Food Photography with Simon Park

Has any of you readers out there read the blog The Heart of Food? if not, stop reading this and go to that first!! (Warning: Ensure you have eaten before clicking the link, else you will become very very hungry). Anyway, so Simon Park (blogger of The Heart of Food) came in, and gave us a very impressive presentation about his style of photography. Oh! He also brought along a surprise for the end of the class ;p

 

Every Friday afternoon, UNSW Photoclub holds some sort of tutorial/lecture/workshop kind of thing, where people learn how to be a better photographer. Last week, we had a food blogger come in to talk about food photography!!

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So, lets get into it! From here on out, most of the things I say would be paraphrased from Simon Park, I apologise if I get something wrong, but oh wells.

Alright! What is food photography? Well, it is considered a sub branch of still-life. The photographer generally has some reasonable control over the setup in these situations

The way Simon described food photography was... 'food porn'. Yes, it was awkward, but he has a point! When you look at pictures at food, what usually makes it a good photo?It makes you go OMG I WANT IT!

This is basically 'Desire'. Similar to what normal porn does right? Or is that just me? ;p


Framing

Further into the presentation, he gives lots of examples of what different perspectives and settings would do to a picture. The idea of cropping and framing was quite significant in his talk. For good food pictures, you have to get intimate with the food (this is starting to sound like some dating blog). Crop close but not too close. You don't really want to give it a suffocating feel. The key thing to remember is, if some part of the photo plays no part in telling the story, then if by getting rid of it enhances the pictures, then do it!!

Talking of stories, this brings me to something I learnt from a previous guest speaker. Photojournalism is about telling a story right? Working for the papers, you tell the news with a photo, or a series of photos. Well this is no different to food. Actually it's no different to most kinds of photography. There is an underlying story you want to convey. Sometimes, one photo is just not enough.

Having multiple pictures can be good at times. Simon showed us a... quite bad image of someone eating pork ribs. By bad, I mean it looked like a snapshot, badly composed etc. But tied together with 2 other images, he told  a story. Unfortunately I don't have any example pictures to show, but hey, maybe my description is awesome enough for you to imagine it. (Highly doubt it)

I noticed that I have written quite a large amount already, so I'll try and keep it more succinct. The most important part of the whole presentation I found, was not all the different technical nitty gritty stuff, but it's showing you how composition makes a good story. This is what makes or breaks a photo in my opinion. With enough practice, the shutter speeds, aperture, ISO all become somewhat natural (or just use the light meter and chimp like crazy!! Yes I'm lazy) and composition is the only thing on your mind.


Lighting

Soft light. That is the key to all food photography. Soft light gives food, similarly to what gives to portraiture, this awesome softness that makes it look delicious ;) But of course this is not a rule. It is just, what food photography these days tend to be. You can be out there, and make some awesome hard light shots. Actually I encourage you to! Anyway, if you look at any food pictures, the common themes you see is, bright, natural lighting. No or very little shadow, and a white background. This does NOT mean you bring around a white sheet to take pictures of food.

So in summary, if you are in a bad lighting position, MOVE. I don't care if it's the table with the most romantic lighting, it sucks for your photos ;p I'm only joking, I don't think your date will turn out well if you acted like that.


Perspective

Last point. Change your perspective. Try to not shoot from the eye level as if you were just sitting down. Why? All non-photographers would generally shoot like that. You don't want to be mixed with that bunch ;p You want to ACT pro!!! Anyway, shoot at an angle. From above, from below. Depends how much of the background you want to keep in.

Shoot the food itself on a angle. Use the lines of the foods to make it more interesting. if the edges are parallel to your frame, the lines would distort to a vanishing point, which looks funny for food. Hence shoot the food itself at an angle.


Surprise!

I did mention that there was a surprise at the end of the presentation. And that surprise... was a box!! A box, with cake inside. Which.... actually looked like a box. It was a interesting shaped cake in my opinion, something that looks very expensive and fancy. So what better to finish up a food photography presentation, with some food photography! And do you know what's great about food photography? You get to eat it afterwards! By the way, the cake was from Chocolate Artisan, and you should visit them because this cake was AWESOME!!!

Anyway, I hope this was not too long considering the attention span of people seem to be decreasing these days.

Next time! on...dragon ball this blog, I will talk about the spoils from my quest of food.