How to take food photos outside

Retouched

The original photo
Shutter Speed 1/10, F 3.5, ISO 800

at Chatan Harbor Brewery

Retouched

The original photo
Shutter Speed 1/10, F 3.5, ISO 600

at Chatan Harbor Brewery

For the last of series posts, "How to take/edit food photography," I would like to go present with the way of showing before and after photos. I leave both the original photo and retouched one worked on LR and see how it gets done to finalize photo editing. Here, let me go through 3 tips of taking food photos outside.

Previous series posts
#1: How to take food photos at home (Dark Moody Look)
#2: How to take food photos at home (Whitish-blight look)

1. Set shutter speed and ISO right
   It's so important to keep your attention to shutter speed and ISO on your camera. I know I edit photos later, and I could just focus on shooting. BUT I do not want to think "I can edit it later." So try to set up the shutter speed, and ISO proper to light up for an environment. It's a restaurant. There is no any way to set up flash-light next to food, and you don't want to bother other customers by flashing. Also, you better enjoy your quality time, which is eating(!). You quickly need to take shots before meals get cold. Setting up the proper shutter speed and ISO before the food is delivered, and when it comes to your table, you are ready to shoot.
   
   

2. Add colors on food by color luminance tools
   As showing my editing process on color luminance tool in a screenshot below, you get to know and focus what food should be featured. In this photo, apparently, chops. First, I adjusted "Red." After having the best color on the chops, I modified other colors to fit the tone of the chops over the whole meal presentation on the plate.
   
   

3. Give the high amount of Sharpening as much as possible
   One more screenshot of editing behind the scene. Especially when it comes to beers, top bubble surface and the golden color of liquid that makes you gulp it should be emphasized on a photo. Adding the high amount of Sharpening gets it next level of food photo presentation to make audiences craving it.

#2 Tip: “Add colors on food by color luminance tools”

#3 Tip: “Give the high amount of Sharpening as much as possible”

Taking a food photo by your phone

Next. I would like to show how to take food photos by an iPhone. For the picture below, I use Snapseed to edit.

I like Snapseed because it has all adjustment tools it needs and is able to edit the whole parts on the phone. The app particularly provides excellent work for food photography. (I have used different apps, but this probably the best-qualified app concerning editing quality, control, and modification. )

The original
at Full Circle

Retouched

It's a slight change of brightness of the table, details of food, and contrast, however, that's a crucial part of photo editing, I think. This descent effort keeps you up with the pursuit of beauties on photos, such as better qualities, details, and brightness, that gives shiny parts of food presented in your quality time.

I think that’s it for the series of taking food photos. :) Hope you enjoyed and earned a little tips from the posts.

Thank you so much for reading.

How to take food photos at home (Whitish-blight look)

This is for the series of taking food photos from the previous post. The series continues to the last post, "taking food photos outside." Today, I present "How to take a food photo at home (bright-light look)."

Those are photos from the time I started using a DSLR camera back in 2010-11. (Resolutions are not high because I did not know how to control that camera.)

In the previous post, I was talking about editing points that sum up photo qualities. Today, I give a little tip on editing for a bright light look.

Let me quickly show tips on taking food photos at home and make it bright-light look with tips of 1. Use a white dish, table or put a white table-cross, 2. Control levels, 3. Make it in high contrast with colors.

---

1. Use a white dish, table or put a white table-cross

   It's before editing, at time of the shooting. To use a natural light wisely, a white base under dishes really helps to edit later. I usually use a white table or white plates for shooting. If not, buy at least A3 size of white papers, and that helps to reflect natural lights and brightness adjustment on LR/Photoshop.

2. Control levels.
   The bright look is all about brightness over the whole photo. On photoshop, you open levels and move the right point to left. That creates more shining light over the picture, however, keep your mind that brightness does not color off on the main food.
   
   

3. Make it in high contrast with colors

   Because of the other whiteness around food, now you can use high contrast and add colors onto food for more visually popping out. In the previous post, one of the tips were for the basic of color luminance. In addition to the point, high-contrast with colors really works out for the whitish-blight look, and to make the adjustment tool is handy, food choice for the primary photo object, the colorful fruits, such as grapes, strawberries, berries, peach, etc.., are the best ones to use to practice high contrast with colors in whitish-blight look. Those fruits are visually great when they are mature enough to eat. (It means the mature high contrast colors on the surface) as compared with other “side-fruits," such as figs, persimmons, green apples, etc.. 

In the end, it's all about your preference and perspectives for what could be matching with whitish-blight look or dark-moody look in food photography.

Enjoy shooting photos at home. :)

How to take food photos at home (Dark moody look)

My first photography features were food and natures back in time that I started taking photos way before portrait or any product photos. It's just because simply I loved cooking (and eating) and wanted to store my food collection somewhere and started doing my first food blog back in 2010. It didn't go well (well, I stopped posting while getting into busy moments with study). However, that's been a part of my daily practice and a way of taking care of myself.
 

So, today, and in the next a couple of posts, I present taking food photography at home. The first post is about making it dark, moody look, the second post is more for a whitish-blight look. The third one is how to take food photos outside of a home.

Let's get started.

I took those photos last week. I baked banana-coconut oil cake in the morning, and the color of the bread significantly collaborated with the dark-brown kitchen table, and that light wood plate. So, that could be presentation materials of today's session.

There are three points I am going to cover in here. 1. Tips of decorations 2. White-balance 3. Color luminance

---

1.     Tips of decorations

For food photography, creating a mood for craving food you show is a key. To do so, you can use food/ingredients you used for a dish to make. In that photos, I put bananas, flour, nuts, and also measurement spoons. Not only ingredients but tools for cooking, such as measurement a spoon, fork, bowl, knife, cup, give the sense of reality and an image of proceeding you cooked.

2.     White-balance

White balance is so essential for any categories of photography look stable. Even you take multiple photos (different angles, decorations, composition) in one series of the presentation, you do not want to change its style. In other words, you want to keep it under the same sense and make audiences comfortable to keep their eyes on that matter. From my experience, accommodating colors, exposure, highlight, contrast, and editing tools can be fixed for each photo, but it's necessary to keep White Balance same in every single photo. In this series of photos, I set WB as Temperature: 3,640 and Tint are -4. Made cool bluish look.

3.     Color luminance

Finally, color luminance. I think that could be applied to all food photos no matter what types of look. You adjust (or add/decrease) color impact on photos. If you use bananas, then the yellow part should be adjusted to minus to emphasizes its color. I made -17 in the yellow zone here and changed Red, Purple, and Magenta to +100 for a little piece of dried flowers. Because of the dark, moody look in the whole photo, this color luminance gives photos having an effort in term of sensitiveness and details, not only a "mood."

I think that's it for today. Hope that I could leave tips and techniques of food photography at home…

Hope you enjoyed the photos and thank you so much for reading. : )

Break : Snapshots from the summer time in 2015

Photos from summer back in 2015, just Soumen lunch with my family. 

Those photos always remind me that how fun is just taking pictures whatever I like without thinking any specific conditions. 

While I like striving for the excellent shot for photography, I naturally love catching the moment of my life and the people around me. It's just because people and objects are JUST there unintentionally. 

Genuinely, I love the time of eating, listening to music, and dancing. 

How to edit a photo taken by your phone (Classic Moody Look)

Let's talk about editing. 

Have you ever had the moment, "if I had a camera with me, it could have been a great snapshot.." or you are in a rush and "Okay, let's take a photo of the moment without thinking about lights or focus." 

When you are not with a camera, as we know, we always can take photos with your mobile phone and edit later. Today, I would like to introduce some app and how to use them making pictures look good and add your photos a little bit of the sense of the next level. 

(*Please note that this blog is not only about 'photography.' I want to provide tips for snapshots people take every day for their fun and use. When it comes to photography, ISO, Aperture, Shutter Speed do matter, and we do not want to take a shot by thinking we can edit later.)

Since I use an iPhone, I'd like to focus on how to edit photos taken by iPhone and editing tool/app we can use to make them look like Instagrammed or pro-angle look. 

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Shoot
I usually take snapshots for food, table setting, and a part of natures. I shot photos above at home. I typically make a picture from the top and see the whole space with food and other table decorators. 

It's just because, in the view of editing, that angle gives you a simple process to crop the photo if there is any additional object are on, which could ruin your photo look. 
Also, in color/white balance wise, you can see the whole balance of the primary object and other additional decorators. 
Moreover, the angle gives an object itself more standing out and provides the audience feel it. 

Of course, you also can take a photo from different angles like the photo in the middle.  
When you take a photo from the angle, make sure the background. You do not want to spend time on editing it with Photoshop. So usually, I put the object in the dark color background and decorators that matches with the primary purpose. 

For example, if an object is sweets, then put some dried flowers, candles, a flower pot,  a folk, a mug cup...something relates to the images of the object. The additional objects should come from a tool you want if you are served it at the restaurant. Something makes you feel good for no reason.  

*A little tip is that a candle always works out with almost any objects. That's a magic tool to boost your photo image to the next level. 

After shooting, let's go to editing. 

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

App
I've been using different apps and came to the point where stick with 2 - 3 apps along with a purpose/ image of a photo. 

My favorite photo editing apps are 1) Photoshop 2) VSCO 3) edit.lab
Photoshop can be used almost for every photo, and it's easy to edit on an iPhone. I use it to make a picture polished first with 'Enhance' on Photoshop. Let me talk about how to edit on an iPhone by Photoshop next time, and show it in more detail. 

Today, I mainly focus on 'how to make photos look classic moody look.' For that, I am going to focus on the app, 2) VSCO. 

This app carries much variety of filters and editing tools, and it is the best app to provide classy moody look on the picture. I only receive benefits from them for the free zone, which is limited filters available. But trust me, it's enough just for fun shooting and snapshots. 

Before the details of editing, let me give you my definition/thoughts on the classy-moody look. 
To me, classy-moody is containing the colors of blue, green, grey, and brownish and the vintage style, but the photo does not look old. Objects still match with 2018. It's a mixed texture of trendy objects and classic tools.  
 

The process below is how I edit for the classy moody look pictures. Here is each action for the final edited version I took on VSCO. Please take a look at each number of adjustment tools. *Click the bottom '<>' to see next photo. 

The process is how I edit for the classy moody look pictures.

My tip is that do not use the 'Exposure' fist. Adjust 'Contrast.' 
And after 'Contrast,' if necessary, adjust 'Exposure' to darker. It's my personal opinion, but 'Exposure' is just a supplement tool to add a strong sense of lights to a picture, and you do not want to have an intense fire in the classy moody look. 

Moreover, if you could adjust 'Saturation' and 'White balance' for cooler/warmer looking. I think that those two tools are the most important for the classy moody looking beside the filter. 
In other words, as long as you handle those two, you can create the best snapshot in the classy moody style. 

The last tip is that use 'Grain' and 'Fade' to make more the vintage look. Recently 'Grain' is my favorite tool for editing. I don't prefer to use the 'Fade' tool in general, but 'Fade' definitely works out for more portrait snapshots, instead of food and natures, 

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Lastly, let's go review. 

1. use the angle from the top
2. have additional decorators/goods provides the feeling of the object. *a candle is a magic tool
3. do not adjust 'Exposure' first. Always 'Contrast' first
4. handle 'Saturation' and 'White balance' for cooler/warmer looking
5. use 'Grain' for the vintage look

I hope these tips help your first step of photo editing on your phone. 
Please let me know if you have more suggestions or questions that you want me to cover in the next post. 

Thank you so much for reading and hope you enjoy your snapshots more!