Learn Food Photography and Food Styling

How To Start Photo-a-Day Project This Year

Neel — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 13:42:00 +0000

In a previous post I mentioned that I will be starting a photo-a-day project and asked you if you would like to participate. There was some great discussion in the comments section and on the facebook page.

Some of you said that you would like to participate in the challenge, others shared their past experiences and raised good questions.

My First Photo-a-Day Project

When I did my first photo-a-day project, it was challenging. I started with a 30-day trial and decided that I would pursue the full length project. As the time went on and as I tried to take a photo every day, I started seeing photographs everywhere.

My eyes were getting trained everyday. Looking through that view-finder and creating at least one photograph had helped me. I would be driving from work and I could see a photograph. I literally started seeing frames. “This would make an interesting photo”, I would think.

So photo-a-day was clearly helping me. Read on.

What is This Project?

This project is most commonly known as 365 day project. There are other variations of this project like 50-day project, 100-day project or 300-day project, you name it, its there. This project is to improve your photography in general.

This is NOT solely focused on food photography, and for that reason, this challenge will NOT be hosted on this food photography blog. I am working on a separate website for this challenge, so that others continue getting food photography related post on this blog.

Details about the projects:

You choose the length of the project. You can pursue a 50-day project and then stop or you could choose a 100-day challenge. If you are up for it, you can participate in the full 365-day challenge. You choose.
As part of this project, each day one theme or photo idea is sent to you in your inbox.
You should use that theme or idea and create a photograph.
You camera does not matter. DSLR is not required. Use a point and shoot or even a phone camera.
Post it on project facebook page.

If you’ve made up your mind and would like to start the project, please sign up below. If you are signed up in facebook, this form should automatically be filled for you.

Who should NOT participate?

This photo-a-day project is not for everyone. Not everyone will be able to participate in this challenge. Following are some things to consider:

This is not an easy project by any stretch. This project does require serious time commitment on your part. If you cannot commit to create at least one photo for some time (50, 100, 200 or 365, whatever suits you and is more than 50), do not participate.
This project is for improving photography in general and is not focused just on food photography. If you are only interested in food photography, do not participate.

Start With a 30-Day Trial

Not everyone is able to commit all 365 days or even 100 days. Participate in a trial and see if this project fits you. If it does not fit your schedule, stop participating.

No Instant Gratification Here!

This project is about training your eye to take better photograph. Does this mean you will get amazing photos on day 1? No.

The goal of the project is NOT to force yourself to click a button. Each day, you should make a conscious effort to make a great photograph. Make a photograph with a purpose in mind, don’t take snapshots.

“So does this mean, I will get great photo everyday?” No. For a minute forget that this is about making one great photograph everyday that will get your raving reviews. This is not about that, statistically that’s not even possible to get 100% great photos. This slow and grueling process will help you to start seeing photographs everywhere. This is about learning to see a photograph not taking it.

By consciously thinking about elements of art and choosing a frame and everything else that goes into creating a photograph, you will start training your eyes. So taking a snapshot is not going to help. Each photo you create needs to thought through and not just clicked to cross an action item off your to do list.

This is a marathon friends. And marathon training is a slow process. No instant gratification here.

So if photography is something you would like to improve this year, go ahead and sign up below.

You choose.

Calendar Photo by bubbo.etsy.com

The Only Thing That Matters to Improve Your Photography

Neel — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 13:49:00 +0000

We’ve been having a discussion this question recently,

… what quality is essential to improve you photography?

And we’ve got a lot of different response. Some have said, its practice. Others have said vision. Still others have said basics are essential to improve photography. All of you have given many different answers.

I’ll tell you this for now that there are no wrong answers here, but there is still one thing that in my opinion, trumps it all. So what’s the only thing? We’ll get to that in a minute.

This last year, I’ve tried to change few things to improve my photography. I’ve tried to practice more, but have slipped the schedule at times. I’ve tried to develop my vision, and what I’ve learned is vision comes by practicing.

So how do you practice more? That’s what Jamie taught me.

What Jamie Taught Me

I came across Jamie few days ago but didn’t get a chance to talk to him or to learn from him. He died in 1997, about 17 years ago, fighting cancer.

Jamie Livingston was a photographer from NYC. Jamie took one photo a day with Polaroid everyday. His commitment to photographer was like none other. He took one photo a day for 6000 days – that’s 18 YEARS!!

His last photograph?

On his death bed.

The story behind this photograph really moved me. And then Chase Jarvis asked one question: How strong is YOUR commitment?

Jamie taught me that commitment is what matters. If you are committed, everything else will come. Commitment to improving photography will force you to practice more. The more you practice, the clearer your vision will become.

And about the discussion on our facebook page about the essential thing to improve photography, my answer, well you know now – commitment.

As the new year begins, let’s commit to improve our photography skills. I am renewing my commitment and will be consciously taking more photographs than last year and starting photo-a-day project.

Are you committed to grow? Would you participate in photo-a-day project for next 365 days? Leave a comment below with your thoughts. Leave a note on food photography facebook page or send me a tweet.

Follow LFP facebook page for more on this upcoming project.

Photo courtesy: Question Mark by WingedWolf

Reader Question: The Only Quality Required to Improve Your Photography

Neel — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 13:57:00 +0000

Few days back, we started a discussion on food photography page and asked:

“What is the only thing/quality required to improve your photography?

What do you think? In your opinion, what is one quality that is absolutely needed for improving your photography?

Take a look at some of the answers by going to this post.

Share your opinion in the comments section below.

Group Project: Background Matters

Neel — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 14:02:00 +0000

Recently I posted this photo and shared my food photography process. And Robert Orsa replicated it. His idea was to use same composition, same camera angle, same styling and just change one element – background.

That made me think. What if there was a group project where everyone could participate. Yes! You. The bulb went on.

Photo by Robert Orsa

So here’s the thing…

The Challenge

The challenge for you is to replicate this photo, with just one change: the background. For this challenge use the crackers that look like the one shown in photo. These are Triscuits, available at Walmart but can also be ordered from Amazon if you are looking to buy in bulk.

The idea is to keep all elements in the photo exactly same – the composition, styling, number of crackers and even camera angle, while just changing the background. All you have to do is take this photo using whatever background you have that will make this photo stronger.

Take your time and choose any background you like. Submit the photo before Jan 21 2012 by uploading it to food photography facebook page and we’ll share all submissions on this food photography blog.

Here’s something more about this project for the inquisitive ones… In the world of statistics, this is called Design of Experients (DoE).

The Boring Statistics Talk: Design of Experiment (DoE)

Sparing you from all the details, Design of Experiments is a methodology used by scientists and researchers to understand impact of one variable or element on “subjects” in the experiment.

This is done by collecting data from “information-gathering” exercises, and in each of these exercises changing just that one element whose impact is to be understood. Scientists and researchers use DoE almost everyday to create experiments and develop studies.

DoE in Food Photography

In terms of food photography and this group project, this translates as an attempt to understand the impact of one variable, background in this case, in food photos. We will use cracker photo to understand the impact of background on photograph.

So, recreate the photograph and change the background. Use same camera angle, same placements, same frame and everything else. Everything else but one – background.

Upload your version of this photo on food photography page before Jan 21 2012.

Are You Onboard?

What do you think about this group project? Will you participate in this simple group project? If you plan to submit a photo, please leave a comment below confirming just that.

If there’s enough interest, we may do this regularly.

5 Surefire Tips to Stunning Canvas Prints (and Easy Canvas Prints Review)

Neel — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 13:42:00 +0000

I have been wanting to create a canvas print for our home since quite some time. So this holiday season, I went ahead and ordered a canvas print from our trip to the Tetons.

Printing photos is complicated. It’s not as simple as just picking up and ordering online. I learned that there are few things that you should remember before ordering prints. Here are 5 important tips:

5 Surefire Tips to Brilliant Canvas Prints

Start with Great Quality – Simple yet often forgotten advice: start with great quality photos. Make sure you select photos that are sharp and reflect true color. Pick as high resolution as possible.
Post Process Your Photos – Some companies provide post processing service to “enhance” your photos. No one other than you knows your vision of that photograph. So don’t rely on post processing services and do it yourself before sending it to print.
Carefully Position Your Photos – When going with Canvas prints, make sure photo aligns specially if you plan on creating gallery wraps. Gallery wraps are available in different styles – mirror image, image wrap and border color.
Understand the Color Difference – If you know that prints have a slightly different color tone, you can adjust the original photo to balance this out. Also make sure your monitor is calibrated to the right colors.
Always Preview Before Ordering – Always without exception, preview your image before final order. I cannot tell you how many times previewing has saved me flushing money down the drain. If you are ordering gallery wrap, make sure your photo does get unintentionally cropped.

Easy Canvas Prints Review

For a while, I had thought about printing a photo on a canvas print, but was a little unsure. I had always thought that canvas prints were expensive and so the question was whether I should print on canvas or should stick with the time tested method – matte prints on 11×14.

Few days back after much thought and hesitation I decided to create a canvas print. Finally, I ordered a canvas print on easycanvasprints.com. The rates on this website are reasonable.

The ordering process was simple. I picked up a landscape photo to order. Photo was horizontal frame so was easy to order with click of a button. However, if your photo is vertical it takes a while to figure out how to find that size in vertical frame.

Print quality was good and professional. The colors were a little on warmer side. Understand what’s the “right” color of the photo not only depends on the photo but also your display settings.

The canvas was mounted on a solid wooden frame and overall was sturdy. Canvas frame was well packed and shipped safely.

We’ve hung this canvas in our living room and among other photos, this photograph printed on canvas standout. Good thing I tried, or I would have never known. Next I am planning to select some food photos to create canvas prints.

I wish I would have started sooner. Order your canvas print on Easy Canvas Prints.

For LFP Readers

Easy Canvas Print is offering 20% off and free shipping and get a free 8”x10” canvas added to your order, if your order is of more than a certain amount.

Or… get 25% off and free shipping:

Buying $100 worth of canvas prints for $39

Our friends at PhotoWhoa, just alerted about this another amazing deal from www.EasyCanvasPrints.com. You can buy $100 worth credits for $39. Go here.

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Taking Great Photographs

Last few weeks I’ve been learning from some very accomplished photographers. I have been looking at some stats too. Last year about 109 million cameras were sold. All of these people bought a new camera to take better photos.

Sad story is that, majority of people never use there camera more than couple of times a year. I am convinced that there is only one way to improve your photography. I am studying this a bit more and will be posting a detailed post soon.

Until then, Keep making great pictures.

My Food Photography Process at a Food Photo Shoot

Neel — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 13:45:00 +0000

The process of taking a food photo of a subject is always evolving. At times I sketch few ideas in advance, at other times the final image appears organically without preparing for it in advance.

Often we get questions from readers for food photography interviews asking “how many photos do you take for one good one” or “how do you plan for your food photos” or something in these lines. In this post, I share experience from my recent photo shoot and specifically the thought process once creative juices start flowing.

How I Started

This photo shoot was not preplanned. At a night on one weekend, I felt inspired and thought of taking some photos. Late at night, all I had was a box full of crackers and some cheese… so that became the subject for this photo shoot.

Before I even started shooting and even picked up the camera, I had some vision of how the final image should look like. The image was in my mind but did not sketch it on the paper.

Depending on the time or subject, I may decide to sketch it or may just try to take photos more organically. This approach, as you will notice, was more organic and I went with the flow.

Taking “Sketch Shots”

Before I started shooting, my camera was set up on a tripod and tethered to the laptop. The first few shots were test shots or “sketch shots” taken with the purpose of trying to understand how the frame looks like and how to adjust/place subjects.

Below is one of the first sketch shot.

The purpose here was not to create a perfect image, but to understand and get comfortable with the setup. As you can see in this shot there is lot of distraction in the background… the green and yellow and red it really not required.

At this point though, I am not worried about the background but rather trying to get a feel of visually what’s going on in the whole frame. I then change few things and add some elements, trying to see how this changes the frame. Here’s the next image..

Now I put some cream cheese on a cracker and grind some black pepper on it. So this changes things, immediately. This is a bit more interesting that just plain cracker on a cutting board. Again, the purpose here is to experiment and understand what subjects should be added/changed to get a strong image.

I now add more crackers to the scene including the hero of the image. As you will notice, the cracker with cream cheese is now moved back (on the right side in the frame). We also have a new cracker in focus. Image is still very weak. Nothing interesting about it. Again, trying to experiment and take some images at the same time.

So as the next change, I bring those crackers at the back more in the frame and try to experiment with changing the focus as well.

Do you see where is the photo above focused? It’s not on the first cracker anymore. Just changing the focal point of this image, gives me more ideas and we get closer to a final image.

Getting the Final Image

After the shot above, my creative juices start flowing with more power. That’s when I decide that really that cracker on the left side is not really working. I need to add some height. So I pick up that cracker and put it on the top of the cracker with cheese slice.

Now I start feeling a bit better. I feel I am going somewhere, things are starting to happen. This photograph is better than the previous photos but still is missing something. So what next? Well I decide to do the dance.

I move and trying to find the best camera angle. I dance around and find the above angle. By changing the angle, I feel the image is a bit stronger. However, still something is missing.

Finding the Missing Ingredient

Part of this creative process has been understanding that something is missing and knowing that “feeling”. Often you may take a picture but just not feel that the photograph is complete.

This feeling of incompleteness and knowing that something is missing but not being able to put your finger on that one thing is often frustrating. As David duChemin has said in his books and ebooks, frustration is part of this creative process.

What I have found is that if you can’t put your finger on one thing, you just need to try more things than you planned for. That’s what I did in the next photo.

So at this point, I changed one thing. Without scrolling back up, can you tell what that one thing is? Well, the background. I switched the background from wooden cutting board to a jute bag. Do you see how background is important in a food photo?

I immediately felt that this image was even more stronger after the background was changed. However, in this process, I made one mistake again. The crackers on the right side are out of the frame.

So I move these crackers back in the frame. This looks much better and a nice strong image. At this point, I am satisfied with it and feel like this is it. So that’s it? You ask. No.

Even Stronger Image

My curious mind wants to see what else can I change here. Is there a possibility of creating an even stronger image? May be.

So I decide to change focus point from the cracker to the one with cream cheese in the right. As you can see from the photo above, it doesn’t work very well.

So I change something else.

I change the focal point back to the original cracker and zoom out a little bit to include other stacks as well. Not a good idea. Too many things creating distraction here.

So I remove the cracker from the bottom of the frame and move towards left a bit. And here’s photo below..

The photo above is okay but not as strong as we had before. So, what else can I change? That’s the question in my mind as I go through this. I move the cracker stack to see how that may change things.

As you can see below, the reddish brown edge on the first stack in the photo below are a bit distracting in my mind.

So finally after turning the crackers, we finally have an image that is compositionally strong. See the image below.

So what are some lesson learned from this photo shoot? Well here they are very briefly:

Keep experimenting and keep trying.
Don’t stop taking photos if you have an image good enough. As you can see here, had we stopped taking the photo few photos ago, we would have had an okay image. Since we kept going and trying new ideas, we were able to get this image above.
Background is important.

What’s Your Photography Process

Photography process is different for almost every person. In my case, it differs from time to time and subject to subject. Is your photography process more organic or do you plan for it and have a structured process?

Do you sketch your photos on paper? Share your thoughts below.

FREE eBook by Yoda of Photography

Neel — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 05:20:07 +0000

If you’ve been around you know that I am a big fan of photographer David duChemin. He is the best selling author of Within the Frame, and several other books.

He is giving away a FREE eBook here. There is no email signup or any opt-in either. The book is titled Craft & Vision and has absolutely amazing information on photography.

Here’s what the content looks like…

Yoda of Photography – David and 8 other photography Jedis have provided 67 pages of rich content absolutely FREE. Same team who has created amazingly high quality and content rich $5 eBooks on huge number of photography topics. Using off-camera flash, beyond the rule of thirds, how to be more creative, how to sell stock photos, and many many other topics and quality content from Jedis of photography… for $5.

Got carried away… Back to the FREE ebook… Even if you only shoot food photography, there are tips on how to make images more dynamic, advice on composition and much more…

Each of the chapter is organized around a strong idea. For instance the first chapter explains how to make your images dynamic and explains 4 amazing yet simple ways to do that.

In Understand the Stages, Alexandre Buisse explains six stages of photography journey and how our thoughts and expectations change at each stage.

This is an amazing book and it’s FREE. Go to Craft & Vision website to get the FREE book.

Thank You and Thank You Food Bloggers

Neel — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 14:10:13 +0000

Thank You and Thank you Food Bloggers

About two years ago all I had, was a camera and some food photos that I had taken at home and in my encounters with restaurants. LFP started with a hope to share what I was learning about food photography and our passion for the art…

The other day I was looking back and so much has changed since we first wrote the about page for LFP. Both of our jobs have dramatically changed and LFP has grown… a lot. The biggest agents that caused this growth is you. So to you and all readers we just want to say…

Thank you

Thank you readers. Thank you for leaving comments and for those encouraging emails. Thank you for nudging me, for poking me and for reminding me of things I forgot. Thank you for reminding me that this blog has grown into a community.

The blog that started with readers I could count on my hands has now a strong community of thousands. Thank you for continuing to interact and participate.

Thank You Food Bloggers

Last two years gave us lot of amazing opportunities; opportunities to interact with some great people who happen to be awesome food bloggers and opportunities to interview some of you.

Some of you are the very best in the food photography industry and still have spent hours interacting and giving me feedback. Some have taken hours from their precious time and shared knowledge with LFP readers. Thank you.

Thank you for teaching me and inspiring me.

For other food bloggers, it’s an absolute pleasure to be a witness of other food bloggers. Your blogs have attracted me more than you think and have seen so many of you improve your food photography by consistently taking more photos and posting them. You are the best example of how determination and perseverance can make things happen. You’ve inspired me to take more photos and to do it consistently.

Thank You Adriana, Andrew, Aparna, Aran, Asha, Bea, Clare, Danielle, Danny, Dario, David, Denise, Evi, Helene, Ilva, Jamie, Jeanne, Jenn, Jerry, Kulsum, Lara, Lisa, Liz, Matt, Matt, Meeta, Michael, Mowie, Nicole, Paula, Peter, Penny, Prerna, Ron, Scott, Sala, Simone, and you…

You all are exceptionally talented and your blogs inspire me everyday to wake up and do more with life. You are the reason why the LFP is still active and will be more active in coming years. Thank you.

Food blogger community has influenced me a lot. I absolutely love your ability to first cook a dish, try it and then share it with community by writing a detailed post about the recipe. Ohh.. and taking an outstanding photo of recipe… I know that takes a lot of time. You do so much of this consistently that I am absolutely amazed with your energy and passion for food blogging. And to that.. Kudos.

And just this… that if you are a food blogger, I hope you realize that you are inspiring others and that you are proud of food blogging. Be proud because you are changing this world for someone. You may not know them yet, but you are still influencing them too. So just for that one reason… thank you and keep blogging.

Thank You for everything.

Neel (and G)

Thank you by woodleywonderworks

No related posts.

How Should a Food Photographer Prepare for Winter?

Neel — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 14:08:00 +0000

Winter….ah winter… it’s almost here… Snow and bone chilling wind. Just thinking about the sub-zero temperatures and cold brings chills. I am not looking forward to this winter.

For a food photographer working with natural light, winter brings shorter days, less natural light and dull and gloomy days. Who needs winter here? But then, who can fight with mother nature? Not me. On both counts.

So now that winter is almost here, how should you as a food photographer prepare for winter?

Well since there won’t be much of natural light in winter, its time for plan B.

Plan B for Winters

So, what’s plan B? Well if natural light was plan A, plan B is artificial light. We have talked about artificial light here before. We have talked about lighting gear, building your own lighting studio and guide to buying light gear.

Having the right lighting equipment is the first step. You should start with answering whether you want to work with continuous lighting equipment or strobes/flashes?

If you have no experience with artificial lighting, continuous lights are a good start. These lights are easy to work with and easy to control for someone who is just starting. Overall continuous lighting is simpler to set up and cheaper when compared to strobes.

For instance, compare this continuous lighting which have two light sources with these strobe lighting. Do you see what’s included in the continuous lighting kit and how it compares to strobe lighting kit?

Strobes and flashes provide greater control in terms of quality and artistic aspect of lighting, but is often complicated if you are just starting. Gear required for an off-camera flash needs some serious research and understanding.

The next step is to learning how to use artificial light. Two key things to learn – white balance and capturing correct color when using artificial light. As we talked above, continuous lighting is simpler to use and control. Strobes/flash on the other hand can be frustrating when you are just starting.

Once you learn few basics about shooting with artificial light, its time to experiment. Get out there, well in this case, in your studio/area and start practicing. The need for practice can not be overstated here.

Shooting with artificial light does take some serious practice. First few times when you start using artificial light for food photos, white balance and color are almost certain to be messed up. And you shouldn’t be discouraged by this, almost everyone who is starting photographing in artificial light has to practice.

So, learn more about continuous lighting gear or strobe lighting gear as much as you can. Now stand up and start shooting.

Do you use artificial lighting? What would you like to learn about artificial lighting? Tell us in the comments below?

Photo by jaxxon

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Post tags: artificial lighting, lighting

25 Food Photography Lessons You May Have Missed

Neel — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 13:22:00 +0000

In last several months, we have interviewed many many food photography and food styling experts. Each of these 60 min interviews are full with lot of great lessons from these experts. With about 25 interviews of about 60 min each, we have 25 hours worth of food photography tutorials for free… right here on this blog. Here are some details…

You can go to the interview page to listen to these 25 interviews. I hope you learn a lot about food photography from these interviews.

We interview some absolutely amazing artists. From the legend and Yoda of photography David duChemin to Chief Food Stylist from Cooking Magazine, some great photographers and stylists have shared their expertise with LFP readers here. And if you haven’t heard these interviews, below are some food photography interviews that you may have missed.

Food Photography Interviews That You May Have Missed

Apart from the ones mentioned above, have you listened to the most popular food photography interviews? From Penny De Los Santos to Matt Armendariz. Food Bloggers like Souvlaki for the Soul to New York Food Photographer Andrew Scrivani. We had great opportunities to interview food photographers and stylists that are at the top of their game.

Don’t miss these food photography interviews.

Who Should We Interview Next?

As we start our next round of interviews, who should we interview? Share who would you like to learn from in the comment section below. Don’t miss this opportunity. Give your feedback below.

Photo by derekGavey

10 Food Styling Tips to Making Any Food Photo Look Appealing

Neel — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 13:49:00 +0000

This is a guest post by celebrity food stylist Denise Vivaldo. If you would like to write for learn food photography, visit guest post page to learn more.

Sometime back we interviewed celebrity food stylist Denise Vivaldo and in that interview Denise explained how to approach restaurants and build your food photography/styling business. In today’s guest post, Denise shares 10 food styling tips from her more than 30 years of food styling experience.

10 Food Styling Tips to Better Food Photos

Undercook your food. As food cooks it looses moisture and shrinks as it cools. Cook food only long enough so that it no longer looks raw. You can always color too-light areas or apply heat with a kitchen torch or heat gun.
If you can afford it, buy two of what you’re shooting, i.e., chickens, pies.
Make sure your prep is meticulous. Go through product and get rid anything wilted, old or unsightly. Cut, chop and slice precisely.
When designing a plate, consider color (contrasting or complimentary), texture, and balance.
Create elevation and movement. Prop pieces up from the back to create definition. Make a hidden base under food to hold it in place using shortening, damp paper towels, cosmetic wedges, or even mashed potatoes.
Plan for the use of garnishes. Have appropriate herbs, lemon or limes, or extra ingredients to use if needed.
Know that cool food photographs better than hot food. You can make cool or room
temperature food can be made to look hot by adding moisture and shine with spraying with PAM, or with brushing oil. For highlights spray your food with PAM or water or brush with a little Karo syrup.
Use any available light. If needed, use a shiny sheet pan, a white cutting board, or a hand mirror as a reflector for added light.
Study food photographs you like. What do they have in common?
Less is more. Appreciate how the camera’s eye is different than your eye. You don’t need to have a sliced mushrooms in every square inch of your food to know that it contains sliced mushrooms; one or two will get your point across without making the image messy.

Add Your Tip

Add your advice on food styling below. Share at least one tip on how to make food photos better with food styling.

If you didn’t listen to one-hour class on how to build your food styling and photography business go to this food styling interview. This interview has some great tactical advise on how to approach restaurants and understand what they need.

How to Work With Food Photography and Styling Clients: Interview with Denise Vivaldo

Neel — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 19:35:52 +0000

In this interview a celebrity food stylist teaches not only food styling, but also business of food styling and food photography. This interview will answer how to get clients and capture their expectations and keep them for lifelong.

About 60 mins of rich content from one of the top experts in food styling and photography industry.

Let’s Welcome Denise Vivaldo

“A seasoned food professional with over 20 years of experience, Denise Vivaldo has catered more than 10,000 parties and has cooked for such guests as George H.W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, Prince Charles, Bette Midler, Suzanne Somers, Merv Griffin, Cher, Aaron Spelling, Sly Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Maria Shriver. She began her culinary training at the Ritz Escoffier and La Varenne in Paris, and then graduated Chef de Cuisine from the California Culinary Academy in San Francisco. Denise spent numerous years as a professor at UCLA’s Culinary Program and at her alma mater, The California Culinary Academy….” her profile page says.

You can visit her profile website at DeniseVivaldo.com

This is a very exciting interview and if I were you, I would not miss this. I have listened this more than three times and learned new things every time. This interview is packed with information.

[Audio clip: view this post on www.learnfoodphotography.com to listen]

Denise is author of seven books on Food business. An absolutely amazing book with lot of details on how to start and run your business is called Food Stylist’s Handbook. Take a look at the book.

What’s Inside This Interview

How to get response from great food photographers and stylists ?
What is the right personality to succeed in this industry ?
How to get your customers’ expectation?
One amazingly simple way to get your client expectation right.
Secret to getting repeat business from your clients and referral businesses
How Food Styling and Photography trend has changed – question from Jerry Deutsch
What are upcoming trends in food photography and styling?
Reader Questions….

Don’t miss this interview…

[Audio clip: view this post on www.learnfoodphotography.com to listen]

Find Your Vision

Neel — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 13:12:00 +0000

“Vision is Beginning and End of Photography” – David duChemin

Vision is everything in photography.

Vision is the most important thing that helps each of us create art in our own way. The discussion of food photography is incomplete without talking about vision and how to find your own vision.

In this post, we talk about identifying your vision. We talk about two specific exercises that will help you identify your vision.

Approach 1 – This first approach in identifying your vision is to look at photographs from many many photographers that you admire. What do you like in these photographs? What moves you? What connects with you? Is it the light that is entering the scene? Can it be the composition that you like? Can you identify what you like in those photographs?

Approach 2 – Look at your photographs. Lot of them. Look at what you like to shoot. Do you see what you like, what your vision is? What do you like to communicate in your photos? Analyze it and find commonalities.

Understanding your vision is the first step to understanding yourself and your photography. Without vision there is no photography.

Vision is not stagnant. As we grow and as our skills grow, our vision changes. As we learn new tools, our vision expands to encompass these tools. Journey to finding vision is an ongoing adventure.

Take an hour today to understand what you like and what you are inclined towards. Use one or both of the approaches mentioned above and analyze what you like. Spare some time for yourself to understand yourself better.

Generate Photo Ideas For Your Portfolio

Neel — Sun, 31 Jul 2011 01:45:00 +0000

What are you going to shoot tomorrow? What about next week? Are you planning to create you own portfolio? Do you have enough ideas on what to include in the portfolio?

Take some time today to think about your portfolio and your long term plan. No matter how much experience you have or what is your skill-level, it is good to start thinking about your photography plan.

I assume that you have some level of interest in creating your portfolio and in couple of months you will be interested in having an online portfolio. Take some time to think about types of photos that you would like to include in your portfolio.

What Type of Photos

Start thinking about what type of photos would you like to shoot? Are there any specific type of photos you would like to specialize in?

Think About Food – What type of photo would you like to focus on? Would you like to take appetizer photos more than desserts? Would you like to focus on snacks to start with? Or all of them?

Type of Lighting – What type of lighting would you like to use? Would you focus on natural lighting or would like to use artificial lighting? Or would you like both?

Type of Cuisine – Is there a certain cuisine that you would like to focus on?

Take a look at these questions and kick start your brainstorming

Two Exercises to Generate Ideas

Each on of us generates ideas in a different way. While you are trying to find subjects to shoot, try two exercises below:

Using Mind Maps

Mindmap is an amazing brainstorming tool. “Tony Buzan claims to have invented the modern mind map”, Wikipedia says. He also wrote a book on how to effectively use mind maps to brainstorm and generate ideas.

I have used it over and over. From clearing my brain to find all things to do that I have to creating list of photos that I would like to shoot. Authors use it to brainstorm book material. Project Managers use it to brainstorm project tasks.

Its an amazingly effective tool to put your thoughts on paper. Read more about mind mapping by visiting wikipedia or by reading the Mind Map book.

Get Inspiration from Flickr

Flickr is not only a photo uploading/sharing site, its also an amazing place for generating photography ideas.

Search flickr.com using some common word that comes to mind. Take a look at the photos that appear and note down any ideas that are generated. Start searching the first word that comes to mind and look at the photos that show in the results.

Make a List of Ideas

Now that you have used mind map and explored flickr, make a list of at least 5 photos that you would like to take in the next 30 days. Create a plan to take these photos and execute it. Once done with these five photos, list 10 more and execute the idea.

Now that you have few portfolio worthy photos, upload them to your portfolio. In the next post, we will look at the technical details that you should decide for creating your portfolio.

Ask 4 Questions Before Post Processing Your Next Food Photo

Neel — Sat, 30 Jul 2011 19:55:00 +0000

How long does it take you to post process an image? Of that time, what amount of that time do you spend understanding your intention with the photograph?

In Vision & Voice, David duChemin says that the image that we produce is made up of three images: one that we envision, one that we shoot, and one that we develop.

To create the image that you visualize, you need to first understand your vision and then do express the vision by choosing how to shoot the image and make decisions on how to develop the image in post production.

The better you understand the first image and the better you can execute the last two images. And the better you are at shooting the image and developing it, the closer we come to what we visualize.

This post is about post processing and what you should think about, before starting to post processing. Moving the saturation slider does take less than a second. Cropping a photo takes less than 5 seconds. And post processing without thinking doesn’t help you achieve anything.

If you shoot photos without asking what you want to achieve and without asking that important question, you won’t get anywhere. Similarly if you start moving the sliders without asking yourself why you are trying to do move those sliders and what you want to achieve at the end of this process, you won’t end up with the image you want.

So what are the questions you should be asking? You don’t need to ask 10 questions. Asking just four right questions is enough. Here are those four questions:

4 Essential Questions to Ask Before Post Processing

What do you want the photograph to look and feel like? – Ask yourself, what do you have in mind, what is the vision you have in mind? Visualize your ideal image.
How should the photo be processed? – Now that you know what you image should look like, think about what specific elements do you notice in this visual image? Are the colors bright? Is your main subject at the “thirds”? What else?
What settings should you choose for that? – You just specified what elements you want. If the colors are bright, what settings should you change? Can you increase saturation? Can you reduce vibrance? If you want subject to be at the thirds, can you crop your image to achieve that?
Does the photo look closer to your vision? After making these changes, ask this question. Is the processed photo close to what you envisioned? If not, repeat questions one to four.

As an example, if you are trying to communicate a rustic breakfast, you should try to process your image to make it feel rustic by decreasing saturation and/or reducing luminescence. This is just one way out of many many possibilities you can choose to create a rustic image.

The point is that without asking yourself what your vision is and without knowing what the first image looks like, you will never know whether you achieved you goal or not.

Good luck post processing your photograph.

Photo by Corey Templeton

Learn How to Correct Color in Your Photos

Neel — Sat, 30 Jul 2011 03:45:42 +0000

We have talked about importance of color to move your readers emotionally and create a temptation for food.

But when the colors are not right, the desire for the food in your photo is lost. This post talks about adjusting and correcting the colors in your photographs.

On day 19, we talked about need for right color in bit more detail, so let’s jump directly to the tip. For this tip, I have another video that will help you understand how to adjust and correct color in

Adjusting/Correcting Color

The video below explains how to adjust 3 important aspects of color – hue, saturation and luminescence. The video uses Lightroom for this tutorial but same can be achieved by using other softwares as well. Quick one-liners about hue, saturation and luminescence.

Hue adjustment will change a tone of your colors in your image.
Saturation is the intensity of the color and purity of the color.
Luminescence is basically an adjustment of brightness of the color.

Suggested Resources

We shared this resource previously – Vision and Voice by David duChemin.
Captivating Color another great eBook specifically on color and importance of color and using color to communicate your ideas.
Day 19: Fill Right Colors in Your Food Photos
Lightroom at Amazon.

Your Assignment

For today’s assignment, open your post processing tool. Open an image in this tool and adjust its saturation, hue and luminescence. Just play with image and see how adjust each one of this affect the mood of the image and if that changes what you are trying to communicate.

Photo by anikaviro

Learn the Darkroom

Neel — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 00:07:00 +0000

Post processing is almost as old as photography is. In film days, this was done in a darkroom with acids and fixers in a chemical bath.

Today those chemical baths and acids have been replaced by softwares like Lightroom, Aperture, GIMP and other post processing applications.

Digital Darkroom is essential for becoming an outstanding photographer. While making mouth-watering photograph in the camera is crucial, it is important to understand and work in the digital darkroom.

In this post, we start looking at some very simple adjustments that you should know as a photographer. If you haven’t used the digital darkroom, it can seem like a daunting task. Take small steps and get started.

5 Simple Post Processing Adjustments to Start With

There are five adjustments that you must learn. These adjustments are basic edits that are extremely useful. If you would like to learn each one of them, don’t miss the suggested resources below.

Here are the five simple adjustments:

Cropping – Cropping is one of the most basic adjustment which is used to reduce the dimensions for a photo.
Adjusting the Image Size – I use this for increasing the size of the image. If I have an image with longest size of 200 pixel and would like to increase that size to 500 pixels, I use this adjustment regularly.
White Balance Correction – White balance in food photography is just absolutely crucial.
Aligning the Horizontals – While taking a photo, you may not notice a certain line that should have been horizontal isn’t horizontal.
Convert Raw to Jpeg – If you haven’t read or heard, raw file format captures lot of information.

Suggested Resources

An absolutely fresh perspective on post processing and tying it to the your vision is well written and articulated in Vision and Voice by David duChemin.
This video below gives some great information on how to do the basic adjustments in Lightroom.

Your Assignment

If you are just getting started with post processing, these five adjustments will give you a good start. Grab an image and do these five adjustments.

P.S. If you haven’t noticed, Amazon has this version of Lightroom 3 available at super low price – 77% off. I am absolutely loving Lightroom.

Draw Your Histogram

Neel — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 13:14:00 +0000

Have you met a person who has said this, “The thing I love about photography has nothing to do with the camera or lens. It doesn’t even have to do with that one important question every photographer should ask…

Its not looking at so many amazing photos…

The thing I love most about taking pictures is a box filled with one or more curves. The only reason I press that shutter is to see those spikes and curves closed in a box. People call it a histogram.” I have not.

Most people don’t like histograms and try to avoid it. Yes, like normal human beings, I don’t like histogram either. But histogram of a photo does give us some critical information about it and specifically about exposure of the photograph.

Histogram is spread from dark side on the left to bright on the right. So, images that are slightly overexposed, meaning these have brighter areas, shift towards right most band and often “clipped”. If a photograph is underexposed, the graph shifts toward left (darker side).

You can find a histogram of a photo at least at two different places. Histogram can be found in the review mode of your camera or in a post processing software. Let’s look at an example:

The histogram above shows that most of the photograph is exposed correctly and some areas of this photograph is darker hence the histogram is shifted towards the right. Let’s look at the photograph for this histogram.

In this photo, most of the tones are darker and nothing here is bright or closer to white. This is reflected in histogram and the curve is mainly on the medium to darker side of the histogram. The spike in the middle tells that most of the elements (or pixels) in this photo are medium – neither too dark nor too bright.

Histogram are specially important for post processing. Using the histogram, you can understand the exposure in the image captured by the camera. During post processing, any exposure related changes are reflected in the histogram, telling you what you need to do next when adjusting your exposure.

Colorful Histograms

If you have used Lightroom, this is the default histogram for a colored photograph. While this gives even more information, this is a bit advanced topic. We’ll tackle this topic in later posts, if there is enough interest.

Your Assignment

Your assignment for this session is simple. Look at your photo and see how the histogram looks like. Does the histogram reflect the exposure?

Open the photograph is your post processing software. I have used Lightroom and I love it and wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it to anyone. (Amazon has this version of Lightroom 3 available at super low price – 77% off)

So once you open the photo, try to adjust the brightness, exposure, vibrance, saturation and see how the histogram changes.

Start Taming Light for Better Food Photos

Neel — Sun, 24 Jul 2011 13:57:00 +0000

Light makes it all happen. If you can control light, you can do magic.

In this post, we talk about modifying light using two commonly used tools.

Tools to Tame Light

There are many many different tools and types of lighting gear – honeycombs to snoots. and then softboxes and umbrellas and bouncers and diffusers.

We have talked about some of these lighting gears in past. In this post, we will focus on simpler light shaping tools. Some of you use these tools frequently and many of you don’t use them at all, even though these are some of the simplest tools available.

In this post, let’s look at two light shaping tools – reflectors and diffusers.

Reflectors

Reflectors increase amount of light in a scene by reflecting the light back. Reflectors are used to bounce the light back to the scene.

Look at the diagram below. The light from the source (shown as blue arrows) travels by hitting the subject and casting hard shadow shown in the image above and then is bounced back by the reflector (shown in red arrows) and comes back to the subject and softens the shadow casted by the main light source.

In simple terms, this is how reflectors work.

Some cheap bouncers include white foam board, easily available in many stores for $2 or less. Some professionally available reflectors come is various shapes and sizes.

Diffuser

Diffusers disperse the light and decrease the harshness of the light and smoothen it. Diffusers soften the light and that makes the shadows softer as well.

As you can see from an approximate diagram below, diffusers are placed between the light source and the subject so that the strong light (shown in thick blue lines) hits the diffuser and the light is softened (thin blue lines). This softens the shadows in the scene.

Home made diffusers include a white bedsheet, parchment paper on the window to diffuse hard sun light. Professional diffusers like this one is easy to handle and is available with a diffuser stand.

Your Assignment

Your Assignment is to pick a subject and experiment with light sculpting. Use natural light or artificial. Take some photos. Then use a reflector or bouncer to minimize shadows. Take some more photos. And then use a diffuser. Now take some more photos.

Analyze the difference in lighting, mood of the photo and overall visual impact in these three cases.

Share Your Food Photos on LFP facebook page.

Day 21: Phew… A Much Needed Catch Up Day

Neel — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 14:11:00 +0000

I am glad that there is another catch up day. I don’t know what you feel about it but I surely needed this day badly.

Creating content everyday is a challenge and throw in that a week long unexpected work-related travel… boy was this week something. If you haven’t noticed, publishing articles on the right days has been a bit challenging.

Thank you for your constant support on LFP facebook page and on my twitter profile. Without that, I wouldn’t be published an article a day. I hope this series is being helpful.

How has the challenge being going for you? Have you been able to keep up with the series? Are you taking a photo everyday?

Here are the post from this past week….

To get the upcoming posts of this 31 Days series, you will need to subscribe to our FREE updates either via RSS feed or email updates.

Thank you to (soon to be) 2500+ food photographers on LFP facebook page. Thank you for your support and encouragement. We wouldn’t be where we are right now without this support.

What topics would you like to see in last 10 days of this series? Tell us in the comments below as soon as possible.

Day 20: Go Window Shopping At a Grocery Store and Improve Your Food Photography

Neel — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 13:11:00 +0000

Window shopping can teach you a lot about food photography.

As we have talked about type of food photography previously, there are different approaches of food photography based on the goal and type of client.

Grocery stores have lot of places to read food photographs. Each aisle has a different type of food and a different subject. This provides us a lot of variety and examples of many different photos. Depending on what aisle you are in, you may be looking at a pasta photo or a dessert.

Most grocery stores have huge signs to mark different areas. Often these markers also have food photos on them and are mostly raw food photos. These are amazing places to study these raw photos. This is a great way to study what type of stock photos work in food category.

This tip is very action oriented so let’s jump right into the assignment for today.

Suggested Resources

Your Assignment

Visit your favorite grocery store.
Carry a notebook and pen/pencil.
Visit an aisle of your choice. Let’s say that’s ice cream aisle.
Look at the packaging on ice cream boxes. Do you see a photograph? Pick a product that has photos.
Read these photos. Don’t note anything. Just read. What do you see? Can you see the direction of light? Is the photo composed? In most cases, packaging designers edit the photo that was taken by photographer. See how the editing is done.
Now note what you learned. Answer the questions. Draw a quick sketch.
If you were to recreate this photo, what would you need? What elements would you need?

Have you observed food photos in grocery store? Where else have you seen food photos? Have you analyzed them and studied them?

Photo by lyzadanger

Day 19: Fill Right Colors in Your Food Photos

Neel — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 13:42:00 +0000

Do your food photos have right color? How do you decide which color would go with a red strawberry? Which photo works better in the photo above?

Is Color Really Important?

Color is another important element of a great food photograph. Like we have talked before on this blog, without the right color in the photo, food doesn’t remain appetizing.

Black and white photography is an amazing art and for the type of food photography we are talking here, color in food photos in very important. Color moves us visually and creates temptation in food photos.

5 Ways to Get Color Right

So if you would like to capture the right color in your food photography, how would you go about it? Previously we talked about five ways to get colors right, These five ways are really what it takes to make sure you have correct colors. Here are those five ways:

In-camera adjustments
White card
Post processing
Natural Light
Use Correct Artificial Light

To read more about the 5 ways of getting true color, go to this link

Understanding the Color Chemistry

After knowing the importance of right color and how to get true colors, the next important thing is to understand the harmony between colors. Colors have a chemistry and the juxtaposition of these colors in a frame impacts the photograph immensely.

Below is a variant of color wheel, commonly used by graphic designers. Based on this color wheel, colors on opposite side of this wheel complement each other in a scene. So, red would complement green, blue complements orange and yellow complements violet.

Using Color Wheel to Compose a Compelling Image

Based on this wheel, now you know the harmony between the colors. This wheel can be used to compose a photograph with color. If you have a dish that is dominant in yellow color, to create a photograph with heavy contrast, you should use the color that’s opposite to yellow in this circle.

Violet, when included in a frame with a dish that is dominantly yellow, will create a photograph that is vibrant and creates amazing contrast.

Blue Orange Color Chemistry

Your Assignment

Your assignment is to create vibrant photograph by choosing a dish dominant in a certain color and fill your make photo that uses complementary colors. Composition should always start with your goal and then move to the color of your food or hero.

Use your creativity and make a photograph that shows colors and their complementary pairs.

Good luck. Happy coloring.

Photo Blue Orange Color Chemistry by D Sharon Pruitt

Day 18: Create a Shot List for Your Photo Shoot

Neel — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 14:10:00 +0000

Shot list is an amazing tool for planning your photo shoots. Wedding photographers regularly use shot lists with their clients.

In this post, we look at how you can use this approach to get more photos.

What is a Shot List?

A shot list is a list of potential photos that you or your client will like to create. It is also a good way to organize your thoughts on what are all possible shots that you can make for your client.

How to Create Your Shot List?

A comprehensive shot list starts with in-depth research. Research helps you understand the subject, specially when you are unfamiliar with the subject. While doing research note things that you believe will bring an interesting perspective to this subject.

List all possible shot that you can think of. The way I use shot list is to note broad photo ideas. If I were to shoot for a Thai restaurant, I would work with the owner to see how many and what type of photos he is expecting from the photo shoot.

In some cases, owners will give the shot list, in other cases restaurant owners will need some coaching and advice on shot list.

Sample Shot List

Below is a very basic shot list for a Thai restaurant:

Opening shot – in the restaurant with people and one without people
Recipe shot – Pad Thai curry, Pad Ki Mau, Mango sticky rice, green tea

Portrait shots – photograph with chef

This is not a comprehensive list, but rather an example. Depending on this list, I would either ask owner to provide his input (if there are no questions, get their agreement to start the photo shoot).

Creating shot list becomes easier as you grow in photography.

Your Assignment

For today’s assignment, you have a simple task. The task is to create a shot list – list of photographs you would like to take potentially. List them all.

Now this becomes your list of possible photos and something you can start exploring more by sketching these photos.

Photo by Dan04

Day 17: Switch the Background of Your Food Photo

Neel — Sun, 17 Jul 2011 13:13:00 +0000

A supportive background strengthens a photograph.

In this post, we talk about choosing the right background for your food photo. I also share what I learned from a simple exercise and how you can too.

Photography is like an orchestra. For a great performance, all instruments have to come together, synchronize and perform well. One performer plays a wrong note and their goes the entire performance.

Background, just like the rest of the elements of photography, is equally important. A great background is clutter-free and supports the story a photographer is trying to tell.

Now that you have your props organized and stored in one place, I bet you found new backgrounds that you could possibly use. It is always fun to learn how background interacts with your subject.

In the sushi photo above that I took long time back, I started with a wooden background. The photo didn’t work for me, so I moved to a lighter background and sure enough I realized I needed a darker background.

Thinking about darker background, color black comes to mind. Hmmm… that didn’t work for me either, now what? I tried another background and of the four that I tried, this seemed to work for me.

In the hindsight, there are many other things that I could have changed, like the plate for example, a darker plate could have worked better, I think. I could have presented the sushi differently. I could used a better set of chopsticks. I can go on and on…

In terms of background of a photograph, this was an important exercise for me. After completing this exercise, I learned few lessons about the background.

My initial assumption that a lighter background would work, was put to test and helped me realize that in most cases it probably won’t. Contrasts work. Light plate on darker background works better.

I think the most important lesson that I learned was not to quit just in first few minutes. Had I not switched the background, it was very likely that I would have just quit. With a rationalization that “I am just not in the mood today” or something similar. Ever said that to yourself?

The act of switching the background was a simple change and this simple change helped me learn more about food photography.

Your Assignment

Your assignment today is just as simple. Choose a food photography subject and do a similar experiment. What background do you think will work for your photograph? Take few shots using this background.

Now switch the background without changing the composition and placements of the subject and support elements. Repeat this for all possible backgrounds that you think will work with what you are trying to achieve.

Now the most important thing: Take time to reflect on this exercise. Do not miss this step. Ask questions. Once you have had a chance to reflect, tell us in the comments below, what did you learn.

Day 16: Dig Your Backyard to Find Food Photography Props Treasure

Neel — Sat, 16 Jul 2011 14:56:00 +0000

After organizing your existing food photography props now is the time to find some more props… No no, you don’t have to buy them, you just have to dig your backyard (or your living room) to find the treasure buried under that tree (or that sofa).

In this post, we talk about hunting food photography props…

Shopping for Props

One way to grow your prop collection is to shop for them. Paula Walters shared some great ideas in prop styling interview on where to buy props, Ilva Beretta mentioned 4 Frugal Ways to Go Shopping Props. These two pros give some great advice on shopping for food photography props.

For some new food photographers who are on limited budget, buying too many props isn’t an option. But do you really have to buy a prop? Are there ways to find props without buying them?

Digging the Treasure Chest Filled With Props

Props need not be bought, there are many things in your own house that can be used as a prop. All you need is an eye for the prop. You can start your prop collection by looking what you have in your kitchen or storage.

Do you have a cutting board that you can use? What about a white plate? A wine glass? These are pretty common and if you use them everyday and sometimes can be forgotten when you start to think about the props.

The limit of props in your home is only limited by your imagination of a prop and an eye for finding them. Let’s discuss look at 7 props that may be staring you in the face and you may not even see them.

7 Hidden Props In Your Home

Bed sheets – Can be used as a background or if the bed sheet is while it can be used as a light diffuser.
Cutting boards – Cutting boards serve as a great background as well. Worn out cutting boards make great backgrounds.
Kitchen Napkins – Is a great way to add “layer” to your photo and create more depth.
Ribbons – Ribbons (or simple strings) are another wonderful prop. Tie the cookies that you baked or raw veggies like asparagus.
Baking Trays – Baking trays are very popular as a container as well as background.
From Farmers Market – Ever been to a farmers market? I am sure most of you have. If you have not been to a farmers market, its a huge (depending on where you live) gathering of local farmers where they sell what they produce. Some of the produce is sold in containers and these containers make great props.
Milk Bottles – If you buy fresh milk in milk bottles, these glass bottles filled with milk make great prop as well. Great story with milk bottle in the back.

These are just some commonly seen props in food photos. I am sure there are many many props that are easy to find in your own kitchen. Tell us what other props you use in the comments below.

What Props Do You Use?

I am sure some of you have been using some of these props for quite some time. What other props do you use? Tell us about your ideas of finding hidden props.

Suggested Resources

Your Assignment

Today’s assignment is to find those hidden props in your home. Go to your kitchen and see what you can find. See if you have a bed sheet in a closet that would work. Look at the list of props mentioned above, will any of them work? Create your own list and tell us in the comment below.

Photo by Ben Beard

Day 15: Arrange Your Food Photography Props to Get Photography Ideas

Neel — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 14:40:00 +0000

Props… are the important element of food photography. They add to the mood and complete the story.

In this post, we look at a simple yet important task to be complete by every food photographer who would like to take their skills to the next level.

A well organized prop storage can generate great ideas for taking photographs. When its time to take photos, it is very convenient to have all props arranged and stored so that you can pull the one you need in no time.

I have a small collection of plates and containers, backgrounds, fabrics, napkins and other props. Having these props stored and organized inspires me and helps generate ideas very quickly.

Some Common Props

While there are many many props that are used in food photography, in this post I refer to prop as anything that is or can be included in a food photograph other than food. Keeping this definition in mind, here are some common props:

Backgrounds
Plates
Flatware
Napkins
Glasses

Now that you know what is a prop the way that we are defining here, we need to move to the next phase and that is to create an inventory of your props. In a simple way, here are the few steps that you can follow to create your own inventory storage for food photo props.

Step 1: Find all the props that you have and bring them all in a place that you can use.

Step 2: Decide how you would like to arrange them. Are you going to organize them by type of props ? May be you want to arrange them by color.

Step 3: Once you have decided how you want to arrange the props, next step is to identify storage location to store your props.

Step 4: Arrange your props in the location you identified above.

Step 5: Take a virtual inventory by using a camera and just take some pictures of your new storage.

By organizing these props, you can now focus your attention on taking the photograph and not think about what prop can go with this food and more importantly where to find it.

Your Assignment

For today, your assignment is very simple – organize your food photography props. Use the steps if you would like. Let’s get your props in order.

Photo by lisaclarke

Day 14: Another Catch Up Day is Here

Neel — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 14:51:00 +0000

How have the last two weeks been for you? The past week we covered some more tips beyond the basics of photography.

In last 6 days, we presented six tips specific to food photography. We talked everything from elements of art to studying photos in food magazines. Let’s look at what we covered in last few days.

Food Photography Tips from Last Week

Day 8: Add These 6 Elements to Your Next Food Photo - Six elements of art you improve your food photography.
Day 9: Get Inspiration to Feed Your Brain – Constantly feed your brain with creativity. This post details on how to do that.
Day 10: Add Variety in Your Food Photography Portfolio by Breaking the Pattern – Stuck in a rut? Read this on how to add variety in your portfolio.
Day 11: Sketch Your Food Photo Ideas – Plan your food photography shoot by sketching your ideas before starting to take photos.
Day 12: Study Food Photos in Magazines – Food Magazines are great source of top notch food photography. This post explains how to study food photos and read them.
Day 13: Compose Your Food Photos with Props (and without Food) – Food photography is complex and this post helps you simplify composition by breaking it into two steps.

To get the remaining posts of this 31 Days series, you will need to subscribe to our FREE updates either via RSS feed or email updates.

Again don’t miss this opportunity to interact with fellow photographers on our facebook page. Join more than 2000+ food photographers and learn from them on LFP facebook page.

Share your thoughts of this 31 day series and tell us what you would like to see next.

Please Do Me a Favor

I hope this series is helping you in some way. How has the first 14 days of this series been for you? Can you please take 2 mins and tell me in the comments section – what you would like to see in next 15 days? What topics would add value to you? Thank you for your help.

Day 13: Compose Your Food Photos with Props (and without Food) [Updated]

Neel — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 13:29:00 +0000

In a photograph, there are shapes and lines and color and other elements of art. The interaction between these elements defines how compelling the image is.

Composing these elements and sculpting that photograph takes time and patience. Let’s look at how to simplify the process by pre-composing.

Improve Your Composition by Removing Food

Previously, we talked about sketching your ideas and using the sketches to plan your photo shoot. However, as you must have realized after completing the assignment from day 11, that sketching an idea doesn’t mean that the final photo that you are satisfied with will look exactly like your sketch.

Once you sketch your idea and are ready to set the table and scene, there will be some more thoughts and ideas that come up as you work on creating the scene. The goal should be to finalize the scene by using the elements of art and composing the frame.

So how do you go about doing that?

After sketching the image, start arranging the elements on the set/table. Start with the sketch you like the most. Arrange the plates and bowls and flatware according to the sketch.

How do things look? Does this match with your goal with this photo? If so, bring out the food and see how the food looks on the scene. Add last minute finishes to complete the scene. And then take the shot.

How Does This Help?

Pre-composing the scene helps in couple of ways. This approach helps you to break the creative process into several steps. Rather than bring the food, plates, background, flatware and any thing that you need and starting to compose the scene, we make this a two or three step process.

We have composed the scene first without the food and then we adjust our composition once food is brought in. Not bringing food right away helps in several ways. The props are easier to handle, food doesn’t stand while you are composing and looks fresh, set doesn’t get messy and you can patiently work and compose the scene.

I find this process helpful and helps me tackle this challenge piece by piece. For someone else, they may bring all in and then compose. For some, creativity comes out of chaos and for others, it is different approach.

Everybody’s creative process is different. Experiment with this and develop your own process. I am sure as time goes on your process will change and composing a set will be your second nature.

Suggested Reading

Composition – From Snapshots to Great Shots

Your Assignment

For this assignment try this. Set the table and bring in the props. Bring in the plates and bowls and everything you think will work in this scene. But don’t bring the food just yet. Arrange the props and other elements with a goal in mind.

Take couple of shots. Does the combination look good in the frame? Take few more shots and once you are satisfied, use this arrangement for your final food shot. Show us your arrangements by uploading the photos to LFP facebook page.

What is Your Process

How do you go about photographing food? Share your process with us in the comments below.

Day 12: Study Food Photos in Magazines

Neel — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 13:00:00 +0000

Study Food Magazines

Food magazines are great source of inspiration and studying them can give you an understanding on how to approach food photos for editorial photography.

Today, take some time out and go to your local public library or book store. Pick up some food magazines and cookbooks and study the photographs.

My Process of Studying Food Magazines

I take time out to study food magazines regularly at least once a week. I spend about an hour in library or go to a coffee shop (or home) studying the photos.

Shortlisting the Food Photos

I usually scan the magazine from front to back and look at photos that move me. This helps me differentiate between the food photos that tell a story and with those that I can relate to with those photos that I have to spend more time understand the story.

Analyzing the Photograph

I go back to the first photo that really connected with me and start the analysis process. We have talked about reading a photograph. I use this process to understand the few things about the photograph:

What is the story this photograph is telling?
How does it relate to the article that this photo supports?
What is the subject of the photo?
How is the subject placed?
Is the photo composed in a way to leave space for some text/copy to be added on the photo?
Where is the light source? (hint: observe the shadow/s)
What is the background like?
If I was making photos for this article how would I take my pictures?

Once I am done with this photograph, I would move to the next photo that I have shortlisted and analyze the photo.

Next Step

After analyzing the last photo in the given time frame, I go back to the photos again and quickly flip through the pages to list any photos that I would like to recreate and experiment later.

One Note on Choosing a Magazine

Not all magazines are created equal. There are some well-known magazines where I just don’t get why some food photographs are published and cannot relate with the photograph. So it is critical that you choose the right magazines.

I keep going back to Cooking Light and Saveur for the most part. I find that these magazines consistently publish food photos that I can relate with and learn from.

Suggested Reading:

Your Assignment

Take about an hour or so of quiet time. Pick up food magazines that you relate with and study the food photos in magazines. Ask questions similar to the ones we talked about above.

Tell Us About This

Share your comments about this exercise in the section below or on our food photography page. Tell us:

What magazines did you study?
How long were able to spare?
How many photos were you able to analyze?
What did you learn?
Do you regularly study food magazine to learn food photography?

Photo by thebittenword.com

Day 11: Sketch Your Food Photo Ideas – 31 Days of Food Photography Tips

Neel — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 13:47:00 +0000

Do you sketch your food photos before starting to make photographs? Here’s something for you…

Need For Sketching Your Food Photos

Food looks good when its fresh. So photograph food when its fresh. That is translated this way – the time you have for taking a food photo or a fresh looking food is relatively very small and this means you need to be fast.

Fast, meaning you should be able to bring food to the table, style the food, and take a shot. You should also remember to do the compositional dance and explore photographic possibilities.

So much to do so little time. How do you create stunning image when there is so little time? Successful photo shoots come with planning and thought. Sketching your ideas as they come and before the photo shoot, helps massively with planning.

4 Steps to Sketch Your Ideas

Sketching seems very simple and yet very few new photographers use this to understand their subject and capture the photo idea. Here are four simple steps to get started.
Step 1. Get inspiration by looking at portfolios
Step 2. Start sketching an idea – Keep in mind what your goal is. Where would be the plate? What about the hero? What about flatware?
Step 3. Explore your idea further and improve it
Step 4. Choose your best composition sketch

All Sketched, Now What?

Once you have sketched your ideas what next? Sketching isn’t really the goal of this exercise. Sketching is only a means to create better photos. So once you are done sketching it is time to take the next action.

The next action after sketching the ideas is to start planning for photo shoot. Once you choose a composition that you like the most, identify the elements that you have put together in the sketch and start planning for it.

What plates have you thought off? What background did you use in the sketch? Is there a napkin you are planning to use? Ask these questions and bring it all in and start arranging the scene as you see it.

As you will quickly find out that this is again just a start. Once you have arranged the scene, there will be some more dance that you will do. And finally you will like an arrangement that you will execute in food photos.

Further Reading:
1. Prerna Singh on sketching her ideas
2. Andrew Scrivani on planning a photo shoot

Your Assignment

Here’s the assignment – for your next photo, sketch your ideas. Don’t just stop at one idea. Create multiple options and then choose the best composition. It’s really pretty simple, but you will have to sit down with pen and paper and sketch some layouts.

Once you do that, share your sketch photos in the comments below and on food photography facebook page.

Are You Making the Most Out of 31DFPT

To get the most benefit are you doing this 31 day series, you can participate in following ways:

Get the remaining posts of this 31 Days series and subscribe to our FREE updates either via RSS feed or email updates.
Interact with fellow food photographers on LFP facebook page.
Ask questions and leave comments below.

Photo by cagrimmett

Day 10: Add Variety in Your Food Photography Portfolio by Breaking the Pattern– 31 Days of Food Photography Tips

Neel — Sun, 10 Jul 2011 17:13:00 +0000

Formula for Perfect Photograph

What is your favorite camera angle? Is it top down? or is it 45 degree? Do you take photos in vertical frame mostly? or do you use horizontals more?

This post is about getting out of a rut.

Identifying a Pattern

Are you stuck in a pattern? Have you started using a "template"? Do you find your photos to be of a certain format? Have you started using a formula to take your photos?

If so, are you still an artist?

Each photographer has one or more styles, which can be understood by looking at their portfolio. A style is different than a pattern. In this context, pattern is associated with composition.

Photography is an art and cannot be mastered by using formula, template or set of instructions.

How to Break the Pattern

So if you are stuck in a rut, what do you do? How to break out of it? Here’s how.

You get into a pattern when you stop pushing yourself and exploring your subject. For your next photo try this:

When you start taking a food photo don’t stop after you think you are done. Take few more photos by changing the scene.

If you think you have taken lot of photos, turn the dish by 30 degrees or so and take some more photos. Did you try changing the camera angle? If you have been taking photos from sideways, did you try top view? Did you do the compositional dance?

Few things that you can change to break the pattern:

Placement of the dish in the frame
Proximity of main dish with the props and supporting elements.
If you have done all that, then turn the dish a little bit. And then some more. And further more.
As you do each one of the above, explore the scene with various camera angles.

Start doing the dance and becoming aware of your patterns. Get out of this compositional rut.

Further Reading

Within the Frame by David duChemin
Day 5 – Do the Compositional Dance
Day 9 – Get Inspiration to Feed Your Brain

Your Assignment

For today’s assignment, analyze your past few photos. Look at them, do you place your subjects in a certain place in the frame? Is the light always coming from a certain angle? Do you always use white plates? Is there a certain background that you always use?

Identify your pattern and then break it by taking your today’s photos in a different way that you usually do.

Tell Us About Your Pattern

Have you observed a pattern in your photography? What elements do you tend to use most in your photos? For me its usually lighting. I tend to keep the light on my right side and it has to do with the set up in my studio. What did you observe in your photography?

Photo by Domiriel

Day 9: Get Inspiration to Feed Your Brain – 31 Days of Food Photography Tips

Neel — Sat, 09 Jul 2011 14:18:09 +0000

Inspiration changes things. It moves you to do great things and embraced further, it motivates you to do greater things.

Today, inspire yourself.

Get Inspired

Inspiration comes in many shapes and forms. A walk to farmers market inspires some. For some its a photo they saw in a food magazine. For others its just a food blogger who constantly creates amazing art work on her blog.

Sounds familiar?

Subject Based Inspiration

At times when you were trying to create a photograph for that pasta dish and you just couldn’t find something to inspire you what did you do?

Subject based inspiration is simply a way to inspire yourself by looking some outstanding images of the subject. This helps you generate some ideas when you have a “photographer’s block”(Why should only writers get a block named after them?).

Here are some examples that we have posted at LFP before:

General Inspiration

As a food photographer who wants to get better, I hope that you visit portfolios of some famous food photographers and stylists to get inspired. If you are not, you should.

To get started you can start with our interview guest list. We have had great pleasure to interview many well known food photographers and stylists. You can find all of them at the food photography interviews.

Inspiration versus Copying

One suggestion that many well-known food photographers have given is to look at portfolios of food photographers and try to recreate those photos to learn and improve your skills. This is different than saying that you should copy the photos in your professional work.

Inspiration here relates to just that – getting inspired and not copying someone else’s work.

Don’t Just Look…Read

This is the whole point of visiting these portfolio. Don’t look at the photos and let the drool flow… The important lesson here is to start reading a photograph. Look at the direction of light and the placement of the subjects. See how the elements of art are used. Study the photo.

Look at the camera angle. See all the props that we have used.

Your Assignment

Today’s assignment is very simple. Choose a food photographer’s portfolio or two. Visit these portfolios and just read the photos as we discussed on Day 6. Ask all the questions that help tell you how to read a photograph.

Do Us a Favor

Once you have completed the assignment, answer these two questions in the comments:

Which photographer’s portfolio you studied?
Which photos you studied and what did you observe/read?

Photo by photosteve101

Day 8: Add These 6 Elements to Your Next Food Photo – 31 Days of Food Photography Tips

Neel — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 14:11:00 +0000

Green Lines

As photographers and stylists we create an art from a subject that others overlook. We form our vision and then express it in a way that moves a viewer.

In this post, let’s look at some very basic elements of art and why we need to start looking at our subjects as these elements.

Art and Elements of Art

Art, Oxford English Dictionary describes,is the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination…

Webster says, art is the conscious use of skill and creative imagination especially in the production of aesthetic objects..

Our creative imagination is usually presented by using the elements of art. Let’s look at the elements of art:

Lines
Shapes
Form
Color
Space
Texture

You can read about each of these elements in detail and how they are used in food photos -part 1 – lines, shapes and form and part 2- color, space and texture

These six elements when used in a certain combination create an art that expresses an idea and communicates with viewer. The more thoughtful the use of these elements, the stronger the connection with the viewer.

Food Photography, after all, is not about food but rather using these elements of art to create a compelling image that connects with the audience.

Your Assignment

Train your eyes to find the pattern and these elements. For this assignment, look at the photos that you have taken before. Study those photos and find how many of those elements do you see in the photo.

Next: Add your food photo in the comment section using our new feature. Tell us about the photo in the comment and share what elements do you see or were trying to use. Here’s how to add a photo in comments.

Photo by mkrigsman

Day 7: Catch Up Day is Here

Neel — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 14:33:00 +0000

It’s already 7th day of this 31 day series. Many of you have joined us on our facebook page and have given us great feedback and suggestions about this series.

One of the suggestion has been to add a catch up day. And here it is – the catch up day.

Use this day to catch up on any assignments that you may have missed or to go back to any lessons and ask questions. Utilize the facebook page and interact with fellow food photographers.

Special Weekly Assignment and Weekly Digests

We mentioned in the introduction post that if you are serious about food photography you can also get special assignments, thank you to hundreds of you who have joined this list and encouraged us to keep going.

If you have not signed up yet and would like to fill in the form below as soon as possible. July 7th is the last day to get all special weekly assignments from the 31 Day series.

Those of you who have already joined the list will receive the first weekly assignment on 8th July.

31 Days of Food Photography Tips Weekly Wrap Up

Here are the posts from last week of this series.

Day 1: Use Exposure Triangle and Turn off Auto Mode
Day 2: Create Depth in Your Food Photos
Day 3: Read Your Camera Manual
Day 4: Ask One Question Before Pressing Shutter
Day 5: Do the Compositional Dance with Your Next Food Photo
Day 6: Learn to Read a Photograph

Again don’t miss this opportunity to interact with fellow photography on our facebook page

To get the remaining posts of this 31 Days series, you will need to subscribe to our FREE updates either via RSS feed or email updates.

Share your thoughts of this 31 day series and tell us what you would like to see next.

Day 6: Learn to Read – 31 Days of Food Photography Tips

Neel — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 13:24:00 +0000

If you want to take great photos, you need to learn the language of photography. While you speak this language with your tools, you should also learn how to read photography.

In this post, we discuss how to read food photos and improve your photography.

So what do we mean by "reading" a photograph anyway? Reading a photo is studying the photograph by observing and trying to find out how a photo was created and the thought process behind a it.

When you read a photograph, you start to understand the photo and you start connecting with the photographer and her process. Reading a photograph will give you an insight to information like how was this photo taken? where was the camera? How was the light?

As photographers we take lot of photos. If you are getting started (or even have been working) with photography, you need to start observing and noticing photographs from other artists to learn from these photographs.

So how do you start reading photographs? There are several things that you can learn about a photograph just by observing it thoughtfully. Here are few such questions to ask yourself when you are trying to read a photo:

Subject – What is the main subject of this photo? How is it placed with reference to the frame? What if that was changed?
Camera – Where is the camera? What is the camera angle?
Lighting – Where is the light coming from? Where are shadows in the photo?

These are just three main areas that would give you a good start. If you are doing this for the first time, don’t complicate this exercise and keep it simple.

Once you are comfortable with these three areas, you can learn more about this subject by reading more about how to read a photograph.

Assignment

Below we have two photos. Observe these photos and try to answer the questions above.

In the comments section below, share your answers with other readers.

Tell us what is the main subject? What if the elements in the photo were placed differently? Where was the camera? What do you think the camera angle was? Where was the light source?

What do you think? Share your findings in the comments below.

Reading a Newspaper photo by Dustin Diaz

© Neel for Food Photography Tips, 2011. | Permalink | 7 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 31dfpt, inspiration, practice

Day 5: Do the Compositional Dance with Your Next Food Photo – 31 Days of Food Photography Tips

Neel — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 13:49:00 +0000

Do the Dance

You may have the best camera and the best lens and the coolest post processing tools, but the art of photography comes down to just one word – composition. In this post, we look at composition and share recommendations on doing the compositional dance.

Art of Composition

The art of composition relates to arranging the graphical elements in such a way that the resulting image expresses what you as a photographer want to communicate. This includes the elements you want to include in the photo and some elements that you would like to exclude from the frame as well.

The process of composition should start only after you have asked and answered the most important question. If you start composing the photograph before answering this question, in most instances you would go no where with the photo. Once in a while you will get lucky.

While composition includes everything from the right light that creates the mood to the camera angle that tells a story, let’s only focus on three ways you can compose a photograph:

Framing the photo
Subject Placement
Your Choice of Three Elements of Exposure Triangle

Once you’ve answered the question, decide what your image should look like. Should it be in a horizontal frame? or should it be a vertical frame? Perhaps a slightly tilted frame?

Should you zoom in or zoom out? Should you follow the 1/3 rule and place you subject on the golden corners? Or should you center the subject?

Do the Dance

When you are starting in photography, take lot of photos to answer these question and see what makes most sense. Take a shot with horizontal frame. Now change the frame to vertical and take another shot. Zoom in take a shot. Zoom out.

Do this compositional dance by changing one element at a time, taking a photo and quickly reviewing it and change the composition. Pick another element do the same.

The more you dance in early days, the better you will be able to "see" like your camera and you would have to dance less.

Laurie Excell et. al. talk a great deal about doing the compositional dance in their book Composition – From Snapshot to Great Shots. Another amazing book on composition in Michael Freeman’s The Photographer’s Eye. This book has lot of ideas on how to "see" like a photographer.

As we talked earlier in this post, learning to beautifully compose a photo is the most important aspect of creating photographs that move the viewer. At the same time, learning to compose a photo is vast subject, below are some suggested reading that will help you to create better food photos.

Your Assignment:

For today’s assignment, you already must have guessed what you have to do. No? Pick a subject and do the dance.

Remember it all starts with that one question.

Happy Dancing.

Upcoming Posts

How is this series going for you so far? To stay up to date with this series, you will need to subscribe to our FREE updates either via RSS feed or email updates.

Have you checked out food photography facebook page yet? A small group of passionate food photographers have started helping each other here. Have you said Hello??

Photo by Dey

© Neel for Food Photography Tips, 2011. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 31dfpt, composition, exposure triangle

Day 4: Ask One Question Before Pressing Shutter – 31 Days of Food Photography Tips

Neel — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 14:32:00 +0000

A great food photo can only be made, it cannot be taken. For a photograph to move the viewers, it needs to communicate and move them. A photo is not created in 1/125 seconds, it takes a lot of thought and plan.

In this post, we look at a seemingly simple approach to creating images that will move your audience.

As photographers we communicate through a visual medium and all we have is usually just one frame. With a medium like photography and just one frame it is necessary to understand what we want to communicate, if we want to create a photograph that moves people.

This understanding doesn’t come in a snap. Photographers spend lot of time trying to research their subject so that they can make a connection with their subject. This involves some thinking and some planning. If your goal is to improve your photography you have to start doing that – thinking.

So how do you start thinking? By stopping and asking a question before pressing that shutter. So what’s the question, you must be wondering, here it is:

"What do I want to get out of this photo?"

We have talked about this question in past and I think this is absolutely critical to improving your photography.

Simple enough? Ask yourself this question every time you are trying to take a photograph. Once you find the answer, place the food and dishes and everything you need in a way that helps you get to where you are trying to go.

Make sure you have a goal in mind when you take photograph and are not just are pressing shutter in hope to get lucky. Do just this one thing consciously and regularly and you should see a dramatic improvement in your photographs.

Further Reading
One Extremely Important Question That is Ignored by Aspiring Photographers

Your Assignment

We’ll keep this assignment simple. You know that you don’t have to cook to take a photograph. So once you have a subject picked up, take just a couple of shots, but answer the question first.

Answer the question and try taking just few shots.

Make no mistake this is not "easy" by any stretch of imagination. This assignment may be simple but not easy.

When you are starting out with this approach, this can be very tiring. Answering that one question is not just challenging but plain frustrating.

Not finding that answer quickly will wear you down fast, so calm down and take a few shots, come back to it again. You will get it.

Photo by 姒儿喵喵

Day 3: Read Your Camera Manual – 31 Days of Food Photography Tips

Neel — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 15:10:00 +0000

Have you read your camera manual? Doesn’t matter if you have a DSLR or a point and shoot. Did you ever read your manual?

Boring?

I totally get it that reading your camera manual is completely boring. But it’s a necessary evil. And no I am not asking you to read the manual cover to cover. You don’t have to know everything about your camera.

We are not talking about perfection here, although that is going to help you. In this post, we talk about 9 essential features you should know how to adjust.

These 9 controls are the ones that you would use most when taking photos. If this is all you take away from your camera manual, this is a good start.

9 Essential Control Every Food Photographer Should Know

How to Adjust Aperture of Your Lens
How to Adjust Shutter Speed
How to Change ISO
How to Manually focus using your camera
How to Change Exposure Compensation
How to Adjust White Balance
How do Various Photography Modes work
How to lock point of focus – Here’s a hint: In most cameras it has to do with the shutter. Read your manual to find out.
How to switch to Macro – For Point and shoot, you will find this in your camera manual. For DSLR this will be in your lens manual.

Last One: Once you are done with this list, start with your camera manual’s table of content. That’s it. Pretty simple right.

Further Reading

Your Assignment

For today’s exercise, pick up your camera and grab your camera manual. Start with the aperture. Read what your camera manual says about aperture and how to adjust it. Try adjusting aperture on your camera. Once you figure it out, move to the next thing on the list. And the next.

If you are stuck at any one of these steps, ask a question in the comments below. Don’t stress yourself too much. Just play with these features. For now.

Upcoming Posts

How is this series going for you so far? To stay up to date with this series, you will need to subscribe to our FREE updates either via RSS feed or email updates.

4 Ways to Get More Out of 31DFPT

Share your food photos on LFP facebook page.
Ask questions in the comments below.
Introduce yourself to other food photographers.
Get weekly digest and special weekly assignment. Fill out the form below.

Photo by AlaskaTeacher

Day 2: Create Depth in Your Food Photos – 31 Days of Food Photography Tips

Neel — Sat, 02 Jul 2011 15:09:00 +0000

Deep photos engage viewers. These powerful photos draw you in and create an unusual experience by giving your eyes room to explore. In this post, we talk about creating depth in food photographs.

Depth in Your Food Photos and How to Control It

Depth is one of the necessary elements to create a stunning food photo. There are several ways to create depth as David duChemin explains in his book a Deeper Frame. Depth of field is just one of the several ways.

For this discussion, let’s focus on depth of field. We have talked about basics of depth of field before. We have also looked at three ways you can control depth of field. Here are those three ways again:

Distance between lens and the subject
Aperture Used
Focal Length

Composing Better Food Photos Using Depth of Field

Composition is not just where to place the dish or how to align the frame. These are just few choices that help you create a strong photo. Your decision of the depth of field will also determine what your photo communicates and expresses.

How much should be the depth of field for your next photo? That depends on what story you are trying to express. But here’s something to think about:

If you would like to isolate your main subject from the environment, but still give a feeling of what was the ambience like, go with enough depth that gives a hint but doesn’t overpower your subject.
If your subject is the whole scene, then your depth of field should not be shallow and everything should be in focus. Again, these are just some hints and most likely will not apply to your situation. You will have to make a decision based on your story.

Your Assignment

Today’s Assignment is going to be simple. All I am going to ask you to do is:

To again pick up a subject – any subject. If you don’t like to cook, read how to practice food photography without cooking.
Once you pick up the subject, take a photo so that you capture maximum depth (everything in focus). Use the three elements we talked about above to get to this state.
Next take a photo at shallowest possible depth of field.
Take few more photos with depth between these two ranges.
Analyze them. Do these photos with different depth of field “feel” different? Can you see how you can change the story by changing the depth of field?
Share what you learned in the comments below.

Have You Introduced Yourself Yet!!

Your fellow food photographers have started interacting with each other. Have you said hello yet?? Go here and tell us about yourself, your blog, your twitter profile and all that.

Day 1: Use Exposure Triangle and Turn off Auto Mode – 31 Days of Food Photography Tips

Neel — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 15:34:00 +0000

Exposure is fundamental to making photographs. Understanding the concept of exposure triangle will make you a better photographer. This simple concept has been talked about a lot of times but rarely do you find a photographer, experimenting and analyzing results based on this triangle.

In this post, we do just that. Whatever you do, don’t skip the assignment.

Today’s Goal: Refresh your understanding of exposure triangle and use the triangle and see its impact.

In one of the most popular photography book, Understanding Exposure, Bryan Peterson talks about exposure in great detail. I am sure you have read about exposure and the triangle in many books.

But have you taken few minutes to understand it by taking action? If you are like most of us, you have not. By reading this concept in books, it may seem very simple, that requires no action, but you will learn more lessons just by taking action.

To understand the concept of exposure, let’s briefly look at how an image is created.

How is Image Created?

A photograph is nothing but an impression created by light on a sensor (or film). If you understand the interaction behind this one simple line, you can make better pictures.

This process of creating an image is very subjective. There is no perfect setting for a certain condition. There is no formula or a “if-then” loop that will answer questions for what aperture to choose?

The image is created when the sensor or film is exposed to the “subject” for the right amount of time with right amount of light coming in through the lens. The right setting is controlled by three adjustments – ISO rating, aperture (f-stop) and shutter speed.

These three elements make three sides of the exposure triangle. These three sides together help you create a good exposure. Exposure for a photograph can be adjusted by changing either one of these three elements.

You can read more about these three elements in our previous post on exposure triangle. In that post, we talk in detail about ISO and the concept of a shutter speed and aperture. Read about exposure triangle.

Today’s Assignment

Today’s assignment is really simple. The entire assignment should take you less than 10 mins. For this assignment your goal is to learn how the three elements impact a photograph. Read the assignment before picking up the camera.

In this assignment, you will pick a subject and then take multiple photos by changing one element at a time. For detailed instructions, read the steps below completely before starting.

Step 1. Pick a Subject

Pick any subject. Pick a fruit or pick a veggie. Don’t slow down because you don’t have cooked food. Read previously posted tips on practicing food photography without cooking.

Step 2. Pick Your Triangle

Pick an ISO speed (if you don’t know where to start, pick ISO 400), shutter speed (start with 125 here) and aperture. Take a photograph with proper focus. This settings are your starting point.

Your first photo will have these settings 400-125-8 (ISO-Shutter Speed-Aperture)

Side Tip: If you are using autofocus and camera doesn’t seem to seem to do anything, this is usually because camera cannot “see” what to focus on. In that case increase the light, if you can.

Step 3. Now Change Aperture by 1 full-stop

Take another photo by increasing the aperture by 1 full-stop. If you started at f/8, increase aperture to f/11 and take a photo. Now reduce the aperture two stops and take a photo. Now you are at f/11 in our example, so change aperture to f/5.6.

Please use the following standard full-stop aperture for best:
0.5,0.7,1.0,1.4,2,2.8,4,5.6,8,11,16,22,32

In our example, you should have capture two photos with following settings:

400-125-11 and 400-125-8

Before going to next step, change your aperture stop to where you started (f/8 in our example).

Step 4. Next Change Shutter Speed by 1 stop

Similar to step 3, reduce shutter speed by one stop (from 1/125 to 1/60) and take a photo. Now increase shutter speed by two stops (from 1/60 to 1/250) and take a photo.

As above use only the following standard shutter speed

1/1000, 1/500, 1/250, 1/125, 1/60, 1/30, 1/15, 1/8, 1/4, 1/2, 1

In this step, you should have captured two photos at these settings:

400-60-8 and 400-250-8

Bring the shutter speed back to the starting point.

Step 5. Now its ISO

Assuming you started at 400, increase ISO to the next level (800 in this case) and take a photo. Now decrease the ISO by two levels (200 in our example) and take a photo.

In this step again, you will have captured two photos. Settings should be as below:
800-125-8 and 200-125-8

Step 6. Analysis

At this step, download these photos to your computer. And analyze how exposure of each photo is affected by changing the three elements.

What did you learn? Tell us what you learned on food photography facebook page. Thousands of food photographers are interacting and forming a food photography community, are you there?

Interact with fellow Food Photographers

This 31-day series will be most fruitful if you share what you have learned and ask questions and answer questions from fellow readers. Have you introduced yourself yet? Go here and tell us about yourself, your blog, your twitter profile and all that. Interact with other food photographers and read about them.

Exposure Triangle by RobMan170

© Neel for Food Photography Tips, 2011. | Permalink | 6 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 31dfpt, exposure triangle

Announcing 31 Days of Food Photography Tips

Neel — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 15:19:00 +0000

Today we are very excited to announce a 31-Day series on this food photography blog to improve your food photos. We are calling it “31 Days of Food Photography Tips” or 31DFTP.

Starting July 1st, we will post a food photography lesson every day with a simple assignment for the next 31 days. So what is it going to be like?

Posts and Tips on Food Photography

During this time, we would publish 31 posts that will focus on helping you make better food images. These posts would range from some critical concepts of photography to some actionable food photography tips.

The initial posts in this series are focused on those of you who are just getting started and we hope these first few posts help you to grab your camera and start taking photos. Most of the remaining posts should also help those who have been taking non-food related photos for a while and have ventured into food photography recently.

Every post will be accompanied by a related assignment. Completing these assignments will give your greater and deeper understanding about the concept and help you better comprehend the tips. Importance of doing assignments is well explained by this Chinese proverb:

“Tell me and I’ll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I’ll understand.”

Our hope is that you would spend few minutes reading the post and then act on the tip or advice by doing these assignments.

To stay up to date with these posts, you will need to subscribe to our FREE updates either via RSS feed or email updates.

Special Weekly Assignments

In addition to our daily assignments we will be sending special weekly assignments to those of you who are interested in taking your food photography to the even next level.

These special weekly assignments are not for everyone but for only those who are serious about food photography. These special assignments will be available only via email by joining below.

In addition to these special assignments, we would send weekly wrap ups at the end of each week of the 31-day series to this list.

If you just want to learn few tips, you will get lot of information during the next 31 days and do not have to sign up for these special assignments. Again, this list is only for those who are serious about food photography.

Submit Food Photography Tips & Win Photography Books

We also encourage our readers to share food photography tips on their own blogs in form of a blog post. After you’ve published your food photo tips, submit the link to your specific post (not your blog) using this submission form. Please fill out the form completely, specially your contact details.

During this series, we would compile the submissions and share them with everyone so that we all can learn from your post.

At the end of the series, we would randomly giveaway bundle of eBooks from Craft and Vision to one participant who has submitted a blog post about their food photography tip.

Please note: For this contest, we would be only including those posts that are published during the 31 days of this series.

If you don’t have a blog you can submit your tips in the comments section of this post and the daily posts as well. We may add a separate gift for commenters, and once finalized we will announce this separately.

More Ways to Participate

This series will be most beneficial to you if you participate actively and learn from your fellow participants by interacting with them on this blog and on food photography facebook page. Here are some ways to participate:

1. Ask Questions – Ask questions about the posts when you need clarification or have a question.
2. Participate in Discussions – You can learn most when you actively participate in this series. So, don’t miss a chance to get involved and discuss a certain concept or a tip.
3. Complete the Assignment and Share Your Results – Share your results from the assignments on LFP facebook page and tell us about your experience.
4. Share This – Sharing is fun. Help your friends and followers who are trying to get better at food photography by share this series. Tweet the post and share it on facebook and blog. Spread the word and help us in our goal

Start Participating Now!!!

What are you expecting from this series? What topics would you like to read about in the next 31 days? Leave a comment below and start participating.

Remember to stay up to date with these posts, you will need to subscribe to our FREE updates either via RSS feed or email updates.

Bruchetta photo taken by Neel

How to Create Better Food Photos and Write Better in 3 Days – With Plate to Page Team

Neel — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 12:01:59 +0000

Plate to Page Team – From Left: Jeanne, Ilva, Jamie and Meeta

Food Photography and writing are both essential for a great food blog. In this interview, Plate to Page team shares their knowledge on how to take better food photos and how to write better.

They also give away an exercise that you can use to improve your food blogging and food photography skills. Don’t miss this interview.

Let’s Welcome Plate to Page Team

Plate to Page is a hands-on food photography and writing workshop. The Plate to Page website explains it as this:

Plate to Page is an intensive hands-on food photography and writing workshop aimed at food bloggers, writers and photographers looking to enhance and hone their photography and writing skills while finding their own unique style and voice, both for their blog and for professional work.

Press play button to listen to this interview

[Audio clip: view this post on www.learnfoodphotography.com to listen]

About The Guests

Plate to Page team consists of four very talented instructors – Ilva Beretta, Jamie Schler, Jeanne Horak-Druiff and Meeta Khurana Wolff.

Ilva is a freelance photographer specializing in food photography and styling and writes at very well known blog Lucullian Delights. Ilva can be found on twitter @lucullianblog and @lucullian

Jamie has worked as assistant editor/recipe editor and is a regular contributor to the prestigious Huffington Post. Her blog is Life’s a Feast and you can say hello to her on twitter @lifesafeast

Jeanne is a freelance writer and columnist whose work has been published in several reputed publications like National Geographic’s 500 Food Journeys and 500 Secret Journeys and many more. Her blog CookSister has won the title of Best South African Food Blog four times. Say hello to Jeanne on twitter @cooksisterblog

Meeta is a freelance photographer, stylist and writer. Her blog What’s for Lunch, Honey? has been nominated for several awards. You can find Meeta on twitter @meetawflh

You can read more about our guests here.

In This Interview

We talk about how to take better food photos and write better. P2P team also shares what can you do to make the most of any workshop you attend. They also share some sample exercises to improve your food writing and food photography skills. Go ahead and start listening to the interview…Don’t miss this interview

Press play button to listen to this interview

[Audio clip: view this post on www.learnfoodphotography.com to listen]

Taking Better Food Photos and Writing Better

In this interview, you will learn

How to take photographs and not snapshots
How to write meaningful and thoughtful posts
How workshops will make you better writer and photographer
How to make most of workshops
How to improve your writing and photography using exercises

Press play button to listen to this interview

[Audio clip: view this post on www.learnfoodphotography.com to listen]

Have You Attended Any Workshop?

Have you attended any workshop or class that teaches food photography or food blogging? How was your experience? If you have not attended any workshop, can you share the reason?

Photo by Jenn from Jenn Cuisine

Photographing Macarons and Chef Portraits: A Food Photographer’s Diary #8

Evi — Sat, 18 Jun 2011 17:24:59 +0000

This is a guest post series by photographer Evi Abeler. If you would like to write about food photography on learn food photography, visit guest post page to learn more.

In this post of food photographer’s diary, Evi shares a story of macaron photography. As a food photographer, there are instances when you may have to shoot portraits as well. Let’s hear from Evi, how she took macaron photos and portraits for chef.

Macarons Photography and Chef Portraits

Often when I photograph for a restaurant the owner or chef asks me if I could also shoot the space or a portrait. I am definitely more comfortable with food and still life photography, but of course I want to be able to deliver these photos as well. Below are a few images from a recent desert and portrait shot that I wanted to share with you.

The pastry chef made a variety of macarons for the shoot. (The pink ones are almond butter and rhubarb jam filled!) I photographed her pastries on the back deck of the kitchen. It was an overcast day and the deck had a bunch of tables to work on. During a break the chef came outside, sat down to chat and there it was the perfect portrait pose! (Now I wish I had taken out that door mat…oh well.)

I tried a few different angles for the macarons and liked them best from the top. In the image below they are settling on the backing sheet. The other shot shows how she gave them to me, in a tart dish on our prop table. I loved the light and the one sideways macaron, which was filled with vanilla creme. The dirty dish towel with the green line could have been a bit cleaner, but I really enjoyed the composition of the circles and the line, and the green, white and pink colors.

More delicious macarons next to the window on the prop table.

I also took a few close-ups of the chef and the macarons and thought these two would make a great diptych…both smiling.

As you can see I do need to practice my portrait photography this summer. How is that going for you, do you shoot spaces and portraits as well? Right now it seems like photographers are supposed to specialize into a niche…maybe chef portraits still fall under food photography, right?!

So long,
Evi

PS: I probably do not need to mention that none of the macarons survived the shot. One of the great perks of being a food photographer is that you get to sample so much delicious and good looking food.

—–

Rest of the Posts in Food Photographer’s Diary Series

Here are other posts from Evi’s food photography journey–

Do you have a similar story? Would you like to share your food photography journey on learn food photography? visit guest post page to learn more.

All images are copyright property of Evi Abeler.

7 Tips to Practice Food Photography Without Cooking Food

Neel — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 11:44:31 +0000

Food photography is an art of photographing food. But what if you don’t have any food to photograph? What if you don’t like to cook or don’t want to cook? Is that what’s stopping you from practicing food photography?

In this post we talk about 7 tips on how to practice food photography even if you don’t have cooked food.

How to Practice Food Photography If You Don’t Cook

The one common advice from all the great food photographers, food stylists and props stylist in the food photography interviews that we have done is practice, practice practice. But how do you practice if you don’t like to or want to cook?

If you don’t cook, there are still ways to practice food photography. You don’t really have to cook food, to practice food photography. Here’s how…

7 Tips to Practice Food Photography Without Cooking Food Yourself

Let’s get to the tips on how to practice without cooking. Here are some tips that can help you.

Order a Take-Out (or Get it Delivered)

If you don’t want to cook, go and buy something from a local restaurant or any place that cooks food. Although, buying food is a very convenient option make sure you put some thought into this. Buying food and bringing it to your studio to take food photos seems easy enough, but it only works for certain type of food.

If you buy a sub from a national chain and bring it home, from the time it leaves the payment counter to it reaches the table of your studio, it may have become a big mess and will not make a great food photo. So, give some thought before buying something that may not look photogenic once you get to your studio. For the photo shown above, I ran to a national grocery chain and bought some fresh sushi.
Partner with Food Bloggers

Here’s another tip to consider. Find a food blogger in your local community who likes to cook but doesn’t want to spend time photographing food. You can offer to help him by taking photos for his blog.

This is a win win for both of you. It helps food blogger as he can focus on cooking and writing and it helps you because you get food and dishes to photograph. The partnership should be mutually beneficial for it to sustain.
Add Some Spices

Cooked food is not the only subject that you can shoot. If you don’t want to cook, think about all the raw ingredients and spices you can shoot. Spices can be challenging to shoot and provide a great learning experience.
Use Raw

Photographing raw fruits and veggies require no cooking. ( I hope you don’t consider washing veggies and fruits thoroughly before eating them as cooking…). Raw veggies and fruits are the nicest and friendliest subject of all.

They don’t melt on you while you were changing you aperture and shutter speed. You can photograph them for longer than any other subjects. If you are looking for a subject that for practicing artificial lighting, these are definitely on the top of the list and are easy to handle than most subjects.
Have a Drink

Drinks are also challenging subjects and the good thing is photographing drinks does not require you to cook. You can simply buy some beverage, style it and practice photography.

Granted drink aren’t “food” and in the strictest sense drink photography is different than food photography. Although a food photographer should be a “drink photographer” as well if you would like to make money photographing for restaurants.
Convince Your Spouse/Partner/Roommate

Executing this tip is very simple. All you need is one simple trick – the Jedi Mind Trick. Look in your spouse or partner or roommate’s eyes and say this confidently, “You are going to cook for me.”

If this doesn’t seem to work at first, have a staring-match with them by challenging them to look into your eyes long enough and repeat the statement. If this trick doesn’t work even after second time, find another victim like your roommate’s friend (and watch Star Wars to learn how Yoda does it). On a serious note, I am sure you get what I mean.
Go with the Pros

Once you are comfortable with the quality of your results you can start approaching restaurants and help them for no or low price. This option is only useful to those who have been taking food photographs and create decent photos consistently.

Approaching restaurants at very early stage of food photography is not advisable as this may hurt your brand and restaurants will lose time and money if you cannot deliver a good output.

What Do You Do?

Do you always cook for taking food photos? Share what you do to practice food photography?

A Must-Have Food Photography Book: Plate to Pixel Review

Neel — Sat, 04 Jun 2011 20:17:50 +0000

Few weeks ago, I received Pixel to Page book from the publisher for review. This book, on food photography is written by Helene Dujardin, a pastry chef turned food blogger. Helene is an accomplished food blogger and has photographed for many cookbooks. She regularly teaches food photography in food photography workshops.

First Impressions

When I opened the package and looked at the book, my first impression was that there is lot of content in the book. Looking at the table of content, Helene packaged a lot of information in this 288-page book.

What’s in Plate to Pixel

The chapters in this book range from basics of photography to natural light photography and artificial light photography. There is a complete 60-page chapter on food styling. Helene also shows how to set up the scene for capture.

At many places, Helene uses a personal language and that really connected with me. It seems like she was talking to the reader directly, as if the reader was in a workshop with her and she was personally teaching food photography to each reader individually.

I flipped the pages and I was pleasantly surprised to see the quantity of images included in this book.

Food Photography in This Book

For an instructional book on food photography, it is imperative to have stunning food photos. The quality of food photos give credibility to what has been written. At the same time, the more food photos there are in a book that are used as an example, the better the learning and understanding for readers.

In this book almost every page has a food photo. It is like holding Helene’s portfolio in your hand and as if she is explaining you how she took that photo. You can read and understand the topic and how Helene has applied it in a certain photo.

Reading the book, is just one way you can learn from this book.

Another Way to Learn from This Book

If you are not the reading-types but still want to learn, you are in luck. We have talked about how to read a photo. If you just did that, and read specifics like how the light is placed, where the props are, how the scene is composed, you will learn a lot.

From food photography books that are currently available in the market, there is no doubt in my mind that Plate to Pixel book is a must-have. If there was only one food photography book that I had to recommend my friend, it would be this one.

Don’t Take My Word on Plate to Pixel

Just read these 15 reviews on Plate to Pixel. Notice, all the amazon reviewers gave this book a 5 out of 5-star.

Thank you Helene, for sharing so much of your knowledge with us and for creating a resources that is a must-have book.

Did you buy the book?

What did you think about it? What did you like about the book? What else would you like to learn?

How To Learn Food Styling: Interview with Lisa Golden Schroeder

Neel — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 15:30:00 +0000

Food Styling is the most critical element of a stunning food photo and it is also very challenging and tough to learn. In this interview we talk with veteran food stylist and she teaches how you can learn food styling on your own.

Let’s Welcome Lisa Schroeder

Lisa Schroeder is a veteran food stylist and writer with 29 years experience in the food business. Starting out with her own catering business to pay for college, she graduated to promoting food products in corporate test kitchens, doing a stint as a marketing manager for a food company, and working as a food editor and stylist for a cookbook publisher. You can learn more about Lisa by clicking here.

Press play to listen to the interview

[Audio clip: view this post on www.learnfoodphotography.com to listen]

Food Styling with Lisa Schroeder

In this interview, Lisa shares lot of very crucial information on food styling. For anyone who is interested in improving their food photography and styling, this is a must listen. Here’s more on what is included in this interview:

How to start learning food styling ?
Food styling tips for food bloggers ?
Food styling trends and how it has changed ?
Fake food versus real food – do food stylists really use fake food these days?
How to style and shoot boring food?
When to use a straight tweezers and when to use slanted tweezers?

Don’t miss this interview. Press play to listen.

[Audio clip: view this post on www.learnfoodphotography.com to listen]

Selected Photos of Lisa’s Work

Links Discussed in This Interview

John Carafoli’s photography and styling book
Lisa’s website
Conference Website – In the interview Lisa mentions about the upcoming food styling and photography conference. This conference starts on June 24 , 2011.
Conference details

Thank you Lisa

Thank you for your time Lisa. Listeners and Readers can visit Lisa’s website for more amazing information on food styling.

Getting Started with Stock Food Photos: A Food Photographer’s Diary #7

Evi — Sat, 21 May 2011 16:08:27 +0000

This is a guest post series by photographer Evi Abeler. If you would like to write about food photography on learn food photography, visit guest post page to learn more.

Have you been taking a lot of food photos for yourself and not published them? In this post Evi shares with us how you can put those images to good use.

What to do with all these food images?

After 5 months of photographing food I have accumulated quite a collection of images on my hard drives. I was looking for a way to get them out into the world and a friend who works in the stock image industry recommended to submit my unused images to StockFood. I browsed their website and found that they have quality stock photos, a good reputation and professional photographers working for them. I love that they list their photographers and frequently send out image wish lists. You will find quite a few names you might be familiar with on their site. In comparison to Getty or Corbis they are a small and select stock house that takes time to connect with their photographers.

Submission Process

"Sure, why not!" I don’t expect to see a ton of revenue, but another income stream and the additional marketing will be great for me. I sent the StockFood representative a link to my website and they requested a sample submission from me. So, I took a day to clean up and prepare about 50 images and sent them out. The submission guidelines are quite specific. They accepted my submission and I just signed my contract. (Yippee!!!) The copyright stays with me and they have the right to market and license these images worldwide for the next three years in exchange I get 40% of the net revenue. Besides the marketing they will also take care of image editing, data acquisition, key wording in several languages, captioning, customer advice and customer service, order processing, photo dispatch, recipe text production and account settlement.

Images submitted
For my submission I was looking for beautiful images that are not too time or location specific and that represent my style. I submitted a bunch of images from the shot with the Crosstown Bakery, my recent shot with food stylist Laura Knoop as well as some of my own set ups. Here are a few examples:

After I am set up with them I am planning to contact the editor to see what kind of images they think I should work on and will set aside a few days a month to shoot stock. So keep an eye on their portfolio list, soon you’ll find me there on the very top!

Maybe you are considering submitting your images to a stock site as well. Here are two websites I found helpful: Selling Stock, Stock Photo Talk

So long,
Evi

—–

Stock Photography eBook

Nicole Young has written a great eBook on Stock Photography. And its only $5. You can learn more about the eBook here.

——-

Food Photographer’s Diary Series

Here are other posts from Evi’s food photography journey–

Do you have a similar story? Would you like to share your food photography journey on learn food photography? visit guest post page to learn more.

© Evi for Food Photography Tips, 2011. | Permalink | 19 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: business, income, journey, stock

*Learn Food Photography and Food Styling*

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Start With a 30-Day Trial

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