Shooting For a Client
Lesson 12 from: FAST CLASS: Getting Started in Professional Food PhotographySteve Hansen
Shooting For a Client
Lesson 12 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
Shooting For a Client
So basically what we have going on here is we just have, we're gonna do a roasted chicken shot. And this would kinda be a shoot that would feature this as a, as a product itself. This would be like an oven shoot. And we're gonna have a nice roasted chicken, within this pan, and we're gonna have a lots of vegetables, we have a camera inside the oven, which is gonna capture a lot of the steam that I'm gonna push in there with a fog machine. And we're gonna kinda troubleshoot this, because in a simple shot like this, where there's just a chicken and some vegetables, there's nowhere to hide. Every single component is, if you get it wrong, and especially when you're dealing with reflective surfaces, we're not fully going into that in this instance, because we're not photographing the whole oven, it's just more of an inside shot. When you're dealing with both food and reflective services in the same shot, like if you have a hamburger and a beer, that really gets complex. So we're gonna delve...
into that and kinda how to solve some of the problems that you know will be caused by those two interacting together in the same scene. So that's what we have going on. This is an actual, this is a one foot by three foot Westcott flex light that just came out. These are fairly new. This was one of the prototype models, but it works really well. And so we're gonna create, you can actually fold it up into the oven. And they do make a one foot by one foot. So you could actually just tape that particular you know, I don't have that one. So I just folded this up. And this actually goes in my luggage when I travel and I have a strip light with me and I also have a regular, you know, soft box with me wherever I go. But these are really flexible, no pun intended, and they, they can go anywhere. So we're creating a downward light, that if you were using a traditional light would be completely impossible. If you were to actually put like a strobe or something else, it just wouldn't work. You'd have to actually, you know, use the oven light itself, if it's a home, you know, home oven, but in this instance, there is no light, it's a commercial, it's a commercial convection oven. So we're gonna go in, I'm using the 180 millimeter lens that I that I mentioned earlier that I really like and we're using the Nikon D 100 E. One 40th of a second at f 3.2. So this is way out of left field for me, I don't shoot, I haven't shot f 3.2. But this, I mean, for a client, I would do this cause this requires it. When you're a commercial photographer, you have to do what the client asks you to do. So if you want to knock out, you know, if you wanna knock out certain areas that aren't necessarily pleasing to the eye, or they want to have a certain look, you've gotta be able to dial it down. I can use light, to knock down the back end. But I'll kinda show you how to troubleshoot that too. When we get to, maybe we'll end up shooting f 16. Maybe we can do that. The teams that you'll see on a commercial shoot, if you're awarded it, there'll be pre production, we'll go into that. But the team is not just my team. It's also the client. It's the art director. It's the creative director who's usually not on set. There's an art producer who was probably the one that you spoke to at the agency who you know, found you and, and gave your name to all the art directors, but they'll be on set. They'll be working with you to kind of make sure that the creative is being executed the way they want to see it executed, and they'll work with you. It's a team effort. It really is. It's almost like the food stylist and the photographer. They'll make you a lot better, they'll come to you and say, this isn't quite you know, and it always ends up being better when you work with a really good art director. So it's both Jack, Molina and myself, usually on a bigger set. It'll be an art director, it'll be also a brand manager typically. And they're there to look out for things about the brand that are not being represented the way that their brand is used to being represented. And there's a lot of hands in the pot, and that's just during the shoot. There's stuff before and after. During post production I'll do Photoshop, work on an image, send it in, they'll ask for a revision, they'll sometimes ask for three revisions before we get it right in Photoshop. If it's a really complex shot, so there's a lot of work both before and after. And so overcoming those obstacles of the things that will go wrong in a shoot. There are numerous things that will go wrong in a shoot always. Your camera will break down. I've never had a shoot where just nothing goes wrong, it just doesn't happen. So when you run into that, it's when you're a pro, you've had enough experience to just kind of let it, you know, I've had, I've had computers fail and people say you're totally relaxed about that. I'm like yeah, it's, it's probably not me. But no, no but it's it's a matter of it's a matter of overcoming it without letting it get you on set 'cause they can kinda tell and and, and it's okay to be new. I mean, there's, there's people breaking this industry all the time. I, a few years ago I did and it was just a matter of learning from your mistakes and not repeating them, but you have to get the image down at the end of day. You have to be at least good enough to execute anything even if there are a few errors along the way and deliver that file. And for the photographer, you saw when we did the shoot, I wasn't up on the camera hanging out by that I wasn't camera guy, I wasn't looking through, jostling, focusing, you know, I knew the angle that I wanted. I was very, there's some photographers who will search out an angle. They'll kinda move around. That's kind of what I do at the beginning. But when I lock down, it's, it's locked down time because there's usually a layout that determines the angle that you're gonna be shooting in. And I just make sure using tricks that, that angle is executed and that things are propped up. I've had to do shoots, we did a baby food shoot where there were two, there were two elements or two different packages, they're deciding on. They didn't know which one they were doing. And we were shooting. We were in, in a shoot, they had no idea but there wasn't a testing phase. And so they wanted to decide which was the best. So we were shooting two of the same types of packaging, but one was completely vertical. And one was a three quarter shot in a very natural wood environment, which they eventually I believe we're deciding on. But I had to use, I had to use an entire tub of Vaseline to get the stuff to stand up on top of the 'cause we were shooting directly and there was a crate on the package and they wanted the produce to look like it's coming out of the crate. So you have to you have to use trickery to kind of force the food to do what their layout says you're going to do. As opposed to just kind of like well, you know, it's not as loosey goosey as that you've really gotta execute the story, you know the the mood board and the actual layout as closely as possible. So I was kind of away from the camera and I was just kinda zooming around, you know handling client, handling, you know, talking to Jack about stuff, you really are a director and photographers are becoming more and more you know directorial in nature because there's a lot of clients who will ask for motion and stills and cinema graphs which we all provide. The cinema graphics side is newer on our end but we're getting into it. So you need to be able to provide all that and so I just become the full the vision and so I see if something's not being executed I tell there's a lot to do and you're in a lot of places. So to be bogged down by technology is not a good thing on a set like this. That's where digital tech is so crucial in those, those roles. But I have done some solo I've done a lot of shoots solo, that are packaging. So it's a lot of work and you can miss stuff. So how does shoot work from start to finish? I just went through that, I just went, no,no but the so you'll deliver the files, you'll execute the shoot, you'll deliver the files. There used to be a, you know, a couple of rounds of edits that go on not always. A lot of times they'll take the images right out of here, right out of your hands and work on them themselves 'cause they have a team in the agency or whoever, or in the in house department who works on these images. So you'll lose some control over the final product. It's just how it goes. You have to be okay with that.
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