Food photography – the art that conceals art
It seems deceptively simple , ‘just a picture of food’, yet there is a lot more going on ‘behind the scenes’ that poses interesting challenges for the photographer.
The brief is invariably to make the food look appetising, and that is a real team effort.
As a minimum, aside from the photographer, shoots invariably involve a food stylist, who is responsible for cooking the food and preparing it for the camera.
It used to be acceptable to cheat by using non-edible addatives, like varnish. These days what you see should be the real food.
Take a look at this hamburger image. Before any serious shooting took place a ‘dummy’ burger was positioned so I could set up the various lights and reflectors and judge depth of field, shadow detail etc.
Then the food stylist got busy; initially she cooked a dozen burgers, picking the best looking as her ‘hero’ to star in our picture. However this was not quite a perfect specimen, so she used a scalpel to remove slivers of meat from the other burgers to fill in the slight irregularities in the surface. Next she carefully cut a half dozen buns – and picked the one the had the cleanest cut edge with no crumble.
The same care now went into the assembly of the burger…specially chosen lettuce leaves were coaxed into position with tweezers. The tomato slices were similarly painstakingly positioned, and a few tiny water droplets added to their skin just prior to shooting to enhance their ‘succulence’.
Next the chips were built up behind the burger, adding a chip here and there, repositioning, until the composition looked just right. Test shots were being taken all along so the finished effect could be judged.
So in this ‘simple’ shot you are looking at over two hours work from food stylist, photographer…and in this instance a chef from the theme park plus a marketing manager! And you would not believe the heated debate that took place over the positioning of a single chip, and whether the lettuce was in exactly the right position!
Oh, and if you are wondering about the where the technical information is about shooting food…I will leave that for another blog entry…just to keep you coming back!