Commercial food photography

Last year I had the opportunity to combine two things I dearly love, Food & Photography, and get paid for doing it!

Last year while setting up a graduation group photo at Ridley College (will write a post on that soon) I was approached by the head chief of Hot Dish catering, Michael Shaw, to take some food photos during the day.  I said sure, thinking he just wanted some photos of the spread while doing the event coverage.  A few moments later he started laying out a table for a formal set-up.  Anyway I quickly organised some lights, took a few shots and landed myself a couple of dedicated food shoots.

The main aim of the shoots was to produce advertising images for the web site, print advertising and any press releases.  Some also ended up being used for as a submission for food competitions and some may even make it into a book one day.  This meant that they needed to be clear commercial images but be 'artsy' enough to not just look generic or for a fast food store.

With that in mind and the knowledge that we had to produce a lot of images quickly as a default I used a two light set-up; a small softbox key light high, behind and slightly to the side and a relatively on axis fill through a silk (shower curtain) to fill the shadows and give another spectral highlight on the food.  I also used a reflector or two for most shots.

 



All photos by Will Hore-Lacy, food styling by Michael Shaw.

Thanks to Michael for letting me post these and with any luck there will be more to come in the future!

Photo & Video merging: Lighting

I picked this one up from @DSLRinformer on twitter.  Litepanels (who produce LED video lights) have just released a LED light panel with strobe function at NAB 2010!!  No idea on the flash specs but it's a cool concept.  Check out the NAB video here.

Gear-a-holic

Hi my name's Will and I'm a gear-a-holic . . Ok so I'm not as bad as some but here is a bit of a review of my photo gear that gives me a fix and fuels my addiction.

• Canon 50D
• Canon 30D
• Canon 300D
• Canon 10-22mm (I love this lens!)
• Tamron 17-50mm f2.8
• Canon 100 f2.8
• Sigma 50mm f2.8 Macro
• Sigma 70-200mm f2.8
• Canon 50mm f1.8
• Sigma 17-70mm (more or less unused)
• Canon 18-55mm (unused)
• Canon 430EX Speedlight
• Nikon SB-24 Speedlight
• Nikon SB-25 Speedlight
• Nikon SB-22s Speedlight
• Manfrotto 055PROB tripod with joystick head
• Manfrotto 785B Modo Tripod
• Olympus lightweight tripod
• Light stands, umbrellas and remote triggers
• Polorising filter, shutter release, CF cards, ND filters, Grad ND filter, Batteries etc.
• MacBook Black to process it all

How did it all start?

Well years ago when I was in year 9 I started with a compact film camera and grew to love taking photos, particularly of wild places, and the more I took the better I got and the more I liked it.

Fast forward a few years when after a year of engineering placement at uni when I had some $$ I thought about upgrading to a new digital camera. This brought on much research into high end compact cameras reading review after review, I wanted something that I could take landscapes and sports shots with. Eventually I gave up and got talked into buying a 300D kit, so begins my camera addiction . . .

My upgrades from there were a long time coming, but after I finished my degree I started to add to the kit. Frist what I didn't have a loved, W I D E, with the 10-22, next, sports 70-200 f2.8 for volleyball, then the 50mm macro to give me a 10-22 + 50mm macro hiking kit. Then I added a flash with the 430EX and then with the prospect of a sports job I upgraded cameras to a 30D and picked up a new mid-range zoom, the Sigma 17-70.

So that held off my addicitons for a while untill I discovered off camera lighting and of course now needed a lighting kit to go with my camera kit! So flashes, light stands, radio triggers, umbrellas and a bunch of home made stuff and I had a pretty good set-up for doing still life and portraits and all sorts of things, the one day I was doing some still life photos and my 50mm macro died! So I jumped online and found out I could get a 100mm macro from the US cheaper than in Australia, so out came the credit card . . . again! In the mean time the 17-70 proved to be very good for still life close-ups!

Further upgrades have slowed a little, I was not particuarly happy with the focusing of 17-70 for more distant subjects so I went and got a tamron 17-50 with has been very nice though I still have some doubts about it's focusing. Then when I started to get some wedding work I got myself a Canon 50D. The main thing that I wanted over the 40D was the lens micro adjustment for a couple of my lenses however it didn't prove very useful as they were backfocusing at one end of the zoom range and front focusing at the other. So I'm not entirely sure it was worth it, image quality is said to be not much different to the 40D with similar noise levels and 15MP chews through the memory, but time will tell and and the autofocus live view has been useful a couple of time.

So yeah, I guess that is my camera journey to date. Did I make some mistakes, well probably, there are some things I'd probably change a little but hopefully my experience is useful in your own decision making. I'm looking at upgrading some lenses and pondering full frame so the journey isn't over yet . . .

The Umbrella Softbox

Thought I'd give you a quick "preview" of a product - The Umbrella Softbox - that might be of interest to Strobist readers after a recent post on rethinking umbrellas. So first the background:


The Strobist post was comparing reflective umbrellas to shoot through umbrellas and then after a while softboxes got brought into the debate through the comments. So what tools of the trade work best, particularly for speedlight applications (small light source)?


The consensus seems to be that for most applications shoot through umbrellas work best unless you have a large group and need the added efficiency of a reflective umbrella where you can't just bring it closer to the subject. Anyway more info on the reasons for that in the post I liked to above.


Now we come to softboxes, I haven't ever used them so forgive my ignorance and correct me if I'm wrong, but they seem to be about having more control over your light. They can give you a more directed light source and less spill out the back which allows you to isolate where you put your light. In contrast to using a shoot through umbrella where you almost create a bare bulb type light source. So this begs the question, why use umbrellas?


Umbrellas are quick to set up, pack down small and are cheap! So basically it is a cost and convenience thing, they work pretty well for most circumstances, plus if you know their limitations you can work around them. But is there a better way?


I saw this "Umbrella Softbox" at the Envisage IT and Photo eBay store a while ago when looking for another umbrella and very nearly bought it. At the time I was a bit strapped for cash so I just bought a standard umbrella but I'm thinking it could be a great balance between an umbrella and a softbox. It will still act as a shoot through umbrella for the forward 180º but the black cover will greatly reduce the spill out the back and may prevent some lens flare if you have it position between your camera and the subject. On the downside it looks like the flash would have to be choked up the shaft quite a bit more so some form of wide angle adaptor may be required if you want an even spread of light.

I've seen them for sale a few place but drop a comment if you know anywhere else that sells them or what your experience is with them.

Retailers:

• Envisage IT and Photo (Ebay store so I've linked to the store not the item)
• studioflash.co.uk
• Fotodiox

Disclaimer: I don't have any association with these stores nor do I specifically endorse any of them, this is simply listed stores that appear to stock this item.

In all its glory

My mother rang me up recently to see if I could take some photos of an orchid (actually technically a Gloriosa Superba or Glory/Flame Lilly) that was flowering so I thoughtI'd give you a quick post about some photos I took recently and a bit of the story behind them.






Ok technically it was pretty simply, I thought I'd have a go shooting in direct sun with a reflector, it didn't work great, but I got the one below. Basically the light was just too hard and there were harsh shadows that couldn't be filled due to the shape of the flower.




So I moved inside with a black back drop, I put a shoot through umbrella with sb-25 on the left slightly above and angled down a little, a reflector on the other side, a bit below and angled up (white roof also provided some fill from the spill) and ended up with the shot up top and the one below. I also shot a bunch of other angles and individual part of the flower and was able to keep the lighting pretty much the same for all of them.



Background story:
Basically this was my grandmothers and as the story goes after she passed away my mother was cleaning up and came across this "empty" pot with nothing but dirt in and very nearly threw it out! But because my grandmother was into gardening particularly spectacular (and often rare) flowers so she held on to the pot for a while and look what grew! So more that just being a spectacular flower it will always be a reminder of my wonderful grandmother.