Camera: Nikon F4 (film)

Happy Independence Day! Here are some quick tips and reminders when out photographing fireworks this weekend:

Gear … If you’re shooting with an SLR then it’s necessary to use a tripod and cable release. If you have a point-and-shoot, then have some fun and play around with the “fireworks” setting (hand-held). This is your time to experiment! Last year I even used my iPhone to get a few shots. :)

Location … Location is important—if you want an unobstructed view then stay away from trees and powerlines. If you want to add the surrounding area then try to find a spot that “frames” the fireworks well and include the ground. If there’s water (lake, ocean, etc.) then put it in your shot! If you’re positioned well you might even get some fireworks reflections in the water.

Exposure … Shoot in BULB mode, and play around with the aperture setting (set it somewhere in the middle, like between f/8 and f/16) and test out your exposures before the fireworks start. Watch out for bright lights around you that could “bleed” into the shot. When you’re photographing the fireworks try to keep the shutter open for about 5-15 seconds (the time will always vary … but those bursts will pile up and just be one giant white light in your image if you keep it open too long).

Technique … If you don’t want to see the “trails” of the fireworks making their way to the sky, then bring along a black or dark gray piece of thick cardboard to your location (a normal gray-card works well for this). Cover the front of the lens with the cardboard and open the shutter. Keep the lens covered as the fireworks are making their way to the sky, and then uncover the lens just before they burst. Keep the shutter open and repeat this several times to get one shot with “bursts-only” in the image.

Fun! Experiment and have fun! I was out photographing fireworks when I was in high-school shooting with film, and didn’t have the luxury of chimping my shots. It was a lot of guess-work and also experimentation, but I was usually able to get some good images (the photo in this blog post is one of my favorites from my film days). So go out there and try something new. Maybe you could play around with HDR, or do some light-painting with sparklers. I absolutely love this kind of photography because you never quite know what to expect.

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! :)

Canon 7D, Canon 50mm ƒ/1.4 lens, 1/250 sec at ƒ/2.8, ISO 100

Last week I did my first “ice cream” photo shoot. Everything you see in the above photo is edible, however it’s not real ice cream (just a LOT of sugar with a cherry on top). I used a recipe found in the “Food Styling for Photographers” book. It’s basically just a tub of cherry frosting with powdered sugar mixed together in a mixer. If you’re interested in creating photos like these I would highly recommend that book … there are a lot of other great tips for styling ice cream and other types of food as well.

After I got the “ice cream” mixed and placed in the bowl I used a can of “Pillsbury Easy Frost” to top the ice cream and look like whipped cream (this way it didn’t melt or ooze down the side of the frosting before I was done with the shoot). I also stuck a toothpick into the bottom of the cherry so it would stay in place and not topple over.

I’m really happy how this one turned out and plan on shooting different flavors in the near future. :)

The last few days I’ve posted photos from a food shoot I did, and I thought I’d share some tips on how I styled it.

When you make yourself a sandwich at home they don’t usually look all poofy and airy, they usually end up flattened with all the ingredients mushed together. Well, I wanted my sandwich to look like all of the ingredients were stacked up beautifully, and wanted those nice little curls to the deli meat, so I did more than just place all the pieces on top of each other.

In order to keep the sandwich from being flat and saggy I cut small pieces of cardboard and layered them as-needed in-between the elements. I put one under and on-top of the lettuce, and then I used tooth-pick halves to pin the bunched-up deli meat in place. The toothpicks also helped to add bulk and hold up the tomatoes, which were placed (along with the top piece of bread) directly on the deli meat.

Food styling is all about making food look delicious. I do my best to try and make food look natural, fresh and clean, and sometimes that involves adding elements that you wouldn’t necessarily eat. I usually don’t do anything “unnatural” to my food when I’m styling it, but do have a few tricks I use that you wouldn’t normally do when you’re preparing food to eat.

In this shot I needed to “bulk up” the pasta so it would look like a nice heaping bowl of food. In order to do this I added a half-dome of styrofoam (you can find these at craft stores—I got a styrofoam sphere at Michaels near the floral department and then cut it in half to fit the bowl). For the actual shot I trimmed the base of it down a little bit from what you see in the image on the left, and then piled the pasta directly on top. If I had placed the pasta directly in the bowl it would sit flat, and I wouldn’t get the nice bulkiness that the fully-styled image is showing.

Canon 7D, Canon 50mm ƒ/1.8 lens, 1/8 sec at ƒ/11, ISO 1600

Last night Rich was gracious enough to pose for a quick photo at Joe’s Crab Shack. They have some really cool lights hanging from their ceiling and it made a perfect backdrop for this type of photo. This image is a fun re-creation of an image I shot w/ my point-and-shoot about a year ago … it’s accomplished by twisting the camera while dragging the shutter and using the flash. I wrote an article about this technique on Photofocus … you can check it out here.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

Canon 7D, Canon 24-105 ƒ/4L IS lens, 1/15 sec at ƒ/4.5, ISO 640

Panning is one of my favorite techniques to use when photographing fast-moving subjects. Basically what you are doing when you make a panning shot is you are following the subject and moving your lens along with them while pressing the shutter. Here are some tips for creating great panning shots:

1. Slow shutter-speed is the key. Using a slower-than-normal shutter speed will help you to effectively add motion-blur to the background. It’s usually a good idea to shoot in shutter-priority mode when creating panning photos.

2. The speed of the subject determines shutter-speed. Most of the time you won’t know exactly what your shutter speed should be in order to get a desirable image, and one factor you need to consider is how fast your subject is moving. To create a good amount of movement in the background and still keep the subject sharp a fast-moving subject will need a faster shutter-speed than a slow-moving subject.

3. Use a flash. Another useful tip is that if you have a flash or some sort of strobing light-source available then use it! It will help freeze your subject and allow you to use an even slower shutter-speed than without one. In the image in this post I wasn’t able to use a flash so I had to do my best to keep my camera steady and moving with the skater.

4. Follow-through to get the shot. Just like with kicking a ball or swinging a golf club you need to make sure that you follow the subject the entire way through the shot, and only stop once you are sure that your shutter is closed. This will help you get smooth lines in your background.

5. Use manual focus. If you know the spot that your subject will be passing by then pre-focus your lens. If you rely on auto-focus then your camera might not catch focus quickly enough, which means you would miss the shot altogether.

Panning requires a lot of trial-and-error, which I think is why I like it so much. You never quite know what you’re going to get and oftentimes you can be surprised when you review your shots. :)

Styling is something that can really make a big difference in your food images. Heck, it’s so important in the industry that some people make it their full-time job! And since I mostly do my own food photography then I have no one but me to rely on to make my images look good.

In the images above it’s pretty obvious which image was styled and which was not. The image on the left was photographed at an an outdoor taco stand, so the food is fresh, and not too bad-looking, but it’s not quite as appealing as the image on the right. The image on the right is fully edible … it got cold during the shooting process so it didn’t get eaten but other than that, and a few different ingredients than the taco-stand image, it’s basically the same. I spent several minutes placing the ingredients exactly where I wanted them to be … everything is in its place because I wanted it to be there.

In my photos I will usually do as much styling as needed to make the image look great. Sometimes it makes the image inedible (like adding soap-suds to bacon to give it a “foamy” look), but most of the time everything in the dish is natural … so don’t think that you have to do anything weird to your food to make it “photographable”. The key to making food images look good is using fresh, clean, ingredients and having immaculate attention-to-detail. I like to look at lots of food images in magazines and cookbooks to help inspire me for my own creations, and when I look at an image I will usually ask myself “why does it look so tasty?”. When I answer that question I log it away and apply that newfound knowledge in my own photography.

Here’s another “Two Minute Tip” on how to selectively sharpen images with the high-pass filter using Photoshop.

Canon 7D, Canon 24-105 ƒ/4L IS lens, 1/30th sec @ƒ/4, ISO 100

When it comes to food photography crisp, clean images are always nice, but sometimes it’s good to mess it up a bit. Get some crumbs on the plate, use that fork/spoon/knife and make the image look like it’s being enjoyed. There are ways to do this and still make the image look tasty.

I am very particular about the styling in my images, so the placement of every crumb, garnish, or droplet was placed there either on purpose or was left in place because I noticed it and liked the way it looked. My ultimate goal is to make the image look like it wasn’t on purpose, but still look tasty enough to eat.