that image!
The appropriate MACRO LENS Attachment for each model of DSLR Camera, is the critical tool necessary to capture food features in startling detail, frozen in time. A MACRO lens operates best in low-light conditions, with no more than a 27-80mm equivalent range. The macro capability is 1:4.5 with a focal distance of no more than 5 inches from the food product, or whatever is needed to capture the food, in whole, but not the entire table setting. If you want to shoot in MACRO, you need to have two high-quality DSLR cameras in action. One for the macro and table level shots and the other for the normal overhead, and standing length shots.
Lighting is critical to Creating an Emotional Response
Light should graze across your food product and the table settings to create a romantic or a cheerful appearance to potentially eating the food. Your food product is an artistic statement of what the general public should feel when they sit down to eat at this restraint, or at this family dinner, or whatever the case may be. Lights are used to create this effect we call an “emotional response”,
One of the most important tips we can leave you, is DO NOT use the natural fluorescent lights in your kitchen to compensate for lighting resources. They will tend to taint the food products an unsightly shade of green. If you have nothing else to work with but fluorescent lights; you may want to purchase a magenta filter to help compensate the balance of lighting across the photo’s plane-of-view. Setting up your table top settings next to a window with a light white linen or crepe sheer curtain helps to diffuse the bright sun shining in through the window. Sometime you may be forced to use reflectors to bounce the light off the wall, back to the table setting. Getting creative with lighting tricks can make all the difference to your food product.
