Canon 7D, Canon 70-200 f/4L IS lens, 1/250 sec at f/7.1, ISO 100

I was up pretty late last night working on the last bits of my new book, and this is one of the images I created. The setup and Photoshop editing is similar to the “steaming shrimp” photo from this blog post (steam added with a hand-steamer & two images merged together using masking), so take a look at that post for more info on how I created this image.

Here’s a BTS image and list of equipment so you can see my setup:

• Canon Speedlite 430EX
• Lastolite TriGrip Diffuser
• Black foam board for background
• White foam board underneath and also to the left for fill light
• Small reflector for fill light
• Manfrotto Magic Arm to hold fork (w/ Gaffer tape)

Real ice (left) and fake ice (right)

If you’ve ever tried to photograph a cold, iced beverage you probably realized how quickly the ice melts away. This is one reason that many food photographers and stylists will use fake ice in glasses of cold drinks. This is not only used in still photography … the next time you are watching a movie or TV show with someone holding a drink, take a look at the ice … it’s probably fake. It’s just not realistic to expect the ice to last during the time-frame that it takes to style and phtogoraph an image (or complete a TV/movie scene.)

Not only does the ice melt, but oftentimes it will end up looking foggy. In the image on the left I used ice from the ice-maker in my freezer … pretty standard house-hold ice. Some ice won’t look foggy like this, but if it’s not foggy then that means it probably will melt much more quickly. Fake ice, on the other hand, has a more “glassy” appearance and just looks better. You can find all sorts of shapes of fake ice for sale online—some are really expensive (the fancy, acrylic custom ice and splashes, for example). However I’ve had really good luck with some inexpensive fake ice … I usually just buy mine from Amazon.com (here’s a link to some ice I recently purchased for about $20.)

The down-side to a lot of fake ice is that it tends to sink to the bottom of the glass. Since most ice floats, then the way I get around this is to fill up a glass fully with ice … I’m typically using small glasses so this hasn’t been a problem so far.

BTW, if you want to learn more about food photography, I’m writing a book about it! Check it out here. :)

Some of you may already know that I’m writing another book, and you might also know that this next one will be about food photography! I’m really excited about this book, it’s so far been a really fun process and I’ve also been creating a lot of yummy photos to go in it (which you’ve probably already previewed if you read my blog). This will be my third book with Peachpit and another addition to the “Snapshots to Great Shots” series. I was waiting for the cover-shot to be updated on Amazon with the final image before I posted this to my blog, so here it is! It’s officially official and is available for pre-order on Amazon.com, and it should be in print and released sometime late Summer (August-ish).

This book is for anyone interested in food photography. Whether you’re new to photography or have been a photographer for years, you’ll find a lot of relevant information on how to photograph, style and even edit your food photographs on the computer. The first two chapters are geared towards beginning photographers, as I explain the basics of photography and gear that can be used when photographing food. In the rest of the book I talk about light, styling, props, composition, editing in Adobe Photoshop and also an entire chapter on behind-the-scenes setups from start-to-finish to include styling, lighting (with BTS illustrations and photographs), and the editing process.

Also, if you have a favorite recipe and want a chance to win a copy of my food photography book, head on over to an earlier blog post to post your recipe or food idea for a chance to win my book when it’s released.

Canon 7D, Canon 70-200 f/4L IS lens, 1/125 sec at f/8, ISO 100

Oftentimes the food we photograph loses its steam pretty quickly, even if it’s still hot. That little puff of steam adds so much to the photo … it plays with our senses and makes hot food look appetizing. There are some weird methods to add steam (microwaving cotton balls and other cotton products that should go nowhere near food) but I discovered another way that is actually pretty simple (thanks to a food stylist from a Kelby Training course I saw a while back). So, heres’s an easy way to add realistic steam to food photographs:

Behind-the-scenes photo …

Gear used:
• Canon 430EX speedlight as the main light shooting through a diffusion panel (the inside of a five-in-one reflector).
• Black foam core in front of the light to serve as the background
• Fork taped to a set of wooden chopsticks that are taped to a Manfrotto Magic Arm
• White foam core to the left for front fill-light
• Reflector/white foam core underneath shrimp on fork to add white color bounce
• Camera set on a tripod with cable-release to trip the shutter

To add steam to the shrimp, I used a hand steamer (this one was only $15 at Bed Bath & Beyond).

Photograph the shrimp with steam using the hand steamer (it took a lot of trial-and-error to get the “perfect” steamy look).

Photograph the shrimp with no steam.

The last step is to put both images in the same document in Photoshop and mask them so you have steamy shrimp in one half of the image and the nicer looking fork (plus no hand-steamer) in the other half of the image. (Here’s a tutorial on masking if you need help.) For some other photos I’ve done similar to this I’ll also photograph the “no steam” image with a little more reflector fill in the front to brighten up the metal on the fork (my “reflector” was a white paper towel most of the time). Some of the frames I got were okay and didn’t have the steamer in the photo, but there may have been residual steam below the shrimp, or my hand in front of it “muddied up” the color of the metal in the fork, so masking the two images together makes for a much cleaner photograph.

Canon 7D, Canon 70-200 f/4L IS lens, 1/13 sec at f/5.6, ISO 100
This food in this photograph was “styled”, but was edible and completely natural. And very tasty.

A recent blog post of mine showed two different versions of the same dish—one was “styled” and one was cooked to eat (which I did, and it was yummy). I asked my readers which one they liked better, and the majority of the people who initially responded said that they like the styled version better than the food I prepared to eat.

Then, I decided to link the photo through to my blog through foodgawker.com. It seemed to sit at the front page for a good amount of time so I had a lot of traffic coming through, and I can only assume that the people reading and commenting coming from foodgawker were more of the “foodie” and “food blogger” crowd. The comments I started to receive weighed more heavily on favoring the non-styled dish. There were a few people that even seemed angry that I would even think of styling a dish for a photograph (which makes me wonder if they even read the blog post or just looked at the photograph).

FWIW, when I created those dishes the “styled” version was completely cooked, seasoned and 100% food (except for a bit of a boost from underneath the bowl to give the noodles more bulk). All I did in preparation of that dish was to be very careful and deliberate with the cooking and placement of the noodles, beef, etc. in the bowl.

Now, I’m guessing that if I had photographed the “cooked to eat” version and maybe re-positioned some of the items in the bowl and ONLY showed that photo on my blog then it would have looked amazing. Even as-is I think it still looks great. The thing is, I create most of my food photographs to be food photographs. I don’t consider myself a “food blogger” … I do enjoy cooking, but I take my love for cooking and apply it to photography. I style all of my dishes, which sometimes might just mean placing it gently on a plate and setting a fork next to it, or by making the dish look beautiful as any trained chef would do to their finished product (as in the above image in this post). My goal is to create great food photographs that are real food and that other people find in my iStock portfolio and will want to license and use. I earn my income with my photography, after all.

The thing that needs to be understood is that “styling” or “editing” food doesn’t always mean you have to use fake ingredients (like motor oil on pancakes or cereal placed in white glue … yuck!). I tend to be very natural with what I do to style my food (with very few exceptions) and could just as easily prepare the food as I would if I were going to eat it immediately after the shoot (like with the photo in this post, which was very tasty btw). I just prefer to be extremely deliberate with the look of every ingredient that goes on the plate and I want it to look its best. It’s the same when photographing people, which I also have a lot of experience doing. With commercial photography (which is what I do) a photo of a woman with no hair-styling or makeup applied probably wouldn’t sell as much as the exact same photo of a woman who even had a tiny bit of styling and eye makeup on. Beauty is more popular, and it sells.

In the end this is probably going to be one of those issues that many photographers and food bloggers will have very strong opinions about, just like some people do with the “Photoshop vs. Straight out of the Camera” debate (don’t get me started on that one). For me, I’ll continue to style my food so it looks great but will still keep the food natural, real, and will rarely do anything to a dish that you wouldn’t do to food you would eat. I’ll still use some of the food styling “tricks” but I prefer to keep those to a minimum. I want my food to be real food but look great, that’s really the bottom line.

Canon 5D Mark II, Canon 70-200 ƒ/4l IS lens, 1/30 sec at ƒ/5.6, ISO 100

Here’s a quick pasta photo for the weekend to make you all hungry … again. ;) My only trick with this photo is a half-dome of styrofoam under the pasta to bulk it up for the photo (example here).

I’ll be sitting at my computer over the next three days working to make a deadline for my upcoming book (hence the endless stream of food photography, lol). I hope you all are getting some sunshine and fresh air this weekend … Send some my way if you can!

Canon 5DMkII, Canon 70-200 f/4L IS lens, 1/125 sec at f/5.6, ISO 100

So, here we have two photos. The image on the left was “styled” … I cooked everything separately, placed each element by hand and even added an upside-down bowl and some clear rocks in the bottom of the bowl to bulk up the noodles. It’s all edible and cooked thoroughly, but I was very careful and deliberate with how it looked. I prepared this bowl of food specifically to be photographed.

The second dish, the image on the right, was cooked immediately afterwards to eat for dinner with the leftovers from the photo on the left (not from anything in the other photo, just from the stuff I didn’t cook yet). I didn’t do anything special to it, I just cooked it up like I would any other time I cook a meal. When I was finished I dumped it into a bowl (with very little regard to where the food fell) and photographed for a few minutes while it was cooling down.

Also, both images were photographed in the same light and were edited pretty much exactly the same. The color differences on the image to the right is due to the way the image was cooked (the broccoli lost a lot of its green when cooked in the sauce with everything else), the way it is sitting in the bowl (light can’t hit it the same since it’s sunken in) and also from some “diffusion” from the the steam.

So, my question to you is: Which do you like better … and why? Leave a comment below if you’d like to chime in.

Canon 7D, Canon 70-200 f/4L IS lens, 1/100 sec at f/4, ISO 100

Here’s a quick tip for when you’re photographing a bowl of chili, beans, or any type of real chunky stew: you really want to add some bulk to the bowl so your food doesn’t sit too flat. I’ve written about this before with pasta (link here) but you don’t always need to use a piece of styrofoam to add that bulk. That stuff can get expensive and I only use it when necessary.

So, for this shot I just took a separate smaller bowl and turned it upside-down. This allowed the chili to pile up on top of the small bowl and give it a plump, appealing look in the final image. I also did some of the same shot with a smaller bowl, so I just took a paper cup and cut it down about half-way, then I turned it upside down to get the same effect.

I’m going to be starting a dedicated series on my blog about food photography and need your input! I have some previous posts on food photography and food styling but really want to write more detailed posts that are aimed specifically at non-photographers who want to take great photos of their food (don’t worry, photogs … you’ll get lots out of this too!).

Soooo … ask away! Any and all questions relating to photography, cameras, lighting, editing, etc. are welcome, as long as they are in regards to photographing food. Feel free to link to your blog or any photos you have questions about, too.

To ask your question or tell me what you want to know you can leave a comment below or send me message on my contact page. :)

Canon 7D, Canon 70-200mm ƒ/4L IS lens, 1/160 sec at ƒ/4, ISO 100

When I style my food photography I tend to keep things simple—usually it’s just the main food item and some silverware off to the side. I do like to add elements to the scene at times, but when I do I always make sure that the items in the scene are relevant to the dish. I place things in the frame as if I were sitting down to a meal … in this photo it would be perfectly natural to have a glass of water and some french bread on a plate, so adding them to the scene does not take away from the image I’m trying to create.

When you’re styling and adding props to your food images try to stay away from adding ingredients used to make the food next to the dish (like uncut fruits/veggies, eggs, etc.), unless you are photographing the actual prepping of the food itself. I’m sure there are ways to make these items “work” in an image, but most of the attempts I see just don’t look natural. Just do what I do … picture yourself sitting at the table and think of what makes sense to have nearby.

Food looks more appetizing if it seems “ready to eat” … you want your viewers to think that he or she could reach in and take the first bite. If you really want to add color and throw some of those ingredients in the shot, then do some prep-work to them and make them look tasty! A whole tomato doesn’t have as much appeal as one that’s sliced into bite-sized wedges, all juicy and ripe. Yum! :)