| Joined: | Thu Apr 19th, 2012 |
| Location: | United Kingdom |
| Posts: | 4424 |
| Status: |
Offline
|
Light is very important but don't use direct flash. Bounce it, or diffuse it ..better still use natural daylight. Shoot in front of a window with reflectors to even out the light. Strong side lighting can be effective in showing texture.
Get the right, stress right WB for the product. Perfect WB may not be best for the food to look appetising (cooked meat must be more red than blue to look 'right')
Make sure you have contrast between the food, it's plate and background.
Rather than using f32 get in close and use dof to focus attention on an area of the meal.
Have some props....knives and forks, flower poise, knapkin, condiments, etc. use them to add more contrast to the set.
Food deteorates rapidly, when sat under lights or warm rooms. Be prepared to cook up several dishes! We once cooked 15 bowls of rice for a 2 hour pack shoot of Uncle Bens rice....arranging the grains of rice to look perfect!!?
To make things glisten, brush with veg oil...we even used glycerol one time....which made the product ....err ....in edible afterwards.
There are lots of tricks that can be employed to make food larger than life.
It's all a question of looking at what makes the prepared meal look good...then try to make the camera see it like that too.
I once had to experiment with different organic solvents to get the right combustion flame colour /intensity of a flamb© meal. Trust me ....no one ate those meals afterwards.
____________________
Eric