The Complete Guide to Food Photography: How to Light, Compose, Style, and Edit Mouth-Watering Food Photographs

By Lauren Caris Short

The must-have guidebook for creating great food photographs!

The Complete Guide to Food Photography is a visually stunning, eminently useful, and comprehensive resource for creating fantastic food photographs. In this book, professional food photographer Lauren Short teaches you her entire image-making process, as she covers lighting, composition, styling, storytelling, editing, and processing great food photographs.

In the first part of the book, Lauren covers the core concepts, where you’ll learn:

• How to work with both natural and artificial light (as well as modifiers)

• The tools, guides, and rules of composition for food photography

• Techniques, tips, and tricks for styling your food so it looks its best

• How to build a story with the use of backgrounds, props, and other supporting elements

• Processing, retouching, and compositing techniques to finish your image

Additionally, Lauren explains the why behind her creative decisions. By understanding her decision-making process and walking through her problem-solving techniques, you’ll become better equipped to make informed creative decisions so you can excel at food photography, no matter what scenarios you encounter.

In the second part of the book, Lauren walks you through multiple case studies of complete, start-to-finish shoots so that you can see every aspect of her image-making process and understand how it all comes together. Each case study also includes a link to a full video for each shoot so that you can easily follow along.

Filled with beautiful imagery as well as behind-the-scenes photos and helpful diagrams, The Complete Guide to Food Photography is a must-have for any food photographer looking to create images that stand out from the crowd.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rocky Nook
• Release date: May 11, 2022
• ISBN: 9781681988177

Lauren Caris Short

Lauren Short is a British photographer living in Zurich, Switzerland, where she lives with her husband. Back in 2015, she made a U-turn from her career in tax to pursue her passion and become a full-time photographer. Lauren specialises in food photography, and she works with clients in a range of styles, from product to restaurants to editorial. In addition, Lauren runs the food photography education membership “Food Photography Academy,” as well as a blog and YouTube channel. She is passionate about sharing everything she knows with other photographers to help them develop their skills and gain a deeper understanding of photography.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

Lighting

There are few things in photography that get me quite as excited as lighting. Take the same composition, props, and background, light it three different ways, and you could have three completely different images. But lighting is often neglected by new photographers who think composition and gear are more important, which can result in a lot of frustration.

Lighting is a puzzle put together piece by piece, with each piece building on another until you have a complete picture. Lighting can seem overwhelmingly technical when you start, but the good news is, light is predictable, and once you understand the principles, you can control it very easily and make creative decisions to achieve the look you want.

There’s no one way to light any subject, so this isn’t going to be a guide on how to light cakes, for example. Instead, I want to give you the tools you need to understand light at its core, so you can adapt those skills to any situation and confidently make lighting decisions for any subject you wish. Whether it’s natural or artificial light you shoot with, the principles are completely transferable, so you’ll be ready to face whatever challenges light throws at you.

Learning the technical side of lighting opened my work up to more creative opportunities, allowing me to explore many different styles of photography, and I want to give you that skill too. The process wasn’t without frustration, but it was absolutely one of the most rewarding things I’ve done on my journey as a photographer so far.

Reading theory is all well and good, but the best way to get more confident with lighting is to try it for yourself, so there are several challenges and assignments in this chapter to help you put into practice what you’re learning. Then take what you learn in this chapter to identify lighting techniques that resonate with you and your style and replicate them in your own work.

Light Versus Lighting

Light itself is what we’re working with. Whether it’s natural or artificial light, it’s all photons. Lighting on the other hand, is the application of that light. It’s how we manipulate and shape it to create the look we want. As we’re talking about food here, think of light as the ingredients, and lighting as the recipe.

You could have the same set of ingredients and create many different dishes, each with their own character and quality. There’s no right or wrong way to manipulate and shape light, but there are principles we can use to help us achieve more aesthetically pleasing light in food photography.

THE EMOTION OF LIGHTING

Light creates a mood that helps us emotionally connect with images. Lighting that reflects a soft morning glow through the kitchen window gives a very different feel than the hard, undiffused mid-day sun. We often hear about light and bright or dark and moody as if they are the only two lighting styles available, but there’s so much more than this.

In this image of sliced pumpkin, I wanted to create a dark image with a bright, impactful subject. By using a dark green backdrop to blend with the skin of the pumpkin, and a large soft box with a grid, I was able to create a high contrast look that makes the flesh of the pumpkin pop out of the frame.

1.1 In this image I shot for my food blog many years ago, I really didn’t know anything about lighting. This resulted in many flat-looking images and a lot of frustration.

The Characteristics of Light

Before we dive into the more fun application section of this chapter, I want to spend a bit of time digging into the theory of light. Once you understand the fundamentals of how light behaves, you’ll be able to better assess the light you’re working with, whether that’s natural or artificial, and be much better equipped to handle the light and make more informed creative decisions.

BRIGHTNESS

The most important quality of light is its brightness. I say most important in the sense that if there isn’t enough brightness, we can’t take a good photo. Most of the other qualities of light can be controlled and manipulated, but if you rely on natural light, brightness is not something you can influence. The brightness of a light source is determined in two ways: luminosity and distance.

Luminosity

The total light a light source emits is called its luminosity and is measured in a unit called lumens. It’s important to note that lumens are a more accurate way to determine how bright your light will be than a watt value alone. This is because different types of bulbs have different lumen values at different watts. For example, a halogen bulb creates approximately 1600 lumens at 125 watts, but an LED bulb can emit the same number of lumens at only 13–20 watts.

Of course, when you’re working with natural light, you probably aren’t going to measure the lumen value of the light coming in through your window, but it’s good to have an awareness of things that affect the brightness of natural light. Different times of day, year, and the weather will have an impact on how bright the light is, so pay attention to how the light behaves in your space.

Distance

The distance from your light source also influences the brightness of the light. The farther away your subject is from your light source, the less power the light falling on the subject has (Figures 1.2 and 1.3). For example, a subject right next to a window will have a much brighter light falling on it than the same subject five metres away from the window. Therefore, moving your subject closer to your light source will result in a brighter light.

The distance from your light source affects more than just the brightness of the light, but we’ll come to that later in the chapter.

Brighter is not always better though. There are times when you will want to limit the brightness of your light, such as to create dark and moody photography, or if you’re shooting in a space flooded with natural light. Too much light can create scenes with minimal shadows and contrast. In these situations, you may want to block some of the light to direct it how you want.

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In both images I used ISO 100, f/7.1, a shutter speed of 1/250, and my speedlight at 1/8 power. The only thing that changed was the distance of the soft box, as can be seen in the diagrams. This resulted in less power in the shot where the soft box was farther away.

CONTRAST

The contrast of light is most easily recognised through the appearance of the shadows. High-contrast light is created by light rays all striking from the same direction, whereas low-contrast light is created by light rays striking from many different angles.

This is how hard and soft light are defined. Low-contrast light (soft light) has the appearance of shadows with soft edges that gradually transition from dark to light, and high-contrast light (hard light) has shadows with hard edges that have a sudden transition from dark to light. The absence of shadow creates flat, bland images, so even in light and bright photography, it’s important to pay attention to your shadows and make sure your images have enough depth.

In artificial light, small light sources such as strobes or continuous lights (as can be seen in Figure 1.5) without any kind of diffusion create hard light, and lights diffused with large modifiers such as soft boxes (seen in Figure 1.4) create soft light sources.

When you’re working with natural light, direct sunlight on a clear day will give you high-contrast light, creating hard shadows; but on a cloudy day, you’ll have soft shadows. Even though the light source, the sun, is the same, the clouds act like a huge layer of diffusion, causing the light to scatter in many different directions, so by the time it reaches us it’s got that soft, low-contrast quality.

In food photography, soft light has become the go-to desirable standard, but happily, hard light is also getting more appreciation. There is something magical about hard light. It can create the feeling of a warm summer evening with the sun just setting in the sky, or a bright crisp morning with sunlight pouring in through a kitchen window. It’s important when you’re planning your images to think about what kind of lighting is best going to tell your story.

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In these two examples, you can clearly see the difference in the appearance of the shadows. In the low-contrast light example (Figure 1.6) I created soft light by using a large soft box (120cm octagonal) with two layers of diffusion in front of my speed light. The high-contrast light example (Figure 1.7) was created with a bare flash head with no diffusion at all. Each image has a different feel, so think about what kind of atmosphere you want to create.

Size and Proximity

There are two factors that affect the brightness and contrast of your light the most, and those are size and proximity, so let’s look at how these work.

A larger light source will always produce softer light than a smaller light source. But when you’re looking at the size of your light source, it’s not really the actual size that matters, but the apparent size, and that’s where proximity comes in.

Let’s take the sun as an example. It’s huge. Its radius is nearly 700,000 km. But it’s also 149.6 million kilometers away. So, for all intents and purposes, it’s a tiny light source. That’s why direct sunlight creates hard, high-contrast light. When it’s cloudy outside, the clouds act as a huge layer of diffusion, creating a large light source, and therefore soft, low-contrast light.

So how do you determine apparent size? Well, it largely comes down to the size of your subject. A speed light with just a piece of paper over it can look like a soft light source if you’re photographing a single strawberry and your flash head is only a few centimetres away from it. To the strawberry, that’s a huge light source. But take that same speedlight and try and light a large, three-tiered cake, and suddenly that light source looks a lot smaller, so you get a hard light source on your cake.

In Figures 1.8 and 1.9, I kept the light source at the same distance but switched the modifier to change the size. In Figure 1.8, I used a 120cm soft box, and in Figure 1.9, I used a 65cm beauty dish. Pay attention to the shadows in the images and notice how they are harder in the image with the smaller light source.

1.8

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Let’s Visualise

To visualise how size and proximity affect the shadows in your image, shine a lamp directly on a wall and put your hand in front of it to create a shadow of your hand on the wall. Move your hand closer to the lamp and then closer to the wall. What do you notice?

As your hand is closer to the light source, the shadow of your hand on the wall looks softer, and when your hand is farther away from the light and closer to the wall it looks harder. This is because relatively, the light source is larger when your hand is closer to the lamp.

1.10 An illustration of the inverse square law.

Both size and proximity work together to determine the apparent size of your light source, but proximity particularly also affects how your shadows appear in a concept called light falloff.

Falloff

The inverse square law is a complex law of physics, but we can simplify it to illustrate the intensity of light for the purpose of photography.

When you double the distance from your light source, you quarter the power of the light. This is because the light is gradually spreading over a larger surface area, making it appear less intense.

The amount of light reduction between distances is called falloff. Falloff is more pronounced the closer you are to your light source, and less pronounced when you’re farther away. Moving your subject closer to the light source (Figure 1.11) is going to create more dramatic shadows, and farther away (Figure 1.12) will create less intense shadows. So, if you want more pronounced, moody shadows, position yourself closer to your light source. Being too far away can cause your images to look flat and boring, so consider the look you’re going for in your image.

Contrast Versus Falloff

In summary, the contrast of the light impacts the appearance of a shadow. High-contrast light creates hard shadows, and low-contrast light creates soft shadows.

Falloff affects the brightness of your shadows. Being closer to the light source creates darker shadows due to a higher rate of falloff; being farther away from the light source creates a lighter shadow due to a lower rate of falloff.

All of these concepts work together, so you can consider all of them as you’re setting up your lighting.

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1.12

COLOUR

All light has a colour temperature. The scale on which this is measured is called the Kelvin (K) scale, which goes from warm light up to cool light.

Pure white light is measured in the middle of the scale at 5500K and is called daylight balanced light. The goal of shooting with daylight balanced light in food photography is to ensure the colours of your food look natural. Food tends to look most appealing when what we see in an image reflects what we expect to see in real life.

But this doesn’t mean there isn’t room for a creative use of colour temperature to evoke certain moods. In dark, moody photography, a slightly cooler colour temperature can create a more dramatic feel, whereas a warmer colour temperature can create a softer, vintage look. Colour affects our emotions, so it’s important to factor this into your lighting, too. Pure daylight balanced light is not always the best choice for an image.

When you’re choosing your light source, bear in mind its colour temperature. Natural light will have a different colour temperature at different times of day and in different seasons, whereas artificial lights are more consistent, and you will probably know the Kelvin value of the light you’re using.

White Balance

You can use the white balance setting on your camera to adjust for the colour temperature of the light you’re shooting in, e.g., to compensate for warm/cool light and achieve a daylight balanced look (Figures 1.14–1.16).

When it comes to setting your white balance in your camera, there are several pre-set white balance modes, including auto white balance, but these are often not the best choice. When using the auto white balance setting, the colour of the food and backdrops you’re shooting with will influence your camera, and this can create some strange colours in your images.

When shooting in natural light, I highly recommend setting a custom white balance, as this will give your camera real data about what’s happening in your scene. However, when you’re shooting with artificial light, the flash setting or a specific Kelvin value that works with your lights will be sufficient.

1.13 The Kelvin scale, showing a range of colour temperatures.

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The colours of the tomatoes and basil are key to connecting the viewer to the food. The colour of the ripe tomatoes helps the viewer imagine their taste and smell. In the examples where the white balance is too cool (Figure 1.14) or too warm (Figure 1.16), the look of the tomatoes is a bit off and confusing. In Figure 1.15, the white balance is correct and allows the true vibrant colour of the tomatoes to come through.

How to Set a Custom White Balance

Get yourself a white or grey card. I recommend an 18% balanced grey card for best results.

Place the grey card in your scene where your main subject will be, ensuring that it is in the same exact light as your subject will be.

Take a photo of your grey card, making sure it fills as much of the frame as possible. Ensure the light meter on your camera is reading 0 at this point.

Set your camera to Custom White Balance mode, and in the menu, select the photo you just took of your grey card as the reference photo. Done!

If you change the direction of your light or camera during your shoot for another setup, you’ll need to repeat this process, but once you’ve got it down it will take you no more than 30 seconds end to end and will save you so much time in post processing.

When it comes to making colour changes to your files in post processing, it’s important that you’re shooting in RAW format. When you shoot in JPEG, the white balance is already burned into the image file, whereas in a RAW file, it’s just recorded, so we can alter the information in the file for much better colour correction. We’ll talk about this more later in the editing chapter!

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In these examples, I’ve highlighted the diffuse reflections (Figure 1.17) which simply means we can see the food. Whereas in Figure 1.18, I’ve highlighted the specular (direct) reflections, which create those bright highlights that show us this is a glossy syrup. The reflections in this case are a direct reflection of the soft box I used to modify my flash.

REFLECTION

The word reflection can evoke a sense of panic in