Some of you have been asking me about how I take pictures of food.

Well I feel highly unqualified to write this because I’m learning as I go. I read read read articles by anyone who’s work I like.  I’ve read a few books about food photography and each time I pick up the book new things make sense to me.

I’ll got over the yellow eye hummus photos and what I did.

I chose a good light source with sorta north facing windows. I read something about north facing windows being good. I didn’t know why and went to where I have good light in my house and then realized it was a NORTHISH facing window!

 

Next I took a half used half sheet of white tissue paper and used half a piece of tape an taped it low on the window to diffuse the light that will be coming in at food level. 

 

Recently I have done some reading about reflectors. I think it was Sommer at A Spicy perspective who said she used a tripod and a reflector. Since her photos are really mouth wateringly good That got me curious as to what a reflector was. I read somewhere that you could DIY with aluminum foil or white foam board. So I looked around my house and found this foil like stuff that came out of some packing.

I must say a reflector does a lot!

 

 

Once I’d made the hummus I was ready to build my plate. I chose a plate color that wasn’t brown because my hummus was brown. The table was almost the same shade as the hummus so I looked around real quick for some other color. I spotted the curtain on the door. Two seconds later the curtain rod sat empty.

 

I looked at it and did not like how dull the raw broccoli looked.

 

So I grabbed a few and sprayed them ever so lightly with olive oil spray. I’d vaguely remembered reading something about some food looking better when it shines.

 

  f/6.3  ISO400  50mm  1/50 sec

I looked at it on the computer and decided that red and white checkered pattern was competing with, not complimenting at all. Even after de-saturating the red it was still annoying me.

 

f/6.3 ISO400 50mm 1/50 sec

So I took the table cloth away!

 

And I will never take the curtain off the door again.

 

I hope I’ve helped with some of your questions.

~PN

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