One thing that I do frequently with my photographs is I use a combination of a wide aperture and a long focal length to decrease the depth of field (DOF) in my images to add more compression to the background, making it soft and out of focus. When photographing this cake pop I thought I would create some photos that show how different aperture settings can affect the background of an image.

The photos above show the final photograph along with a behind-the-scenes image. (For the final image I actually merged two files together … one at ƒ/4 to get a soft background, and another at ƒ/11 to get sharper focusing on the cake, since I wasn’t happy with the focus quality on the cake at ƒ/4). For this setup I used window light, bounced onto the subject with white foam board. For the background I used Christmas-tree lights in front of a soft yellow-ish cloth-covered piece of foam board to add more gold tones to the background, and bounced some light on it to make it a little brighter (that’s the foam board you see attached to the boom stand). The cake pop was about three feet from the background lights, and the camera was on a tripod (that funny-shaped black thing in the image on the right) approximately four feet from the cake pop. The DISTANCE you put between the subject and the background, and the FOCAL LENGTH you use (longer is better) are important if you want to achieve a very soft, out of focus background like I did here in this image.

The photos below show the same setup with different apertures, starting at ƒ/4 and going all the way to ƒ/32. All images were photographed at 200mm on a Canon 7D with no change to anything except the exposure settings. (To see it “in action” I created an animated GIF so you can watch the changes happen quickly.)

BTW, here’s a link to the recipe I used to make this cute little guy. :)

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.

Top images: Canon 7D, Canon 70-200 f/4L IS lens, f/5.6 at 1/13 sec, ISO 100

When I photograph food the one thing I don’t want to do is blow-out/over-expose/clip any large areas of the frame. When you overexpose the highlights in a photograph you are pushing those pixels so that they are 100% pure white (255, 255, 255 on the RGB color scale). Even if you are photographing something that is actually white, you still don’t want to overexpose the whites because you will lose precious shadow detail in those areas. (One exception to this would be if you are isolating your subject on a white background in a studio environment.)

The top two photos in the above image were both photographed with the exact same settings, one with an over-exposed background, and one with a well-balanced exposure. The basic lighting setup, as you can see in the behind-the-scenes image, was window-light with the use of reflectors in the front of the food for fill-light (here’s a pulled-back image of my living room so you can see the size of the entire window).

Red Areas: The red you see in the images are the areas that are overexposed. For the first photo I had a good exposure on the food in the foreground but the background was way washed out. In the second “fixed” photo there is very little red, with the exception of a highlight along the rim of the bowl (which doesn’t really bother me). You can view the overexposed whites (and also the underexposed blacks) while editing your photos in pretty much any RAW editing software, and you can also enable a “highlight” alert on most SLRs that makes it really easy to spot the clipped highlights. (Check your camera manual for more information specific information on enabling the highlight alert on your brand/model of camera.)

Histogram: Notice the histogram towards the top of each of the photos. The tones on the first image are pushed all the way to the right, showing that the whites are “clipped”. In the second image the overall tones are mostly balanced, indicated by a full “mountain range” in the histogram.

The Fix: Since the too-bright-light was mostly coming in from the top-right table-top area of the photo, I dropped a piece of black foam core down behind it to cut out that “wash” of light hitting the table. The window is tall enough that the light still poured in from above the piece of black foam core, and I only lost a very small amount of light back-lighting the bowl of chips up front.

Canon 5D Mark II, Canon 70-200 ƒ/4L IS lens
Left image: 1/125 sec at ƒ/5.6, back-lit with Canon 430EX speedlight
Right image: 0.3 sec at ƒ/5.6, overhead available light (tungsten)

For this post I thought I’d show the difference between using back-lighting versus using overhead available (in this case, tungsten) light. I photographed the image on the left and used a back-light setup (here’s a link to the behind-the-scenes). Then, I switched off the PocketWizard so the light didn’t fire, changed the exposure on my camera and used the overhead light in my living room (just normal, boring light-bulbs in a light on the ceiling).

I had to do quite a bit to the color on the image to the right to get the white balance back to normal and get rid of the yucky orangeish/reddish cast, but because I always photograph my food images in RAW then the color ended up not looking too bad (a bit unnaturally green, but otherwise okay). The light, however, is extremely different. Can you see the depth, rim-lighting and soft shadows in the photo on the left compared to the flat, harsh light in the image on the right?

In a nutshell, try to not use overhead room lights when photographing food. The image to the right doesn’t look terrible, but my personal preference is to the image on the left … back-lighting adds depth, soft shadows and rim-light and makes food look gorgeous when photographed.

Canon 60D, Canon 28mm f/2.8 lens, 8 sec at f/16, ISO 100

Tis the season for beautiful displays of colorful lights. A lot of people enjoy photographing images after the sun has set, and this is a great time of year to get some colorful shots. Here are ten tips for creating amazing photographs at night:

1. Use a tripod. This is pretty much an essential item if you want to get good, sharp images at night. Need I say more?

2. Small apertures can create neat “star” effects. Using a small aperture (such as f/11 or f/16) will not only add a lot of depth of field to your images (where most of the image is in-focus) but you’ll also see some cool effects with the lights. When you use a small aperture and there points of lights in the image (such as the sun, holiday lights or even a street-light, as seen in the above image) then the lights will “star” and add some character to the photos. When you’re photographing something like a Christmas tree filled with little lights then this can really make the details in the image stand out.

3. Experiment with your exposure time. If you end up using a very small aperture for your night photography then you will probably have no choice but to use a long exposure. I tend to shoot in aperture-priority (Av) and then play with the exposure compensation (EV) to get the right amount of light in the image. It can take some experimentation to find just the right balance though, so expect to make adjustments to your aperture if you’re finding that the exposure isn’t quite right. You’ll also want to be careful in very well-lit environements—if the exposure is too lengthy then you may start seeing a “haze” in your image from the surrounding lights leaking in to the sensor. Another quick tip here is to use a very low ISO. This will also lengthen your exposure time, but you are less likely to have any added noise to the image … and sometimes long exposures can create little bits of noise than you wouldn’t normally see in a faster shot.

4. Use a cable release or your camera’s self-timer. When shooting long exposures on a tripod then it’s best to keep your hands as far away from the camera when the shutter is open. You can always use the camera’s self-timer, but I absolutely love using a cable-release anytime I’m using my tripod. There are two main reasons that I do this. The first one is that there’s no “delay” in your shot … you capture the exact moment you want to capture as soon as it happens (no three or ten second wait). The other reason is that if you find your camera in a strange position/angle/height then it’s so much easier to either fully sit or stand and just hold the cable release to create the image. No crouching down to press the shutter button and then hoping you don’t bump the camera on your way back to your comfy position. :)

5. Find a compositional focal point. When there are a ton of pretty lights, moving cars and trees everywhere it may be overwhelming when you first set down your tripod. The key is to find one main feature (a building, tree, person) to “focus” the camera on and make that the “stand-out” of your scene, compositionally speaking. This could be an amazingly lit tree, or it could just be a building that is amongst the colorful lights … the key is to de-clutter your scene and draw the viewer’s eyes to something that makes sense. Make sense? :)

6. Get appy! If you know my work or have read my blog in the past, you know that I love to play around with my Lensbaby Composer. This is SUCH an awesome lens to experiment with when photographing anything with a bunch of little lights like the ones you see on trees during the holidays. Lensbaby has different “creative” apertures (click here for more info) that are in different shapes, and when you use these apertures anything that would normally be “circle” shaped bokeh becomes whatever shape you have cut-out in the aperture disk. Here’s an example of a portrait photographed with Christmas lights in the background, using a heart-shaped aperture (link). Photojojo also sells a “Bokeh Kit” that you can attach to the front of a lens … I’ve never used this before but it seems to be able to create similarly fun results.

7. Go wide. There’s no strict rule that you have to have a wide-angle lens to get great images, but I always find that the wider, the better! I used a 28mm lens for the shot above on my crop-sensor camera and , while it’s not crazy wide-angle, it’s a pretty good start. When using my Lensbaby I was cropped in a bit tighter, but I honestly didn’t really like those shots nearly as much (and didn’t feel like pulling out the wide-adapter from my bag, lol).

8. Live View … if you have it, use it! I LOVE using Live View, especially for this kind of photography. It’s great because the exposure simulations are usually pretty accurate (of course, they can’t account for movement, just the light density in the scene). You can also zoom waaaay in and manually focus your images to make sure they are tack sharp (which is extremely helpful when using a Lensbaby!). I also have to say that having an articulating LCD screen is awesome! I mostly had my 60D set pretty low to the ground (no tripod legs extended) and instead of having to duck behind my camera I was able to swivel it so I could view it while still upright. Another thing that’s nice about Live View is if you’re lucky enough to have a camera with an electronic level then it’s much easier to level your horizon by just looking on the back of the screen (no guessing required!).

9. Darkness is good, but… When we think of night photography we typically tend to think if pitch-black darkness with whatever it is we want (colorful lights, probably ) added to the scene. Well, why not try to beat the sun from hiding behind the horizon and get a few shots when it’s still dusk? You can still get a nice long exposure if your aperture is small enough, and the colors in the sky may even add some drama in your scene! I’m tempted to head downtown again and re-shoot the above image, but this time I’ll give myself plenty of time before the sun sets. Some color to the sky would definitely be a nice addition.

10. Last but not least, dress appropriately! There’s nothing worse than going out to take photos and freezing your butt off. I tried that on Thanksgiving day, and you know what? I think I took maybe four photos because my hands and toes were too frozen to even think straight (I thought I dressed warmly, too!). So if you’re in a location that does get cold, wear warm clothes (duh) but I would also suggest bringing along those nice little hand warmers you can buy at the store (like these little guys … I gotta get me some of those toe warmers, too!). And, if you have control over the situation (when you go on your photo adventure) then it may be smart to plan ahead and check the weather … and maybe even reschedule? Lol. :)

Here’s a quick video tutorial on how to “color pop” to an image using Photoshop.

Click here to view this video on YouTube.

Here’s a quick video tutorial on how to find and remove sensor spots in your photos.

Click here to view this video on YouTube.

After yesterday’s post on the Canon 60D’s “miniature” effect, I thought I’d share my method on how to create the same fake tilt-shift lens effect using Photoshop. Enjoy!

Click here to view the tutorial on YouTube.