Archive for the ‘Photography’ Category
When Foodies and Photographers Come Together
Last Friday, a group of 75 passionate food lovers, photographers, chefs and food stylists came together for FoodSnap! an event put together by Keren Brown Media and Foodista.
It didn’t matter if you only had a point and shoot camera or zero experience behind the lens, eight other photographers and food stylists were right there holding reflectors, white cards and offering tips to help you capture the best shot. Chef Wayne Johnson from Andaluca catered lunch for the event and several other vendors provided delicious offerings, including Kathy Casey who provided the attendees with two FoodSnap! signature edible cocktail gelees; pomegranate rosemary and elderberry and cucumber. The gelees were just as beautiful as they were delicious.
Here is Keren Brown holding a tray of Kathy Casey’s Pomegranate Rosemary Gelees
Guest of honor, Lou Manna, educated, entertained and inspired us all to take better pictures in general, not just of our dishes.
Pictured above is Karlyn, Sheri, Lou, Barnaby, Keren and Melissa
Lou started us off with his basic recipe for food photography (excerpted from Food Arts – July/Aug 2007 issue):
- Start with a full helping of the camera manual. Lou says your camera’s manual is like a cookbook that will help you find the key ingredients of your camera.
- Think grey. Your camera’s light meter is calibrated to measure grey, so using a grey card to meter the reflected light or an incident meter to meter the light falling on the subject will help give you the correct exposure.
- Think white. Be aware of the White Balance setting on your camera. Do your photos often have that yellow, green or blue tint? Auto White Balance doesn’t always work; you can set it manually or take a Custom White Balance to brighten the color of your photo.
- Think Right. In the Western world we read from left to right, so it makes sense that our eyes also scan a photo the same way. Lou says there are some simple rules of good composition: a spiral composition that leads your eye clockwise; and the Rule of Thirds, where you divide your frame into a tic-tac-toe design and place your subject at one of those intersecting points.
- Serve with the proper resolution. Use some type of photo editing software, such as Adobe Photoshop, and as Lou puts it, “cook” your photos to enhance their “visual flavor.” Set the digital oven to 300dpi with an image size of at least 5×7 in a jpeg format. “Don’t forget to meta tag your photos, use keywords, write captions, and use a descriptive file name.”
For more information and workshops check out and join Lou’s social network DigitalFoodPhotography
If you’re looking for an excellent, informative photography book, check out Lou’s Digital Food Photography book available on Amazon.com:
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| Categories: | Events • Photography • Uncategorized | 1 Comment |
| Tags: | digital photography • food photography • foodista • foodsnap • lou manna • photography tips |
Lights Camera Action
We are counting down the days to FoodSnap! an all-day food photography and food styling event happening this Friday, September 18th at George Town Studios in Seattle, Washington. The event has sold out, but you can follow along with us on Twitter the day of the event and stay tuned for a FoodSnap! round up blog post with highlighted tips and secrets we will have learned from the pros that you can implement at home with a simple point and shoot camera.
Here’s the list of food photographers and food stylists who will be sharing with us their magic bag of tricks!
Lou Manna
Lara Ferroni
Rina Jordan
Barry Wong
Charity Burggraaf
Kevin Fry
Tyler Rebman
Danielle Leavell
Jonathan Shmidt
Kathryn Barnard
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| Categories: | American • Author • Events • Photography • Technique | 4 Comments |
| Tags: | food photography • food styling • foodsnap • loou Manna |
Friday Fun Links
Above Photo by Summerrunner2009
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| Categories: | Cooking tips • Events • Photography • kitchen equipment | 3 Comments |
| Tags: | 100 mile diet • Ben and Jerrys • Friday Fun links • michael pollan |
Time to Get Your Barbecue on!
It’s as if a switch is flipped, the sun starts to set and coals start to light. Happy laughter and the toast of cold beers with friends and families as they gather on decks, patios and porches is about as good as it gets. Call it what it is, but I guarantee just about anyone will tell you they love the smell of lighter fluid wafting over from a neighbor’s yard. It must mean it’s barbecue season and that means great outdoor food!
It doesn’t matter if you are slow-cooking brisket for eight hours or simply grilling a couple burgers, who ever is at the grill is instantly moved up to top chef status. Sure anyone can light a fire and sear some meat, but there is a whole other group of people who make barbecue a science, an art and a way of life. Entire cults are built around barbecue. Sauce followers from around the world drive hundreds of miles to compete rib to rib in barbecue competitions to see whose barbecue will prevail.
BBQ CONTEST!! We’d like to recognize those of you who take your barbecuing to a whole other level. Simply sign up on Foodista and add your best barbecue recipe(s) and photo(s) by June 26.
On July 1st the winner will be featured on The Foodista Barbecue Wall of Flame and receive a Foodista apron and a $50 gift card to Sur la Table!
Good Luck!
Image by NachX from Flickr
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| Categories: | Meat & Poultry • Photography • Sauces • Seasoning & Spices • Technique | 1 Comment |
| Tags: | barbecue • barbecue contest • BBQ |
Flickr Creative Commons
When we launched Foodista last December we included thousands of photos from the Flickr Creative Commons image matched to our Food, Cooking Technique, Kitchen Tool, and Recipe pages.
As part of our commitment to open and shared intellectual property, we have also been contributing under the Attribution License since we started blogging and taking our own food photos. To extend that commitment, we are now posting back all user uploaded images to the Creative Commons. Each picture you upload will automatically be added to Flickr, linked to the page where you uploaded it and tagged with your Foodista user name.
We have a big list of features in development, check it out here and let us know if we are missing something you would really like to see.
Here are some of the latest photos we have passed along:
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| Categories: | Photography | Leave a Comment |
| Tags: | Creative Commons • flickr |
Beef Up Your Cooking Skills on TeachStreet
No matter how good we are in the kitchen there are always new things we can learn, right? Perhaps you want to explore Southern Indian or Provincial Italian cooking, or how about the art of cheese making? Mario Batali’s father, after retiring from Boeing, went to Italy to study sausage making. How fabulous would that be? People now queue up for his amazing links at Salumi.
After reading The School of Essential Ingredients, a wonderful book set in the kitchen of a restaurant, I’ve been noodling over the idea of taking a cooking class. So I went on TeachStreet to find some classes in my area. Teachstreet is a great site that helps you find cool things you want to learn like Snowboarding, Pilates, Voice Lessons, Adobe, even Citizenship! For us food lovers maybe a course in Wine Appreciation, Knife Skills, or a series in Thai Cuisine. Take a Bartending course and awe your guests with your keen mixology skills! Or, improve your “food porn” skills by taking a Digital Photography course. On the flip side perhaps you’re one of those people who possesses a great skill. You can teach too! Here’s how you can share your wealth of knowledge on Teachstreet.
Check out courses in your area or simply browse what’s being offered. You never know what may spark an interest!
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| Categories: | Chefs • Cooking tips • Events • Italian • Photography • Seasoning & Spices • wine | 2 Comments |
| Tags: | cooking • Cooking Classes • Cooking School |
Foodista Flickr Group Over 1,000 Members
In September we started a Flickr Group and it has grown to over 1,000 members! Check out some of the beautiful photographs our members are taking, and if you’re not part of the group feel free to join here! We’d love to see your food photography.
www.flickr.com
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Possibly Related Posts:
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- Flickr Creative Commons
| Categories: | Photography | 1 Comment |
| Tags: | flickr • Food • food photography • food porn • foodista • Photography • photos |
11 Tips For Great Food Photography
‘Tis the season to take photographs of all that beautiful food you’re cooking up! Cookies, pies, legs of lamb, that Christmas goose, Grandma’s cranberry chutney. You don’t have to be a food writer, food stylist, a blogger, or even an Annie Leibovitz to take fabulous photos. If you know some simple tricks you can take gorgeous crowd-pleasing photos.
1. Use a digital camera.
It doesn’t have to be a fancy DSLR (digital single lens reflex), in fact a lot of my photography is shot with an old 6 megapixel Canon Elph, but at least 3 mp is best.
2. Don’t use a flash.
I never use a flash. Unless you’re a professional (in which case you won’t be reading this) it’s just too hard to avoid glare and a yellowish hue. I do all my photography in natural light or I’ll use a work light (about $10 from Home Depot) and diffuse that light from a wall. Even then it’s tricky, so try to stick with natural daylight.
3. Get up close.
Set your camera to the macro setting (the little flower) and get right up in there. If you press the focus button halfway down most point-and-shoot cameras will show a little square. That indicates what the main focus is on. Play around. Find that “sweet spot” to focus on. Like that lovely bit of chocolate just starting to drip from the side of your ice cream. Or the little tiny “hairs” on the stem of a tiny tomato.
4. Take a lots of shots.
Just click, click, click away! That’s the beauty of digital, you don’t have to worry about using up all your film. All too many times, when I think I got the perfect shot on the first try, I find that when enlarged it’s too grainy or blurry. Your shots always look different on your camera than when made bigger, so take a lot.
5. Style the food.
Get a paper towel or rag and wipe the edges of the plate, smudges from a glass, or any splatter, drip or drop. The littlest things you may not have notice, like a thumbprint, have an uncanny way of showing up in your photos. Also, prop up some of the ingredients to show what’s in your food. If you’re shooting a beautiful bouillabaisse arrange some of the fish and shellfish on top, but make sure it still looks natural.
6. Be aware of your background.
Sometimes we get so focused on the food that we end up finding things we would not necessarily call “desirable” in our shots. When I look through the lens to frame the shot I check out all the things that are in that little rectangle. A not-so-pretty crack in the table? Do you see your own shadow? Adjust.
7. Have a steady hand.
If you don’t have a calm hand then rest your camera on something, like the base of a tea cup, or use a small tripod. If your lighting is not ideal (like in a dimly lit bar), rest your camera on a table and set the timer.
8. Blow that steam off!
As good as it looks to have piping hot steam coming off your food it’s pretty difficult to capture since it fogs up the lens. So, I always gently blow (or have someone else) on steamy dishes as I photograph. You can also use a small fan, but this only makes the problem of eating cold food worse!
9. Take time to set up your shot.
Using colorful, antique, or just plain white dishes makes your photographs beautiful. Consider placing a napkin under or near your dish. Have an interesting utensil? Throw that in the shot. Think of how interesting shots are styled in those beautiful cookbooks. Most likely you have all you need in your cabinets to make your photography fun.
10. Look at others’ food photography.
When I was little my tennis instructor always told us students, “If you want to become a better tennis player, play with someone better than you.” I always check out sites that I admire to learn from them: how they place a dish on a table, how they style the food, the lighting they use, etc..Many of them say what camera(s) they use and their own tips and tricks.
11. What looks good and what doesn’t.
You’ll also learn what foods just don’t photograph well, regardless how good it tastes. On a trip to Mexico I took countless photos of a delicious pumpkin seed mole Barnaby had made. It looked beautiful! But every single one of my pictures looked no different than something you’d find in a newborn’s diaper. Lesson learned.
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- Lights Camera Action
- Friday Fun Links
- Time to Get Your Barbecue on!
- Flickr Creative Commons
| Categories: | Photography | 7 Comments |
| Tags: | digital photography • food photography • food styling • foodista • Photography |
Foodista Flickr Group
Foodista just created a group on Flickr that already has over 100 members. Check out some of the latest submissions below, and feel free to join us and add your food photos.
http://www.flickr.com/groups/foodista
www.flickr.com
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Possibly Related Posts:
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- Lights Camera Action
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- Time to Get Your Barbecue on!
- Flickr Creative Commons
| Categories: | Photography | 1 Comment |
| Tags: | flickr • Food • food photography • food porn • foodista • Photography • photos |
