Lighting help - Fresh Sandwich Products

[fino]

A local sandwich company has asked me for a price to photograph their

products.

 

I've never attempted anything like it and looking for advice on

lighting setups. There is no set brief just to show the products to be

clean fresh and healthy.

 

Has anyone experience of this type of work?

Any lighting help appreciated.

[steve_levine]

The archives here offer some excellant advice on basic product lighting.However,food shooting is a specialty.The need for a "food stylist" becomes immediately apparent,once you try shooting edibles.For example any food item such as,cookies,rolls,fruit,vegtables all have flaws.A stylist might reject 100 tomatoes before finding one with perfect shape,color,stem etc.It takes a lot of skill to make food look like "food",and not plastic.The secret is normally in highlight placement,but this is too complicated a topic for simple a forum answer.Like most photography,with a minimum of equipment you can create miracles with technique and imagination.

 

There are several books on food photography,Kodak's "Professional Photographic Illustration Techniques",has a chapter on food and has some good starting hints.Years ago I assisted a food shooter for a few months.We shot prepared meals for menu and wall hanging shots for a large restaurant chain.On a typical day the "kitchen staff" would out number the photo and art staff by 3:1!

[lex_jenkins]

I once thought this would be a good genre to get into. No dealing with tempestuous live models. No fidgety kids. No uncooperative pets. Food photography seemed like a snap.

 

Wrongo.

 

Take a look at the September 2004 Pop Photo. There's an article on the basics of food photography. It'll give you a general idea of the complexity of this specialty. The article confirms everything I've heard and read about the genre before.

 

As Steve said at the very least you'll need an experienced food stylist and a large enough budget to buy more food and props than you might have expected would be necessary for such a session.

 

Why a food stylist? Be she (or he) is likely to know the tricks to make food look appetizing rather than dry and stale; plump and juicy rather than flat and dull. And how to keep it that way for hours. We all already know that those delicious looking multilayered burgers rarely look on our plates as they do in the TV ads. The thing in our plate looks deflated and lifeless, no matter how it tastes.

 

The first sandwich stylist may have been the chef who created the club sandwich. Careful layering, careful arrangement of elements within those layers, held together with toothpicks to maintain the desired look when presented to the customer.

 

(BTW, this is why many eaters are willing to pay a premium for seemingly overpriced sandwiches at specialty shops. These shops have mastered the art of making sandwiches that look as appealing on your plate as they do on the menu. Clever marketing strategy.)

 

I've seen work (large format Polaroid) done by a photographer who sometimes constructs elaborate creations using food items, often seemingly suspended in air at unexpected angles. Every item looks perfect. While I don't think he uses a food stylist he's also not working on any client's deadline, sets his own budget and makes the final decision on what he likes. As talented as he is, if he were shooting commercial work for a client he'd almost certain hire a food stylist and approach the shoot in a different manner.

[fino]

Thanks guys, this is for a local sandwich bar not a billboard. They are not looking [or paying] for food stylists et al.

[twmeyer]

If you're using digital capture I suggest the Martha Stewart Living magazine's approach. Use window light if the restaurant has windows or a covered outside area, or create a "roof" to work under with a opaque or translucent flat on stands. Use custom white balance, a few silver cards and the fastest lens you can get at it's maximum aperture. This thin depth of field will hide many of the issues of product appearance, give the images a fresh modern look and let you place focus on the best aspects of the sandwiches while making background set building much less critical. Arrange your backgrounds very carefully through the lens at max aperture. Try it, you'll like it. Ask for a sandwich to work with in advance of the shoot, or just try it with any sandwich as an experimental prop. Sandwich's are pretty cheap and the concept/techniques should translate easily to the actual job.<p> You need to think outside the box if your client has a low budget. Keep your kit and concept simple. That's why I recommend window/natural light, reflectors, camera, (tripod) and lens... t<div></div>

[fino]

Thanks for that Tom

[j.k. witherwax]

I am interested in food photography myself, so I googled it and came up with this great site:

www.foodportfolio.com/blog/ food_photography/food_photgraphy.html

 

Good Luck and Enjoy!

.j.