TAKE FULL CONTROL

Advice for brilliant compositions

What makes food styling so different to most genres of photography is the degree of control you have over the subject. You can do anything you like to the scene – you can even eat it. It’s easy to control the light over a scene the size of a table, compared to shooting a full studio set or waiting for sunrise over a landscape. Food doesn’t have to pull a pose or deliver an expression. It sits there and silently accepts the attention without moving. Within limits of course – do be careful with ice cream as it can melt in minutes if you’re not ready for the shot.

The scale and inanimate nature of food photography means you have excellent opportunities for composition. It’s a great genre to explore the use of colour, perspective and repetition. Don’t feel that you need all the colours of the rainbow jammed into a single frame – instead try initially working with a limited colour palette and find ways to repeat them through the scene. And use more than one dish in your styling, taking advantage of a bigger scale and bigger ideas. Change your perspective as you shoot. Try the top-down view but then look for different angles that reveal more or less of certain elements.

Food photography lends itself to tethered shooting. It’s a good idea to work with a laptop and tether cable when in the studio or on location. It’s a big advantage compared to viewing on-camera only, because you get much better feedback on subtle variations in your shots and more accurate confirmation of where your shallow depth of field is hitting. Additionally, the clarity of a large laptop screen also gives you better renderings of your compositions, complete with your preferred processing treatment as each frame rolls off the camera.

The prime rule though is to always start with the light. It doesn’t matter how interesting the food is if you don’t have good light. Aim for soft, abundant, angled light. As you change your perspective you can also change your angle of light. Like adding salt and pepper to a dish, your angle is adjusting the seasoning of the shot.

DP

CAPTURE THE STORY

dynamic moments add so much to the story of the image. For example, broth being poured into a noodle dish is a simple moment of completion for the chef, but is an essential capture for the photographer