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Willow Vanderbosch | all galleries >> Galleries >> food > saturday breakfast sandwich with bowl of aztec chocolate
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24-FEB-2007

saturday breakfast sandwich with bowl of aztec chocolate

The wonkiness is because the surface is not a table- it's my bed. I discovered that the lighting in my room is much better than that in the kitchen, and since I'm going to eat the meal in here anyway...

I discovered this morning that honey is really hard to control to make a pretty design. I'm sure I could do better with practice. This is the second attempt. I also think I could improve the pic by perhaps showing the top of the bread, which was beautiful. I just wanted to show the melted cheese as well as the insides.

The chocolate...well, it appears that there are a lot of things about photographing a liquid that are difficult. Not the least of which is the reflection in the liquid and the bowl.

Sigh. Who knew it was so gosh darn difficult to photograph food???

Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX8
1/8s f/2.8 at 5.8mm iso200 full exif

other sizes: small medium original auto
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Willow Vanderbosch25-Feb-2007 10:12
Oh, and yes I did know about the real food photography. I could look at my stuff and think, "That would look much better with vegetable oil sprayed on it...but yuck. That's my lunch!" I still feel that I can get good images of real food- it's ok if it's not totally professional, I'd like it to look tasty and appealing anyway. :-)
Willow Vanderbosch25-Feb-2007 10:10
Hmmmmm........I didn't know about those little tent boxes. I'm thinking that my laundry hamper could be just like that if I put a white gauze around it (and took the laundry out). Those lights as well...those could be desk lamps. Hmmm....the wheels are turning. You are an awesome sister!! Thank you. :-)
Aurora Vanderbosch24-Feb-2007 16:12
I will tell you a secret about photographing food, and small objects--particularly with shiny surfaces: you need to control the light, so that you have a soft, shadowless light all around. You can control the light, by reflecting it where you want it--and you do this, by using something white. To practice this, take a sheet of white paper, and stand somewhere where light is falling on your face...and carefully notice where the shadows on your face are (eye sockets, sides of nose, under nose, cheekbones, etc). Now hold the piece of white paper under in front of your face, and under it, angled up towards your face slightly, to catch the same light that's on your face--and "bounce" it back up towards your face--and watch the shadows disappear, and the amount of light on your face double!

That's the easy part.

The hard part is making this work on an external object. But if you take some white things--pieces of posterboard, cut to a workable size--some white sheet, a white t-shirt--and begin placing them around what you're photographing, in places where light hits them, and can then "bounce" back towards your object--you can begin to control the light--and get rid of the shadows--as well as, in some cases, even making the overall amount of light brighter! :-)

A product photographer or food photographer is probably using something like this: http://cgi.ebay.com/EXTRA-LARGE-Photo-Softbox-Light-Tent-Cube-Soft-Box-36_W0QQitemZ220084235555QQihZ012QQcategoryZ79010QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem , and then shining bright lights through it, like this: http://cgi.ebay.com/Table-Top-Studio-30W-Lighting-Table-Top-Tripod-Tent-US_W0QQitemZ320085554715QQihZ011QQcategoryZ79008QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem --just common household lamps, can even work, if necessary, to do this. Someone more bigtime would have something like this, to help provide a bounced form of light: http://cgi.ebay.com/SHOOTING-TABLE-NON-REFLECTIVE-OPAQUE-PLEXIGLASS-4007-3_W0QQitemZ200082690681QQihZ010QQcategoryZ30088QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Try experimenting with just white sheets of paper, and see if you can learn to control your light a bit more--I think you'll quickly find you're getting rid of those pesky shadows, at any rate! ;-)

(Oh--and I'm sure you knew this already...but real food photography isn't always done with real food. I mean, they use lots of props--toothpicks to hold things up...vegetable oil sprayed on things, to keep them shiny, etc. You couldn't necessarily really EAT what they're photographing--so unless you're prepared to fake your food a bit more, keep that in mind, and don't compare your own work to that kind of work! ;-))

With that in mind--this is excellent work--keep it up!!! :D
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