I am currently shooting food pictures for my wife’s upcoming recipe ebook ‘ Minimalist Cooking 27 Practical Recipes.

The problem with photographing a series of shots for a publication can be defined as;

How to make the photographs form a cohesive collection without having them having a formulaic feel.

Sometimes it is good just to try something different and this shot is one such case. An attempt to get away from the white or back-lit backgrounds hence the piano stool, strange angle and blurred street background.

I doubt if this image will make the final cut but that doesn’t really matter as the thinking about it frees the mind up just enough in order that one of the succeeding shots might.

Now for the plug. At the time of writing it is still possible to snag a free copy of the 57 page cooking recipe ebook that my wife is writing and that I am doing the photography and layout work for. Just sign up for her website newsletter, which you can do from the top of the sidebar on the right on this web site and you will receive a link to download the  ebook for free on the day of publication, September 21st 2010. After this date the cost will be $4.95. Still great value but not as great as free. Much more info on her Minimalist Cook website

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As a photographer working with scale has always fascinated me.

The idea of using electronic circuit boards, transistors and the suchlike as a metaphor for a city is hardly a new one. I wanted to attempt to capture this in an image but I wanted to focus on photographic atmospherics to push it away from the cold hard digital feel of the circuit board and more towards the ambiguity and less defined feel of a city. This image is not quite there but there is enough promise to make another attempt at some point in the future.  I feel that there is more mileage yet in my circuit city photography project.

Water

I used to live on the coast of Lake Michigan and could see the Chicago Skyline from the beach and that view has embedded itself into my soul as now I find it hard to envisage skylines that are not over water. Water has always been my natural element, I was born on the coast and am, or at least was, a fairly strong swimmer. Being in water has always felt like coming home, all I need to do is swim or just float on my back in a lake or a pool and both the worlds and my problems fade into the background.

Now to come back down to earth, here are the technical details:

Camera Nikon d40x

Lens the 50-200mm zoom(300mm efl) kit one that came with the camera

Extra optics – the lens unit of an ancient overhead projector – the type that runs hot but projects non transparent stuff i.e. if you wanted to project the pages of a book directly on the wall this is what you’d use. Basically I use this as a macro unit – gives around 1:2 magnification and means that I can work a lot closer than the 3ft minimum distance of the original kit lens. One day I will be able to treat my self to a top notch macro lens and that will really extend my working with scale projects.

Lighting daylight in my studio. I have great natural light for most of the day with the main window on the south and a smaller one on the west. I rarely work with more than fill lighting in the studio.

Surface is a plastic decorating table – great for spraying with water and has really nice blue undertones – this table also does great service for food photography.

Post Production was done, as always, In Adobe Lightroom. As far as I can recall I just did a small crop and removed a dust speck at this stage.

As always any comments, suggestions and stories are welcome. I would be especially interested to hear about any other photography or artistic endeavors around the whole subject of working with scale.

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This is something a little different in the lighting food photography department. It is a photograph of a piece of carrot cake but shot in top of our oven. The oven is one of those with the burners under a translucent black material, presumable some type of fire resistant plastic. The background is an aluminum splash panel that was attached to the wall to make cleaning easier.

Over the past several months I have been experimenting with various brushed metal finishes and reflective surfaces as I think that they work well when lighting food photography. The soft abstract reflections and the neutral grays work well to show off the main subject. I think that the reflection of the plate in the stove top adds a strong compositional element.

I often work with the over sized  white plate as this gives the image a more airy, less cramped feel than using a smaller one. For some reason these particular plates always seem to add their own interesting reflections to the image, never too much but enough to draw the viewer into the photo. Possibly gives the image a little more complexity than is first apparent. The problem with food photography is that everything can start to look a bit like stock photography unless a conscious effort is made not to fall into that particular trap.

The carrot cake was cooked by my wife and is the most moist, tasty carrot cake to be found anywhere and the camera is my trusty Nikon d40x with sb600 dedicated flash mounted on the hotshoe and pointed at the subject (not bounced) and with a diffuser. Camera was set to sync with flash. The flash actually behaved itself this time out. The sb600 is notorious for treating settings as an idea by the user that it can feel free to modify.

A side note, my wife, Megan Wolfe, owns the blog minimalist cook and if you sign up for her newsletter you’ll get a free recipe ebook. This is a genuine freebie honest! This photograph is one of a series for the cookbook.

I would be interested to know what others think, is the image a little too minimal or is this slightly different approach worth working on? Any suggestions for lighting food photography in more interesting ways also always welcome as of course are general photography tips.

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This is an honest attempt to answer the question What is Minimalism. As with most questions in art there is no easy answer and any two art historians are likely to give widely differing answers. Anyway, here is my shot at it.

Most of the great artistic movements can be seen as either an extension of a preceding movement or as a reaction to one. Minimalism falls into both categories. It was a direct and forceful reaction to Expressionism in general and to the raw emotion and anti-intellectualism of Abstract Expressionism in particular. Minimalism was, however, firmly rooted in one overarching movement of the time and that was Modernism, which had already started a reductive process. It also provided the bridge between Modernism and Post Modernism. Put simply, it sought to do away with all external references, especially emotional and historical, and to create art that was completely self contained.

Minimalism first appeared in the 1950′s in New York as a subset of Abstract art but became a dominant trend in the 1960′s and 1970′s. Many sculptors were associated with the movement and pieces featuring large flat planes, industrial finishes and industrial materials were common. Geometry was extremely important as this represented the most pared down representation possible, a form stripped of everything decorative but still retaining its essence. Repetition was also prominent, not only in sculpture but also in two dimensional art and also the other art form that embraced the genre,, music. This music tended to consist of repetitive pulses or small groups of notes with changes being very gradual. Writing also had its own drive towards the minimalism. Authors tended to use fewer adverbs and adjectives and didn’t describe everything down to the last detail which allowed the reader to fill in the blanks deliberately left by the author.

Minimalism was also hugely influential in design and architecture with traditional Japanese buildings being perhaps the most dominant influence. Design, by its nature, is functional, unlike the fine arts such as music and painting which by definition have no practical job to do. Architects embraced this with such novel concepts as making a floor double as a radiator and removing internal walls to create multipurpose spaces.

For a deeper understanding of the topic I recommend reading Robert M. Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. He answers the question, What is Minimalism as well as anyone, despite the fact that he never claims to be dealing with Minimalism per se, and the work itself is definitely not a Minimalist work, but one of the main themes running through the entire work is a discussion about the Romantic world view versus the Classical world view. The former represents the surface as being all-important, i.e. the decoration, the visible, while the latter argues that the appearance of something should be determined by its function and that this is where true beauty lies. Pirsig uses the motorcycle engine as a metaphor for the Classical world view stating that everything visible when looking at an engine exists purely as an offshoot of its function. Minimalism, however it is expressed, always comes from the Classicist viewpoint. It can appear to be a very dry academic subject, as most think of art as being about emotions and surface, but Pirsig’s novel removes much of the abstraction involved and weaves a discussion of a Minimalist philosophy using concrete examples into an book that, though very complex, is also a really good read.

I have deliberately not listed names of prominent exponents of the genre as I felt that this would make the article too disjointed and the names are easily available elsewhere. Also it wouldn’t really help to answer the question what is minimalism. I recommend looking up Minimalism on Wikipedia as a jumping off point as there are some extremely good articles on there written by many different people. As with any art movement there are many conflicting views, even among experts or maybe especially among experts, and the discussion pages allied to the Wikipedia pages will give an insight into some of these.

The rise of minimalist cooking is changing the art of food photography. The following is a look at some of the techniques adopted by photographers to capture the simplicity and the spirit of this modern cuisine. Whether it is because of the recession or a genuine desire to downsize and simplify, minimalist cooking has become extremely popular.  Everything from expensive and hard to acquire  ingredients to rarely used, specialized utensils and equipment have been pared back to the bare minimum. Less is definitely more. Many photographers have noticed this change, either consciously or intuitively and are evolving and adapting their techniques to suit. The old sumptuous saturated glistening overfilled image just doesn’t seem to be a good match for this new approach to cooking and food in general.

The photographers who get this and have a feel for the subject have started to utilize a few specific techniques which serve to emphasize the subject matter but in a much more understated way and this article will lay out a few of these basic techniques. It is not intended to be a comprehensive photography primer and most of the techniques will not require expensive equipment. It needs to be stated though, that even a basic dSLR camera will be capable of much more flexibility than even the best point and shoot due to the amount of control available to the operator. This does not mean however that perfectly acceptable results cannot be achieved with the point and shoots, just that the range of possibilities is smaller.

Simplicity is the Key

When composing the shot keep things very simple, plain white plates and brushed steel or plain counter tops work very well. If the image needs a bit of additional color, a sprig of a fresh herb such as sage is more than enough. Shoot on a level with or just a few degrees above the food. We are used to looking down on food and, in photography, offering a fresh perspective is always a good idea as it wakes the viewer’s brain up. It also adds interesting possibilities for lighting but more about that later.

A blurred background is generally a good thing as this emphasizes the subject. This can be achieved by either using a long lens e.g. a 300ml with a wide aperture from a few feet away with a dSLR or by utilizing the macro setting on a point and shoot and getting in really close, normally within a foot of the subject. Both of these approaches have the added benefit of giving a very narrow depth of field. This means that only a small proportion of even the main subject is likely to be in focus. This concentrates the viewer’s attention even more.

The Tripod

The only piece of equipment that is essential for taking high quality food photographs, other than a camera of course, is a tripod. It may not be required for every single shot but not having one would rule out a lot of potentially good shots. The choices would be between a small  tabletop model, probably best with the smaller point and shoot camera. This would enable the tripod to be set on the same surface as the item being photographed, very useful when the camera has to be close to the food. There is a small tripod available that has flexible legs enabling it to be wrapped around objects such as  tree branches and signpost poles. This type of support would come into its own for say, picnics or barbecues. The bigger dSLR cameras tend to be too heavy for the smaller tripods  and generally require a normal sized model. The advice usually given to photographers is to buy the most expensive tripod that they can afford. I would say buy the tripod that will do the job without breaking the bank.

Whatever tripod is used always either release the camera’s shutter remotely or use the timed delay function built into just about every camera now on the market. Pressing the shutter causes the camera to vibrate so doing this off camera or giving the camera time to settle down before the shutter release makes for a much sharper photograph. This leads us to the main reason for using a tripod: the photograph can be taken in natural light, i.e. flash isn’t essential. As a rule of thumb good natural light is always preferable to artificial if the choice is between one or the other but often the best photographs use a combination of the two.

Lighting

While the above applies to food photography in general  there are specific lighting approaches that give a more minimalist feel. The use of a very strong  back light is one such approach. The best source is a window that occupies the entire background. This will give a very bright background with any colors reduced to pastels and objects such as trees, cars or other buildings reduced to abstract shapes. Now if this were the only light source used the food itself would be silhouetted and appear far too dark so a little fill light is needed. This is a blast of light from the camera’s flash that is not as powerful as it would be if there was no ambient light but is powerful enough to illuminate the main subject. Point and shoot cameras generally have a setting that automates this process while a little more experimentation may be required with dSLRs and flashes.

A couple of quick points about lighting that applies to all photography. Direct light is harsh and produces heavy sharp shadows. I think that it is safe to say that in all minimalist food photography this is a bad thing so we need to soften the light. This applies to both natural and artificial light. With expensive off camera flashes a small diffuser that fits over the bulb is usually enough. In the case of smaller cameras with built in flashes a little ingenuity goes a long way. If the flash can be covered with a piece of semi transparent clear plastic or even a piece of greaseproof paper results can be improved dramatically. The worse light source for photography is the small built in flash units on cheaper cameras. As for natural light, direct sunlight is to be avoided which is why a North or south facing window is best. If direct sunlight is the only option then a semi transparent plastic shower curtain attached to a frame of plastic piping makes for a great diffuser.

The Computer

Of course the process does not end with pressing the shutter. Once the session is finished, or even during the session, the images are uploaded to a computer and edited. Usually the editing consists of little more than a bit of sharpening, a slight color correction or a minor crop. It is possible to use the computer for just these technical chores but, with a little imagination, the computer, can become a creative tool in it’s own right. A minimalist approach to photography requires an awareness of what is essential to the image and what is incidental. It is often possible to lose information by increasing the exposure at this stage, often an increase of two thirds to a full stop can really make an image pop. Part of the reason that this is so effective is because it makes dull and off  whites bright. This effect is often used in fashion photography but works equally well with food.

Technique and Eye

There is no great mystery regarding what makes for great minimalist food photography. The best advice, as with all types of photography, is to find images that you like which were taken by others, see which techniques were applied, then practice. Hopefully a combination of good technique and a practiced eye will produce something unique. The following techniques work well for me: diffuse natural light from behind the subject and fill flash to fully illuminate the subject; a low point of view, get close to the same level as the food; blur the background and aim for a small depth of field; on the computer, sharpen the image a little, crop and color correct if required. Above all, experiment and have fun. One day I may be practicing and writing about a technique that you have discovered.

For more about food photography and minimalist cooking including examples of my photography check out my guest post on my wife’s blog Minimalist Cook. I have been fascinated by minimalism for many years, especially as it pertains to photography and the arts. For more about minimalism in general and additional examples of my camera work check out my wife’s other blog Minimalist Woman.

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This small but perfectly formed ebooklet represents my wife’s first foray into the world of  publishing.  Until recently she owned her own small commercial bakery but had to give it up for health reasons. Publishing was a logical progression as she is a more than fair writer – the success of her non-cooking blog, Minimalist Woman is testament to this fact. minimalist woman, minimalist cook – you’ve probably spotted the theme that is going on here.

While Meg, my wife, did the hard work of actually compiling and testing the recipes I got to do the fun stuff such as the photography and the layout work. I was never really much into food photography before we embarked on this project but as time goes on I’m getting to enjoy it more and more. It is probably the least abstract and easily judged type of photography there is. If the image makes someone hungry it works and if it makes them queasy it fails. Simple.

My serious photography does tend towards the sparse and this really seems to go well with the who minimalism thing that Meg is all about. This is a happy coincidence, it was  never really discussed and she certainly didn’t try to direct me when shooting. Our system was basically,

Meg: “Steve I need a photograph of this”

Me: “Ummm OK”

sometimes less really is more.

The ebooklet  is  a sample of the work that will appear in the first full size version which is scheduled for completion towards the end of August. It contains seven very easy recipes (simplicity is the theme) such as basic roast chicken, ditto beef, several salads including tuna, chicken and a wonderful bean one along with the best chile I’ve ever tasted.

Anyway, it is free and can be downloaded from here.

Whether you are into food photography or really good basic food it is worth checking out.  I fully admit to being biased but I am really excited by this project and especially the work that Meg is doing.

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water melon, originally uploaded by Art By Steve Johnson.

Here is something a bit different – cubes of water melon being squirted with water – not as technically difficult as it looks. There was a reasonable level of ambient light so I just set the shutter speed to maximum flash sync, manually focused to a point just in front of where I intended to squirt, set the self timer and started squirting.

There are, in effect three light sources at work, flash on the left as you look at the picture, a lot of ambient from behind and a little from the right.

If you look at the feint trails with the  on the left of the image as you look at you can see that the water drops appear a little in from the right. The trails are the highlights on the drops and the brightness of the trail shows when the flash went off in relation to the entire release time. The rest of the trail is the non flash shutter open time and more interestingly, gives an idea of the ambient light level.

Having a plastic working surface is really handy (this is a gray plastic fold out decorating table. The amount of water is deceptive – there is actually very little, about a teaspoonful in the whole shot and about a tablespoonful including what is out of frame so no studio flood to mop up.

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After a run of monochrome illustrations and small restrained paintings it was great to get back to my first love, big, bright, loud, vibrant, loose, abstracts. Seriously this is my first painting bigger than 20″ x 16″ for around three months and it felt like coming home.

The painting itself is called cityscape and is very loosely based on the feeling that the Tel Aviv skyline in Israel gave me – it is certainly not representational, it is not a photograph or a view abstracted but rather a memory that is now 20 years old. The dimensions of the work are 4 feet x 3 feet.

This is also the first substantial work produced in my new studio which up until two weeks ago was my wife’s commercial bakery. It is a real step up, a lot more space, great lighting (no supplemental lighting whatsoever was used to make the video) and a door to the outside world. My last studio was tiny and had no windows. The difference is incredible and I’m really looking forward to working on some extended projects without feeling restricted.

Did I mention the wonderful light in the new space. I suspect that I will be mentioning it a lot more over the coming weeks and months.

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For some reason I decided to video the process with a view to posting the results to You Tube.

The actual content of the images was agreed before hand as was the palette – blue. Working with just one color was certainly a challenge!

Here is one  of the pieces – The musical Annie.

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The sky darkened dramatically this morning and a storm was obviously in the offing so I stuck the camera on a tripod and snapped a few shots through the studio windows.

The image is part of a weather vane  (the part out of shot consisting of a metal rabbit and an arrow).

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