Capturing Food in Natural Light
Lesson 10 from: FAST CLASS: Getting Started in Professional Food PhotographySteve Hansen
Capturing Food in Natural Light
Lesson 10 from: FAST CLASS: Getting Started in Professional Food PhotographySteve Hansen
Lessons
Class Introduction: Getting Started in Professional Food Photography
05:57 2Tour of a Modern Food Photography Studio
04:37 3Prop Styling with Malina Lopez
06:03 4Food Styling with Steve & Malina
03:28 5Working with a Digital Technician
05:19 6Food Photography Gear
24:29 7Why Use Natural Light?
08:01 8Natural Light Food Shoot Prep
30:23Food Photo Tools & Tricks
02:30 10Capturing Food in Natural Light
06:54 11Natural Light Shoot Final Touches
19:50 12Shooting For a Client
07:24 13LED Lighting Overview
08:51 14Prep for Oven Shoot with LED Lights
10:36 15Food Photography Print Marketing
04:49 16Food Photography Portfolio Tips
09:14 17Pricing and Negotiating for Food Photography
12:13 18Final Food Photo Career Advice
03:01Lesson Info
Capturing Food in Natural Light
Now we're getting somewhere. I like what you did with that strawberry. So the strawberry's not in our-- No. We're gonna get into that. We're gonna rotate the plate. So you see the data light's not even on yet and we're already getting a lot of that texture in the peanut butter and the jelly, and we're gonna accentuate that with a specific light. So you see everything's reading as it should. So in your opinion, what do you see that doesn't, you guys already know what the flavors are, but if you didn't, is there anything that doesn't read as what it should be in this image right now? Well, we have a number of people asking about the two different colors of jam and if that was on purpose in terms of does it makes sense. The jams aren't two different colors, but the depth of the jams is very different. So, we're gonna light, that might be a solution that we create with, you can actually either thin out the jam or you can just leave it be and then we're gonna do a fill overhead whic...
h is gonna get some light into that container. 'Cause we're talking about really raking light here. I haven't even gotten to the data light yet, but we're gonna get on that soon. Let me turn it on just to see what happens. All right. So, take that shot and see, just see how dramatically different. We're gonna have exposure issues, obviously, but... Did we bump the camera? Oh, you, okay. So, that's hot for sure. So I'm gonna turn down, the data light's really powerful, so you don't wanna overdo it. But it adds these streaky lights, almost like sunshine's coming in and that you see the dramatic difference. Do you wanna flip between the two? Yeah. So we're hot but it is revealing the texture. And the nice thing about this slide is you can just dial it down. All these lights can be dialed down to any intensity. So I'm gonna go all the way mid. We just want this to be really subtle. There you go. So I love these spoons. I try to use them as often as I can. It's just these ceramic coated spoons, they're awesome. They don't reflect a lot and they're just neat. I felt like it would be good in the scene but if you have to, if you're determined to put something in a scene and it takes away from it, you're doing your image a disservice so you have to be willing to walk away. And I'm just gonna put this over here. And I'm not gonna use it. Even though I really want to. So we're getting there. I don't have a lot of highlights on the...alright see that. That's where food styles comes in. That looks good. Do you want to do live view? No. We're fine. Okay. Melina just mentioned about live view. I don't use live view. No especially on the back of the camera and it's not even... you can do it on capture one. It really needs battery life. It needs a lot of battery life and it's not. Do you guys use live view? I mean it's...it can be...it has it's place. I just haven't gotten in the habit of doing it. Maybe that's not, maybe I should I don't know. But I have never, we kinda work the way we work. So I want to have that go up there. Do you want a napkin in there somewhere? Or do you want to leave it just like that? Let's put it under the milk. Cause we want to protect the table from Which one do you want to use? Um. I like the striped one. This one, but I don't know if you wanted this red one. Yeah, so I want to do a demo. So see how I'm doing the rust and the red and the orange. It's not straight orange, so it's not blue orange kinda thing. So it's a little off to one side of the color spectrum. I felt like we all have our different opinions on what will look good. I felt like this was going to be the winner. Mhmm. So what we do, this one looks really good too. This actually looks like a towel you'd actually have in your kitchen. So it's a little more authentic. Let's take a picture of both of those and just see how they read. And then we'll make a decision pretty quickly on what. The one thing on capture one is it doesn't rotate. My camera is auto rotating the images a certain way so capture one doesn't actually auto rotate your images for you. So he has to do it manually which is kinda a hassle but. Yeah it has some weird issues with the orientation sensor when you're camera is facing straight down. Okay so that's actually off frame sorry. Yeah. I'll put it near the milk. Do you want another empty glass for the milk? Actually I kinda like that as it is. You want it just like that? I think it's just too busy when you put. Okay. _ You know what I might do? If you're grabbing a hot. I don't know who has a wood fired oven in their home and who toasts toast on a wood fired oven and pulls it out on a charcoaled. You know that's ridiculous. It looks great, but that's sort of extending the reality of what we're trying, but if you were to pull it out you would be using a towel. So it might make sense to put the towel up by the handle of the actual board and then what I really like to do is make it a little messy without being too ridiculously messy is to kinda dip the bottom of the milk container in milk stamp it, and move it a little bit. So it looks like you set it down you poured it, set it down and then moved it, it got nudged and you kinda have that cool ring I love that. Yeah, mhmm. So let's try that. I like you're towel better. Okay. We'll put it under the milk. Under the milk, so you wanna do the milk thing with the ring? Pardon? You wanna do the ring thing with the milk? Yeah if you get a bowl and just dip it and bring it to set and I'm not using milk. I'm using half and half, it reads a little better. It reads whiter, it's not as blue. Heavy cream is just a little too heavy but I use heavy cream a lot for splash work. But for just milk, I tend to like how half and half looks and I'm really liking how that orange juice is reading. That's a good, I think we have a good composition here. Although I don't like anything just touching the side of the frame so I might move the grapefruit just a bit. And I might drag, I'm gonna drag the peanut butter. (tapping) In like that. All right, let's capture that. All right, I don't like that...where that's... There we go, anytime you can kinda crinkle you wanna iron. I don't like wrinkled linens. I like to iron them, but then kinda bunch them and then create the texture myself. Occasionally that's totally called for though. A nice wrinkled linen can look really good. All right so that, then I'll dip that in this. You want a mat? We'll let that sit for a bit. (thumps) It adds a little ring there. Do you wanna take that shot and see where we're at? Yeah.
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