Creative food photography
Albert Pedrosa
Photo Mania
RECENTLY, I did a one-on-one training on shooting food. My student came all the way from Catbalogan, Samar. Her sister plans to open a coffee shop and she’s designated to do the graphics and photography. Our objective is to produce not only menu type of shots but creative shots as well for posters and ads.
I’ve been shooting food for a while now. I like the idea of having total control of the light while taking your time perfecting every bit of detail inside the frame. What I didn’t expect during the training is the fun we had working on the creative shots. It was my first time shooting food creatively.
A couple of weeks before the workshop, my assistant and I did a lot of research in creative food photography, and we tried procuring the materials and props needed for the shoot. We surfed online selling sites, antique shops and second hand imported shops to look for antique utensils and kitchen stuff.
We even visited junk yards and a couple of DIY stores to find a unique base for the set. We ended up having a lot of stuff at hand and my assistant is now more worried than ever having additional props in our inventory, apart from all the existing ones we have for shooting fashion.
I know I can pull off the lighting and composition, but seeing the layout and elements coming together was just amazing and fun to do. Shooting food for menu is quite a fulfilling and challenging work at the same time but adding the creative side opens a lot of boundaries.
This means that there’s so much you can do with photography even if the weather doesn’t cooperate. Studio photography can be laborious especially when setting up props indoors, but shooting desktop means smaller props, thus less stress.
I’ll definitely explore and spend more time doing creative food shots. Photography is a never ending journey for me, and it never ceases to amaze me. If you’re the studio type of photographer and you’ve been doing the same type of photography for a while now, try creative food photography.
Keep on shooting everyone!
photomania.sunstar@gmail.com
www.grp.ph
