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Prep for Oven Shoot with LED Lights

We've got an oven. We've got it ready to go. We've got it set up. I, Melina put a, just, you can put anything in here. You can put paper towels, foil. This works really well because it keeps the drippings away. Just something to prop up the chicken, because you were shooting for a two dimensional image, head-on. We're using 180 millimeter lens, which is even an, it's pretty unusual for food photography, but you'll see how dramatic and kind of cool and compress the shot is once we get to it. Whereas, if I went with a 45, it just wouldn't work. It would reveal too much of the sides of the oven, which frankly haven't been cleaned in a while, (chuckling) but it would just be too, it would be too much of the oven and not enough that, which is kind of the opposite of how I usually like to shoot. But this is so dramatic. I think it has a really neat effect. So, don't be afraid to shoot 300 millimeter just for fun. Just to try it out. Don't be afraid to throw a 200 F2 at it. That'd be unique, ...

we haven't done that yet. So we're going to do, we're going to do the chicken. Let's get, we're going to get started. So feel free to interject with any questions you have while we're shooting this and I'll explain what I'm doing as I'm doing it. So you have an idea of, of what to expect. Yeah. So the first thing, let's put a, I don't need this marked, Okay. Because I have an idea, we can move it. Okay, I can take it out? Um, yeah. But if this were a commercial, I would probably mark the grates, put some tape or, you know, as to where the tray went, so we know where to go, but since we don't know exactly where we want it yet, it's kind of irrelevant. So, once we have the chicken in the pan, we're gonna know pretty quickly, which angle is ideal. So, Melina knows. Thank you, Jack. Melina knows this'll be angled this way. So she's going to look at it and then place the chicken, hopefully kind of just this way. So it has a, there's a little bit of a crisscross pattern, so it's not just straight on straight. So it's a little bit more dynamic. I kind of look at food, fashion shooters would understand this really well. I look for food to have gesture. So, you know when you capture, you have a person in front of your camera and they're doing something, but you just capture that moment where they're like at peak gesture, where their arms are, There's no, all their limbs are bent properly. And it's a really nice image. I look for that in food. I shoot food kind of like you would shoot an athlete. And I, and I treat foods, positioning kind of like you would treat a model. So it's just kind of like, you want a lot of gesture, curve and carrots and stuff that just, isn't just straight and rigid. Unless that's the look you're going for. So, you've got the tag already. Yep, I'm gonna put it on. (laughing) And there's all kinds of, okay, So chickens, styling a chicken. (chuckling) Chickens require a lot of styling. There is, There's a lot of photographers or stylists who style chicken very naturally. And there's stylists who style it very, I guess, old school-esque. I really liked the old school look, where it kind of looks like it's almost plastic. I like it. I don't know why. It's just really, I love the beauty of that perfect, And those aren't cooked. Those aren't even, I mean, you'll put it in the oven for a little bit to kind of shrink up the skin and you'll, you'll glaze it with, it's mostly kitchen bouquet, bitters, and a dash of dish soap, so that it adheres to the skin. The oil and the dish soap kind of just allows that emulsification to happen. So that's very old school. That is not how it's done. I mean typically, no I just happen to really like that look and in a commercial setting, it's even more appropriate because you don't want anything to distract you from the, the oven. And if you're selling the oven, especially if you're taking a shot of the whole oven, or the whole refrigerator, especially, you want everything in there to be perfect. So you're like, your mind says, okay, that's already perfect, nothing to look at, nothing to look at. Oh, it just looks beautiful and delicious. Look at the fridge, which is just stainless. So it does, it's really hard to get your eye there. So use a lot of tricks with the lighting and make sure, making sure the food styling is absolutely perfect. Because a food stylist who fully cook a chicken, when you let it go, the skin will just start to wilt, and wilt and wilt, and wilt. And it'll look like just a dirty date, you know, a massive dirty date. So, but there's, there's a, there's a happy medium. So what we're going to do is we're going to make it look like it's actually being braised in its own pan juices. So we're going to brush a lot of this on there and kind of let it just coat and almost drip off. So we're not actually styling. We've already styled the skin, but we're actually going to create it to make it look like it just got basted. So we're kinda look like when you're opening the oven, it's almost done, and your basing with the pan juices and you're about ready to close the door and there's a lot of cool steam stuff going on and the chicken's almost there. So, do you want me to do the honors? Whatever you want me to do, whatever you wanna do. Okay. So you don't wanna, with a hero chicken, you want to really grab it gently. This is, adhere it best, so it's not gonna move. Okay. And so we don't know, you want to style everything more towards the camera. Even when you're plating a dish, if, if the, you don't wanna, chefs do this all the time, where they play in the center of the plate, you want to sort of help them, if possible, if they're willing to listen to you. Kind of push the food towards the front, use a slightly smaller plate, push the food towards the front. and it'll look almost as if it's in the middle, same goes here, the chicken, if we get it too far back, it's just going to, and this might even be higher, but we'll, we'll take a look. We'll stick a, we have a lot of beautiful produce that Melina styled individually. So we know that this is the camera angle, so every time you style, you're going to look and see how it looks. So, I already see, actually that would be good right there. Do you have a, do you have a T-pin? I don't have a T-pin, but I have a-- T-pins are your friend. I love T-pins. I don't have a T-pin, but-- I have a T-pin. You can actually use a screw. I actually use a tooth pick, but T-pins are actually a good idea. Actually, These are good. This is not t-pin. This is something else that I like, and I don't know what it is. So go to home Depot and just keep, until you find one of these, but they're more robust than a T-pin would be torn, it'd be bent by this situation. T-pins are really small. I'll show you one in a second, but this at least gives you, you can come under the chicken and it'll kind of allow you to at least get some height on it. Maybe. There we go. Yeah, that's better. That one would be, that one could use it too, yeah. Thank You. So you're always looking at, doesn't matter. This doesn't matter. You have to, what matters is the final camera angle and no matter how ridiculous it looks when you're actually looking at it in real life, it's the only thing that matters is what you're coming in at. And if you do happen to, I'd rather get the chicken and the right angle and then have to do a little Photoshop work, removing a T-pin, then having to actually liquify an entire leg. Alright, let's see if that works. That works, you can't see it. That looks good, that looks really good. Okay. Let's push it back a little bit and then we'll start. I'm gonna put paper, since you can't see. I brought the foil, so you want the foil or-- Let's do foil, 'cause foil's black, yeah. Oh, you want that foil, okay. Yeah, I don't only anything that will reflect. This is a expensive use of cinefoil. Now, cinefoil's not usually used to bump stuff up, but I do want no reflections coming up into the, this can be reused though. If you use this for, I will showcase this right now, this can actually be used as a, as a light cutter. I actually fold it like this and an L shape and just, you can mold it. So if you have something, it's completely flexible. So if you have light coming through here and this blocks it, on the set, you can actually come down and just push it exactly into the position that you want. There's no, it'll stay. And it sucks up light like crazy. You can actually use this for the backing of the oven. I could have actually, you know, if I really wanted to cut a lot of light, I could actually put that in the back to really make the back of the oven black. But you would have to really shoot a shallow depth of field. Otherwise you will see it. So I'm going to scrunch this up, being careful not to touch the beautiful and I'll do one more. Don't do this at home, this is really expensive. I mean it's not really, it's a waste. I'm doing it for you guys. For the bottom. Yeah, that'd be great. Can you lift that up and I'll go under? Yeah. Perfect. And then again, I go down and make sure nothing changed. There we go. And yeah, let's start doing a, we can do filler in the back. 'Cause you can start to see as you come down, you can't get away with as much there, so yeah. Even if we have, I'm just gonna put these as I lift. No, those vanished completely. Let's put a, No, these are the non hero ones. Oh, yeah no, we have to get, I think even a lot higher than that. Just so, yeah I'll go in there and you can use paper towels and you can also use Crisco, you can use instant mashed potatoes to kind of just create bulk where you don't have to put, cause you can't see any of that back there. So there's no reason to put food back there. You just put filler, you put paper towels. Chrysalis is my favorite because you can move stuff on it. Like in cereal you can actually move flakes and stick flakes into the Crisco, and it's just, it's a lot more manageable. But for soups, I think mashed potatoes, I mean things that mash, instant mashed potatoes have their place for sure. But you can start to see, you can start to see those potatoes, yeah. Okay, yeah just put them all in there. Okay. So, it takes some time and food photography, there's a lot of hurry up and wait. So there's a lot of franticness while you're trying to get a shot because it's time sensitive. And then you'll be kind of hanging out while stylists do their work, while other things go on, while sets are being rebuilt. We have sometimes have two or three sets going on at one time. But generally speaking, there's a lot of waiting and a lot of prepping and between shots. So, it's important for the stylist to be like she said, one ahead, one shot ahead. As far as prep goes, if not more so it's you can really just kind of go, go, go.