Plate to Pixel
Page 13
f/2.8, ISO 640, 24-70mm L
Oh, one important last thing. When shooting frozen foods that melt quickly, it’s important that you’re ready to snap as soon as the food is set. I recommend getting ready for capture by using stand-in items to set up your frame and composition. To ensure your preparation is accurate, try to use stand-ins that are the exact same colors as the stuff you’ll actually shoot.
If it’s vanilla ice cream, crumple some white paper towels in the cone or cup. If you’re going to shoot mango sorbet, use paper of a similar color. Set the white balance and exposure according to your practice setup and maximize your time with the real stuff.
Use an ice cream stand-in to adjust styling before capture.
f/3.5, ISO 250, 100mm Macro L
Replace the ice cream stand-in with the real thing before finalizing styling.
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Some people use an empty setup to prepare. And while this allows time to finalize the composition, it doesn’t help you get your camera settings ready.
Pick Garnishes
From the feedback I get when I teach workshops, it seems that soup is one of the foods that people struggle with most when preparing for a photograph. So let’s look at a recipe for Cream of Celery Soup. At first glance, it seems like it will end up looking one shade of green without much texture. Will it?
Cream of Celery Soup
Prep & Cooking Time: 30 minutes
1 lb fresh celery or celery root
1 medium Russet (or other starchy) potato
2 Tbsp unsalted butter
1 medium onion, peeled and roughly chopped
1 clove garlic, peeled and crushed
A couple sprigs each: rosemary, thyme, parsley
5-6 springs fresh chives
1 qt vegetable stock or white stock
Salt and pepper to taste
Cut celery into half-inch to one-inch thick pieces, depending on diameter.
Peel the potato and cut it into pieces about the same size as the celery.
In a heavy-bottomed soup pot, heat the butter over low-to-medium heat. Add the onion, garlic and celery and cook for 2-3 minutes or until the onion is slightly translucent, stirring more or less continuously. Add the fresh herbs.
Add the stock and the potato.
Increase the heat to medium-high and bring to a boil. Then lower the heat and simmer for 15 minutes or until the celery and potatoes are soft but not mushy.
Remove from heat and purée in a blender, working in batches if necessary. Return puréed soup to pot and bring to a simmer again, adding more broth or stock to adjust the thickness as necessary.
Season to taste with Kosher salt and white pepper.
Serve with slices of crusty French bread if desired.
As I started reading this recipe, I made a mental note of all the herbs going in the soup and thought about which ones I might set aside for garnish. This process has become automatic for me over time, because it is really the easiest first step for styling. And since, when I was first reading the recipe, I did not yet know how the final dish would taste, I saved some of each herb. I knew I wouldn’t necessarily use all of them, but I needed to wait to see which ones would taste most prominent in the final dish.
I tend to do the same thing with spices. I make a note to set aside some of the whole form of spices—like whole black pepper, coarse salt, whole cumin seeds and cinnamon sticks—to use as natural props. They don’t always work in the final composition, but whole spices are very convenient to have on hand.
From the ingredient list of a recipe, pick out a few options you might be able to use as garnish for the final dish.
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And these natural props serve a dual purpose. Showing them allows you to visually tell a viewer what ingredients/ spices/ herbs are in the dish—which might be helpful if (s)he has no clue what a whole cumin seed looks, for instance. They also give you quick styling tools that don’t require much fuss.
I took a few pictures of the soup without the bread and with only minimum props. Although it worked fine, I felt there was something missing. My aunt had written on the recipe Serve with slices of crusty French bread for a reason. It’s how we always ate soup in our family. We also always added a dollop of sour cream to our soups, because they would be served scortching hot. Sour cream was a delicious and easy way to cool them down.
So already, I had two natural elements to enhance my picture, and they spoke truth about my family traditions. Since I was imagining a casual Sunday supper as the background story for the soup, I simply added two water glasses … as if we were just about to dig in.
Styling begins with just a few items.
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This is the final shot, created after another read of the recipe and the addition of ingredients. Some very basic props tie it all together.
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One thing I had to address was the reflection in the spoon of the tripod and camera, which were positioned overhead. I simply changed my camera viewpoint and that problem was gone. When I sent the image to my mother, she emailed back instantly, “That reminds me of Sunday suppers when you were a kid.” Bingo! Mission accomplished.
It’s all about making mental notes. You move from being the cook and eater to also being the photographer and stylist. It’s much like cooking for someone special, when you pay a little more attention to your gestures. Plating and serving a special dish for a special occasion deserve a bit more care. It’s not about mettre les petits plats dans les grands, as we say in France (“pulling out the finest china”), but about focusing more on taking a plate from “Looks good!” to “Wow! Look at that!”
Create a Scene
When listening to photographers recount their struggles with composing and styling, I most often end up asking them the same question: What is the story behind this dish? Right away, their eyes light up and they emit an enthusiastic explanation, like:
Oh! That’s the dish my mom used to make for my birthdays when I was a child.
This is my grandmother’s famous apricot pie.
This is the dish I ordered on my first date with my husband.
The simple act of verbalizing the inspiration of a dish gives direction to the composing and styling process. So if you decide to photograph a rendition of grandma’s famous tart as a deconstructed modernestic fusionistic plated dessert, then you probably don’t want to take the rustic, nostalgic route. You get the idea.
In the picture on the right, my goal was to describe a breakfast scene as they happen at our house on lazy Sunday mornings. There’s bread, butter, jam and coffee. At first, I considered a little fancier setting—a white tablecloth and finer china—but that’s not us. Our table would never look like that on a casual Sunday, so I went with dishes that we use on a daily basis … and my favorite wooden background.
This image re-creates a typical Sunday morning at home.
f/3.5, ISO 250, 24-70mm L
There will be plenty of times when the occasion dictates the setup, as in the picture below (left). I really wanted to bake my husband a birthday cake. I wanted to recognize the bridge between getting a year older and being a kid at heart. After pondering how to incorporate that idea in one shot, I decided to keep the styling of the cake minimal and use a monochromatic tone. I added a little splash of color and whimsy with some cute straws in small milk bottles.
If shooting in natural light, it’s especially important to make full use of the quality of the light. Let the mood of the light guide your styling. In the picture of the rhubarb tart, for example, (bottom right) I wanted to convey the mood of a casual moment spent having a bite of dessert on a stormy afternoon. The un-styling of the food and the props … combined with the unusual quality of the light, which was strong in shadows and highlights and featured tones of grey and silver … was perfect for portraying a casual scene. The only post processing I did to this photo was to desaturate the colors
slightly. Ahh, a perfect stormy day with nowhere to go and nothing to do but dig in and enjoy.
The birthday boy is a kid at heart. Accessories set the scene.
f/3.5, ISO 320, 24-70mm L
This scene is all about having a bite of dessert while staying away from the storm outside.
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Don’t worry, it’s not always so deep. There are times when I just cook something because it looks good and I want to make it for my family. If it’s good, I like to tell my blog readers about it. No family history, no first date story, no birthday celebration to anchor the dish is required. Yet I always try to think of how I would want to serve food if my friends were coming to share it with us. Would I want to keep it casual? Make it elegant by pulling out my finest china? Is it a fancy-tea kind of dessert or a minimalist one?
I start that process as I’m cooking. Actually, sometimes I start thinking about styling my food as I’m shopping for ingredients. Never too early …
I baked the fig tarts in the picture on the right completely on a whim. No auntie with a great tart recipe, no romantic dinner plans on the horizon. I just saw these tiny figs at the market one day and thought they were too sexy to pass on. Yes. I don’t know why sexy came to mind, but it stuck to me pretty much the whole time I was baking the tarts. So when time came to compose and style these tarts for a photo, I picked a simple setting but kept everything on an intriguing side—dark wood, glistening balsamic vinegar and reassuring touches of blues, greens and whites. Much like seduction, this setup plays with what is familiar as well as what is not.
Setting up for a date night …
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There are times, as a photographer/ stylist, when your job for a particular assignment is to capture someone else’s dishes. The job is to make the food look appetizing while staying true to the idea behind each dish. There will be times when you find yourself in someone else’s home, relying on the information they share to make styling decisions.
By establishing a rapport with the person who made a dish, you’ll hear messages that will help you make good choices for the assignment. Ask about the origins of the recipe, such as the country or era. This might help you pick out props and linens that the family already has and that tie the picture to the story it’s telling. Is it a family recipe? Is there is an interesting story around it? Who knows, maybe it accompanied a marriage proposal, which may lead to a romantic setting for the photo. Perhaps it became a family tradition that you could portray—a vintage feel or a holiday mood.
Here’s to summertime and Sunday suppers back home!
f/4.5, ISO 100, 100mm Macro L
These kinds of questions will help you create a setup that enhances the food. Probing into the history and stories of a dish will help you understand why it’s important for the person cooking it. And this enables you to translate the emotional language of the photograph.
Show and Tell
Mood and story intertwine intimately when styling food. Whether you have a strong—or zero—attachment to the food being pictured, your styling will become much more organic and natural … picturesque … if you take just five minutes to think about the story you want to convey and the mood of it. Trust me, there is always a story to tell with a dish, even if it is somewhat boring. I’m serious. The story could simply be: This dish was delicious, and you should consider making it.
Indeed, it’s never just about the food. As a photographer who creates images of food, you become part of the story.
In the picture on the left, I was going for a summer feel … when everything seems light and simple. I was visiting my parents back home in France, and it was just another Sunday supper. Nothing fancy, nothing different. So I used what my mother had available to set up this photograph. I rummaged through her linen closet to find colors that worked well with the oranges and yellows of the dessert. But that is the only executive decision I took regarding the styling. And, yes, I brought that vintage tart pan back to the US with me, but that’s the story of a prop stylist!
Sometimes, you’ll receive a recipe with some basic instructions for propping and camera angles ... and instructions to “Make it look good!” I remember working on a magazine feature that focused on easy weekday dinners. One of the recipes was for a pork and vegetable chili. The styling started out really bare … with virtually no garnish and just some touches of blue to offset the oranges in the chili. (I will go over that color thing in the latter part of this chapter.)
A simple change in props can change the mood in an image from classic to rustic, even when featuring the same recipe. Here, and above, it’s chili.
f/3.5, ISO 160, 24-700mm L
f/3.5, ISO 160, 100mm Macro L
That was really too bare—even though the message was simple supper ideas. So I took a look at the possible garnishes and decided to add some sour cream on top along with a sprinkle of the cumin seeds and a few sprigs of cilantro. Basically, I used ingredients in the recipe to make the image more appetizing.
Since I didn’t know how casual or minimalist the art director wanted this to be, I took one final shot that was one level closer to minimal. It was a crisp, clean look that focused exclusively on the chili. All other color was removed. So which picture do you think they kept? They actually asked for both, because they each worked in a different way.
Feature the Dish
Photography is a constant stream of decision-making moments. Everything you do to create a shot—whether you’re a blogger, foodie, pro photographer, cook or whatnot—brings together the scene you capture when you press the shutter button. So when making decisions about exposure, ISO, white balance, composition, camera angle and styling, always be sure to make the food the main element of the picture. After all, it’s not about the objects surrounding it.
But, obviously, if your photograph centers on your grandmother’s casserole dish, the actual cookware might be an integral part of the story. Just be sure to use props that help you set the scene. They should be the supporting cast for the food’s leading role.
Props
In addition to making full use of the ingredients in a recipe by using them to style a dish, props can enhance the overall look of a photograph. Sometimes, the nature of the dish you’re photographing will lend itself to the style of props you’ll use. A plate of wings and a glass of beer rarely call for your grandma’s silverware, unless your grandma ate wings that way. See where I am headed?
This shot of Pain au Chocolat with a milk bottle and coffee cup shows a minimal use of props.
f/3.5, ISO 200, 100mm Macro L
Your favorite bistro dish, let’s say Croque Monsieur and a side salad, matches a simple, restaurant style and goes well with white plates and simple flatware. But if you’re plating your kids’ favorite macaroni and cheese recipe, you’ll probably want to add some color. Find a touch of whimsy in a cute napkin, a favorite Flintstone tumbler, or another fun prop of this type. Help viewers of your photograph relate to the dish you’re featuring by finding props that match its style.
No matter what kind of prop shopper you are—and whether or not you even like propping—when you look at your composition before capture, ask yourself if you’re seeing the food or the props. And be honest. Think about props like makeup. The more you put on, the more people focus on that and the less they see of you.
When beginning the prop-selection process, start with one or two pieces. Maybe go with your favorite plate and glass and a pair of vintage flatware that will work well with the dish. Consider a bottle of wine to break up composition and lines. Then take a step back and reassess.
Some people really enjoy the propping part of food photography and seem to do it naturally. It’s often a game of Try & See. For others, it seems to be the most difficult part. My best advice is to follow the story you’re trying to convey. The rest will fall into place. And if you’re really struggling with what to add in terms of props to set the mood, just keep it simple. Ad
d a splash of color, a fun spoon or fork, a textured plate … and keep your focus on the ingredients.
A simple salad off to the side in complementary colors helps keep the focus on the main item, the quiche.
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I get the same two questions regarding props. They are:
• What are some good basic props to start with?
• Where do you find your props?
And I say, simple plates and flatware are always a good start, especially if you’re on a budget. You can’t go wrong with whites and pastels. Strong colors are a bit more tricky to work with. I have basic white bistro plates, and I have others with scalloped edges; but I tend to prefer matte whites and pastels, because they help reduce the amount of glare that’s produced by the light.
I also have a few colorful pieces that I sometimes use in certain compositions to break lines or add another point of interest. Colorful bowls, polka dots, flower plates … these are great for certain shots, but be sure to ask yourself whether patterns and textures are highlighting your food or hiding it.
There are lots of options for cupcake wrappers and other baking accessories to keep styling fun.
f/3.5, ISO 400, 100mm Macro L
Fun accessories are good for certain setups. But you don’t have to collect a crateful of them. A few select pieces can make a picture really pop. Fun straws are easy to find and add a whimsical touch. Cupcake wrappers never stop with fun new designs.