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

 

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) /  by harumi

 

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. : )