By artificially darkening the corners and edges of images we can direct the viewer’s eye toward the center. The trick is to not overdo it, but to have it be subtle. If you look at an image and think, ‘Oh, darkened corners,’ you’ve most likely gone too far. There are several points along the way where you can employ this trick, but my preference is in Photoshop, after the image has been cropped and the contrast adjusted.

My personal method involved the Quickmask tool and an Adjustment layer. On you image, enter Quickmask mode (Q key command) and select a round paint brush of appropriate size. Then simply mask the majority of the image. Remember this is a mask, not a selection, so the areas you paint will not be affected by the next step.

After you’ve masked the appropriate areas, exit Quickmask mode (Q key command again.) The areas you haven’t masked will now be selected. Add a Curves adjustment layer (Layer, New Adjustment Layer, Curves) and bring the mid-tones down to the appropriate point. I usually use 10% as a good starting point. This is the area where you can go too far if you’re not careful, so take your time.

The great thing about doing this on an adjustment layer as opposed to directly on the image is the ability to edit the curve as well as the layer mask after the fact.

Sometimes we simply have to go with the situation presented to us. Those situations don’t always allow for full control at the time we shoot. But using a number of little techniques and gimmicks can really help a shot pull through.

It may be easiest to start with what this book is not. This book, and the lessons within, will not make you a food stylist. This book will not take work away from stylists. We all know there are times when we don’t have the option of working with a professional stylist, whether due to budget, time or logistical constraints. They will not replace the expertise, talents and skills of a professional food stylist.

They will however allow you to understand and communicate the processes a bit better. They’ll also allow you to perform some limited and relatively small tasks on your own when a food stylist simply isn’t an option.

One of the biggest lessons of this book and of food styling in general is that preparing food for photography is nothing like cooking food for consumption. This seemingly simple sentence is well illustrated and supported in the following 200 or so pages. The book is broken down into food/shot types with a full chapter devoted to each. There are step by step narratives and tips for working with beverages, meats, sandwiches, salads, desserts, veggies and pasta. There’s also a great recipe for fake ice cream on page 168.

In addition to the narrative, step by steps and equipment lists for each shot, there’s also call outs and asides written from a photographers point of view. This book is not about food photography per se, it won’t teach you the basics of food photography. The authors assume a reasonable knowledge of food photography on the reader’s parts – but the insights into the working process of other photographers is always valuable.

I’ve had this book on my shelf for a few months now and it comes down every now and then when I have a particular question about how or why to do something styling related. I had it down just yesterday while planning a quick portfolio shot. It’s not a page turner, and you’ll probably not want to read it cover to cover in one sitting. But if you’re looking for insights and tips and trick of styling this is a good addition to your library.

You can read excerpts from and purchase this book at Amazon by clicking ::amazon(“0240810066″,”here”)::

We eat with all of our senses. Obviously there’s flavor, but there’s also mouth feel, aromas, sights and even sounds associated with some foods. When creating a food photograph, we’re limited to just visual stimulation. And even more restrictive than that, we’re limited to two dimensional visuals. As a result of being limited, we must milk that 2d visual stimulation for all it’s worth. I think of food photography as more of a photo illustration than an objective representation of reality. Food stylists are an important part of this illusion. There are also certain legal and ethical factors to consider when deciding how far to take that illusion. But straight ahead, photography skills and knowledge are still the backbone of a strong food photo.

Composition
A food photo is still a photo, and all of the basic rules that apply to photography apply here. A photo is only successful if it engages the viewer and a bad composition is one sure way to turn off most viewers. As visually astute types, we can usually look at an image and realize that it’s composition is less than perfect, and very often we’re able to look past that. But most of the people in the world don’t see things the way we do, they see something wrong and that’s that. The exception to the composition rule – advertising work. Below are two examples of the same photo for a restaurant client of mine. First, my shot. It’s the one I composed and the one I like and the one I would put in my book. Second, the one I delivered. It’s wide and a closed composition. It’s straight and boring, but it’s versatile. If the art director wants to crop it the way I did, they have that option, but if they need a strong vertical, or a shot with more air around it so they can lay type in, they’ve got that option. If I just deliver my tightly shot version, they’re stuck with what I shoot. Yes I’m giving up a lot of creative freedom here and allowing others to make final decisions on how the photo will look, but this is commerce, not art.

Lighting
Food images, to me at least, are all about texture. The texture of the meat, the texture of that french fry all scream to me. Texture is created by focused, directional lighting, usually from the side or behind. I usually light a scene with multiple grid spots and snoots from various angles to accentuate the texture in desired areas. I personally tend to shun soft light for food photography. It flattens out that texture that I love so much. I’ll usually use a softbox over head, or maybe bounce a head off the ceiling to provide a fill, but that soft fill is usually very low in power. I also use a lot of silver and gold reflector cards to bounce light back into the scene. Exception to the lighting rule – food items with no texture. Some food just doesn’t have any texture (roasted chicken) but it does have shape and color. If you don’t have texture, use shape. Shape is best achieved using, my favorite, soft light. A softbox to one side of a dish with a fill card on the other will usually give a nice definition of shape.

Focus
One look at my portfolio tells a viewer I like selective focus. I always have. It was really in for a while, then it was out, now it’s back in, I expect it will be out very soon. I don’t always employ selective focus techniques but often I will at least try it on a shot. Sometimes it just pulls everything together. Selective focus is often a by product of one of my composition tricks. Get as close as you possibly dare, shoot, then get a little closer. My thinking is that you don’t know you’ve gone far enough until you’ve gone too far. When you get close you tend to lose depth of field and selective focus occurs. Of course modern focus blending techniques have helped alleviate this but aesthetically I like the affect. Exception to the focus rule – commercial work (again.) When shooting for commercial clients I’ll often give them a version that’s sharp front to back and allow them to photoshop in selective focus if desired. Again the idea being that images like this are very often used for a variety of purposes and versatility is key.

Food photography is a very technical and methodical subset of photography. It’s not a shoot from the hip, quick moving discipline. It’s more of the sit down, think it through, spend a few hours lighting and testing and then, almost anti-climatically, shoot. We’re all made different, and if this isn’t your thing that doesn’t make you less of a photographer, the key is to recognize your strengths and talents and use those to your advantage.

Ice Cream.
Working with real ice cream is a pain. It melts very quickly, especially the lite or low fat variety. The higher the fat content in ice cream, the slower it will melt. Also, the first things to go on something like this are the small details and texture of the edges. Food is texture, so once that goes, you’re done.

When possible we like to work with fake ice cream. There are as many recipes for fake ice cream as there are food stylists, but they all are variations on the same theme. Shortening and powdered sugar. I know one stylist who uses margarine instead of shortening, another who uses store bought cake frosting. But if you look at the main ingredient of all three it’s partially hydrogenated vegetable oil (mmm, trans-fats.) The basic recipe I use is…

• 2 cups shortening
• 2 lb’s 10x powdered sugar
• Place the shortening and half of the sugar in a food processor and mix in pulses. Continue to add sugar in small amounts and continually check the texture of the mixture until it gets right. The total amount of sugar needed will vary depending on humidity and temperature. Also, if you over shoot and the mixture is too dry add small amounts of vegetable oil and mix.

Use paste based food coloring or actual food to make the proper color. (ie cocoa, strawberry syrup, etc.) The base recipe (white) is pretty shelf stable and it will keep fairly well.

When you must work with real ice cream there are a few tips that can help. Prepare several hero items, if possible prepare them in a walk-in freezer. Your fingers get cold but the food looks great. Work with a stand in and get things very very close to perfect. Bring out the least perfect of the heroes and shoot. Make any final adjustments and then bring out the next hero in line. Continue working along these lines until you’re out of heroes. If possible use ice packs to cool your shooting surface down prior to bringing out your heroes. A sheet pan stuck into the freezer for 30 minutes will also get very cold and is a great heat sink. Finally and obviously, move fast.

Slush and SnoCones
Ice cream melts fast, a frozen margarita, even faster. Pour a frozen margarita into a glass, and before you’ve set the camera up, it’s starting to separate. Luckily a few options exist to help us. First off, is ice powder. This special effects material is available from a number of photo suppliers, like SetShop. Mix this powder with water and in a few minutes, you’ve got “ice” crystals that will stay stable all day. Mix with food coloring or syrup and you’ve got a frozen drink. I’ve also heard of stylists using SoilMoist. instead of ice powder but I have no experience with this product. If you must work with real product, pre-chilling the glasses can be a big help and of course work fast. Pre-chilled glasses will fog very quickly, usually this is desirable but if it’s not, you’ll need to wipe the glass dry just before shooting to get the condensation off.

Working with cold items presents some special challenges that are easiest overcome with technology and some specialized supplies. Sometimes legal or time restraints can prevent you from using fakes, knowing how and when to work with real food is key.

Food styling by Harry McMann

One of the most fun types of shoots we get asked to do regularly is the pour shot. I personally like the pour shot because it’s technically challenging, visually arresting and sometimes unpredictable.

Keep Dry
As you might imagine, working with flying liquids can present some unique challenges. First and foremost to consider is safety. Everything we work with in the studio is powered by electricity so precautions need to be taken to keep the volts away from the drips. In order to make sure we keep the sensitive equipment at a good distance we’ll build the set and do some test drops of the items before we break out the lights, camera or computer. After a couple of drops we can tell where the flying liquid will land and know where we can safely put the gear. On a couple of occasions we’ve even gone so far as to mark out the area on the floor with gaffer’s tape.

Build the Set
Most of the time you’ll want to build a set for shooting flying liquids. Many of the drop/pour shots we do end up making a big mess. As a precaution we’ll spread plastic drop cloths on the floor before we build the set. Most times we’ll use a plastic fish tank as a shooting tank. In the past we’ve built custom tanks out of plexi sheets but those always take more time to build than you think they will and invariable will spring a leak at some point during the shoot. Also – remember that water is heavy, any shooting platform you use has to be sturdy enough to hold all of that weight. At eight pounds per gallon a 30 gallon tank will weigh 240 pounds.

Timing the drop
When doing drop shots, one of the most challenging aspects can be timing the shutter to properly coincide with the drop. Catching the item at the right time and place is crucial and a bit of specialized equipment makes it much easier and more efficient. A beam breaker or similar electronic trigger can be valuable when working this out. The classic DaleBeam system is great and very comprehensive. Other optical triggers are out there and have all kinds of bells and whistles. Now I like esoteric gear as much as the next photographer, but I also like other things like skiing and fishing and going out with my family. The idea of dropping $1800 (suppliers include KaptureGroup, and phototrap) on a trigger kit that I might use once or twice a year is difficult. If you’re in a major market renting is one option, another is to build your own trigger set. If you’re not afraid of a breadboard and know how to use wire strippers there are a few diy kits available for purchase online. A simple casing from RadioShack and some black tape help clean these up and make them presentable. I’m not saying you’re going to be selling them on Ebay or anything, but they work well and they’re relatively cheap. Also, having a variable digital delay timer is helpful. This will help you dial in the placement of the shot. Of course you can also do in the old fashioned way, manually (1-2-3-drop.) Shooting digitally makes manual drop/shoot much easier.

Freezing Motion
Depending on the type of shot you’re going for, you’ll need to vary the level of motion freeze. Some shot’s you’ll want a bit of motion blur, on others you’ll want to completely freeze the motion. Different models of strobes have different flash durations. Most standard monolight or power pack strobes have a relatively long flash duration (although there are a few brands that have very short durations.) that are not suitable for freezing flying liquids. During the testing phase of our assignment for the fruit splashes shown below we found that our Calumet strobes wouldn’t sufficiently freeze the action, even with the power as low as it would go. (reducing the output reduces the flash duration.) One good solution is to use several on-camera type flash units. While their power is relatively low, using several of them slaved together can overcome that. For the final shots of the fruit splashed shown below we used a combination of 5 Canon 430’s and 580’s.

One of the reasons I like being a food photographer is the control and the detailed nature of the work. Working with moving liquids forces me to give up some of that control – every now and then that’s fun. If you’re going to work with drop shots you need to be ok giving up some of that control and learn to embrace the unpredictable nature of this work. You’ll also need to be able to explain that to your client and your crew. A shoot may take 2 hours, it may take 2 days. Like all things in this job, managing expectations is key.

Pre-production.
Work on a shoot begins long before we even take the camera out of it’s case. A successful shoot starts with good planning. We’ll sit down with the client and talk about what they want to accomplish with the images, how they expect to use them and what they would like the images to look like. We’ll go over the shot list, talk about props, locations and timing. Often one of the most difficult questions to answer for clients is one of visual style. They may be looking for a heavily propped and idealized setting (think Southern Living) or a more pared down simple look, (think Real Simple.) Of course there’s also the entire spectrum in between as well as more avant garde styles to consider. In any event, the discussion on visual style is part of a larger question of branding, which hopefully they’ve already had with their marketing teams.

Shooting.
With the big questions answered in pre-production, the shoot is a snap. Ok, well maybe not a snap but it’s easy. Ok, well maybe not easy, but the point is, we’ve developed a plan during pre-production and now we’re ready to put that plan into action. In addition to the client and the photographer there are usually a handful of other people on site during a shoot. They include”¦

• Food Stylist. The food stylist is the person responsible for making the food physically look appealing to the camera. The photographer handles the lighting, the composition and the final technical details but the food stylist handles the food. Most food stylists are multi-talented and have a whole kit of tricks and tools to make the food look it’s best. Food styling is a profession and it’s beyond the scope of a simple paragraph here to outline everything they do, but let it suffice to say that a good food stylist is an indispensable part of the team.

• Food Styling Assistant. Usually on the crew for larger productions. My food stylist is great but he can only be in one place at a time.

• Prop Stylist. A prop stylist is responsible for acquiring the props and other decorative items and placing them onto the set as needed. Just like food styling, decorative or prop styling are professions onto themselves and can make or break a shoot.

• Photographers Assistant. The photo assistant helps me adjust lighting, moves items onto and off of the set, and if there’s no digital technician on the job will help operate the computer.

• Digital Technician. On larger jobs we will bring in a digital technician to operate the computer during the shoot. Since everything we shoot is digital, a trained tech is invaluable in running the software and managing the huge amounts of data that can accumulate during the course of the day.

• Photo Intern. During the summer months and sometimes year round we like to have an intern in house. Interns here are like interns everywhere. They basically get to hang around, watch the world go by and learn from the experience of everyone on the team. In exchange for this learning experience they will often run out and get everyone coffee.

Of course not every job needs the full crew. Sometimes it’s just the photographer, food stylist and the assistant. Whatever the needs, have it covered.

Typically the food stylist will prepare what’s called a dummy. This is simply a stand-in plate of food that represents what the final or “hero” item will look like. We’ll use the dummy to set composition, rough lighting and accessories on the set while the stylist is hard at work preparing the hero. (I know many food photographers prefer to use a very rough dummy as opposed to actual food. Often clients can experience what’s sometimes called “dummy love.” Dummy love is what we call it when, after working with the dummy on set for so long, we begin to really like how it looks. When the hero comes out, we’re so used to looking at the dummy, we’re disappointed. Using a VERY rough stand in, like my brown leather wallet, instead of a steak, helps avoid dummy love.) After we’re happy with the light and the composition, and the stylist is happy with the hero we’ll swap them out and begin final tweaks. Food often has a very small window in which you must shoot before it begins to look dull and well, old. We’ll make sure were almost there with the stand-in, that way once the hero comes out we can make final adjustments and then capture the winner very quickly. We’ll typically shoot a wide variety of variations on the same shot but slightly adjusting the camera position and props throughout the shoot.

This process of course takes some time. It’s not unusual for us to spend three hours or so on one shot. We’ve also spent 2 days on one shot (although that’s not typical.) The amount of time involved per shot will vary greatly from job to job. During the pre-production process we’ll discuss this with the client and make sure everyone understands what’s going to happen and when. Clients can often have a lot of down time so it’s a good idea to encourage them to bring their laptop with them, or have other distractions for them while they’re at your studio (think wii.)

Post-Production

Every recipe needs that last little item to finish it off. Every outfit needs that accessory to tie it all together. Every image needs a little tweak to bring it to it’s best. Most jobs require some help after the shoot to make everything come together. Sometimes it’s simple adjustments. Other times it’s a team collaboration between digital artists, the photographer and the clients. It’s here that we’ll also prepare the file for final output.

As I’ve said, this is typical for a corporate or advertising shoot, editorial shoots run a bit differently but many of the issues and processes are the same.

Steve Buchanan is a commercial and editorial photographer based in Maryland. His work can be seen at http://www.buchanan-studios.com