Shooting advice: food?

malcolm man

malcolm man

Active member
Hi, I've got a shoot coming up for a philly cheese steak shop.

Part of the project will entail getting some good food shots. I don't want it to look like just a pile of slop. I mean, it's basically meat and cheese.

Anyone have any tips/tricks as far as lighting, getting the bread to look nice and toasty brown, creating steam, making vegetables look nice and plump, etc?

I've never done anything like this and am really nervous about this part of the project, so any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!
 
It's actually a bit of an art to get the food to look right. They usually have someone called a "Food Stylist" whose job it s to make the food look good. They carry an assortment of oils and brushes and other things that perk up the food and make it look tasty.

One of the food stylists I've worked it, she also had two different kinds of food: the stand in for lighting and additional stuff like that, so that you got the shot right, and then she brought in the "hero" food. That was kept nice and fresh and in one case, prepared RIGHT before the actual shoot, so it was nice and steamy.

I think there are also a few issues about truth in advertising for food, in that you can't use fake food, and everything has to be real..... but don.t quote me on that. I think the key is freshness...

Yuo have sandwiches: steam the buns, oil the meat... but talk to a chef or a photogtrapher about what to do to make food look FRESH and yummy.

Hope this helps.
 
puckthemad said:
I think there are also a few issues about truth in advertising for food, in that you can't use fake food, and everything has to be real..... but don.t quote me on that. I think the key is freshness...
Click to expand...

Not true--they often use glue and other crap to stand in for milk. It's whatever makes it look best. Truth in advertising applies to ads like McDonald's current 100% beef claim in their ads.

Matthew
 
They do something called "shocking the veggies" to keep them bright and fluffy. I hear it all the time but don't know exactly what they do.
 
Also take into account things that may be affected, or even melt under the lights. I know Oreo cookie pictures use fake cream as real cream would melt.

But since it's meat and cheese, use oil and brushes as mentioned. Cheese looks nice and hot and melted when brushed lightly with oil, and meat looks hot and juicy with the same thing. But test it out of course.
 
Backlighting has been the single best thing that's worked for me when shooting food. If you can have steam coming off the food and backlight that it looks real nice. (By the way, backlighting applies to shooting rain.) You'll also notice in a lot of food shots the background is often overexposed half a stop or so. Extreme close-ups work best for some foods.
 
warming jells can help usualy and make sure you do some stuff with depth of feild to make it pop. also steam coming out of it with a backlight could be an easy way to make it good.
 
Food stylist. Say it over and over again. Without a good one, it will look like a pile of slop. I was just in Philly and had my first. I don't get what all of the fuss is over, I was kind of let down by a "real" Philly cheesesteak.

Maybe I didn't go to the right place?

Dan
 
puredrifting said:
Food stylist. Say it over and over again. Without a good one, it will look like a pile of slop. I was just in Philly and had my first. I don't get what all of the fuss is over, I was kind of let down by a "real" Philly cheesesteak.

Maybe I didn't go to the right place?

Dan
Click to expand...


I worked at a certin network that had alot of great looking food shots. We had a full time staff of food stylist and they could make ANYTHING look good, I would consider hiring a chef from a good resturant to help you out. a trick we used to keep the food looking fresh longer was to spray it with a good helping of hair spray.

Good Luck!
 
Food shoots are wonderful. While interning, I got to lend a hand on a shoot for a particularly popular desert foods restaurant. Every time they made a slight miscalculation in applying the caramel and chocolate to the ice cream, they had to chuck what they just made and start again. That ice cream had to go somewhere! That was a day of yummy. More shooting should be like that.

Best of luck though. It certainly was no simple matter to get those shots. The stylists would spend hours designing the food (while one guy had to hold a colinder full of dry ice above the subject). Seriously, they would lay down half a millimeter of caramel, take a picture, then stare at the monitor and argue over which direction it should take over the next crest. But it's that kind of insane dedication to detail that makes the food look so appealing.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top