Advice for food photography

[etan_lightstone]

Tomorrow I'm attempting to shoot a food catalog for a company. It's

going to be a huge variety of stuff (fish, meat, dessert) all arranged

as complete meals to shoot by a food stylist.

 

I'm bringing two slave triggered flashes on tripods (Vivitar 285hv and

a vivitar 283). I also have an umbrella to shoot through.. in case I

need to create a soft lighting effect. This should be good enough no?

 

Any useful advice? I have already read some tips from the following

site:

http://www.professionalphotography101.com/photography/HowtoPhotographFood.html

 

It's ok, but a little light on the details. Any SPECIFIC advice ? :)

[streetlevel]

This Lighting theme by brooks was good as a nice primer of things to consider.

 

http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=009xtA

[garry edwards]

Etan,

 

Food isn't the easiest of subjects generally and you seem to have taken on quite a difficult task, given the range of different subjects, your limited lighting and camera equipment and the fact that your folder here on PN seems to indicate experience in different fields.

 

Firstly, nobody can give you anything other than very generalised pointers; there is no formulae as such - eveyone would be able to succeed in this specialised field if there were - and personally I tend to try to keep my mind clear of preconceptions. I find that the best way forward is to find out exactly what the client wants and why, and then just draw on lighting and compositional experience to achieve this. As an example, I'm just about to start a shoot on jewellery and fashion accessories. I know what's involved in terms of products etc and the models are arranged but I have no idea yet of how I will go about it. It just flows!

 

The only specific pointers I can give are to forget about your flashguns and think about using natural light instead, helped by scrims, reflectors, black absorbers and mirrors, and to make sure that you setup each subject on a dummy prepared by the stylist, replacing it with a fresh one when you (and the client) are happy with the result.

 

Hope this helps