Finding Your Visual Voice - BlogherFood '11

This is Day 2 of BlogHerFood. I'm in a photography session about Finding your Visual Voice. Three professional food photographers are speaking: Aran Goyoaga, Stephanie Shih, and Tami Hardeman.

Each did a presentation on their philosophy.

Aran Goyoaga - Food Stylist:

•  accidentally deleted all that I captured from this part of the session. :(
• Key points: Make garnishes look like they just fell there.
• I use daylight for my food shots. Love early morning for travel, farm, or kid shots.
• Use my macro lens primarily.
• I often use the same surfaces on my blog. I get criticized for that. But as a blogger, I think it's so lovely to show the surfaces you live with. Makes food more personal. Makes blog more personal.
• Bruised, natural fruit can be beautiful.
• If shooting natural light, the second floor of my home gets the best effects.
• Think of the season and the different moods you want to impart in the picture on the season.
• Build height with garnishes. Add texture with props.
• Copy other's pictures to grow with your work.
• Learn the light in your life. Learn the manual settings of your camera.
• Practice, practice, practice.
• When shooting meat, cut into eat, let the juices run, make it natural. 
• When you take a photo and divide it into 3, your eye goes to the second third. Make sure what you want your readers to see is in the second third. Also, your eye naturally drifts to the right. 
• Don't shoot in direct light. Filter it through parchment paper, cheap sheers, or screens.

 Tami Hardeman - Running with Tweezers

• When I shoot something for my blog, it takes me 15 minutes. And i shoot what I eat. Completely different than how I shoot on set.
• I fight my professional instinct to sort through three pounds of strawberries to find the perfect one. 
• I started with a point and shoot.
• Looks like crap, tastes like delicious is something you sometimes have to accept.  
• Don't get caught up in the fact that you don't have expensive dishes.
• Love how Jamie Oliver is shooting his food. So natural.
• Canvas ceramics plates are my new obsession.
• I get obsessed with napkins. I will literally think of foods that go with napkins I love. Play with the props that you do have. 
• Great cheap prop surface: unpainted shelves from Ikea that you can sand and paint any color you want.

Stephanie Shih - (@shihbakes)

• When I first started out doing food photography, I needed some dessert shots for my clients. I thought of it as an exercise. It shows in my pictures. They have no personality.
• AVOID THE TILT!
• Don't strive to be on foodgawker. Strive to be an artist.
• SCENE: mood, feeling, emotion, moment. Strive to pull the reader into the photograph. 
• Character. Food talks to me. I try to put who I am on an image.
• I want every blog post to be a distinct moment. My images make it clear when each scene in the moment transitions to the next, without my readers having to look at the words.
• Find a Mentor. The biggest impacts on developing my visual voice was finding one. Doesn't have to be a food photographer. Just bug them with questions. 
• Learn your lighting. Play with it. Understand shadows.
• Learn Dark. Get yourself a black foam core board.
• When using your manual setting, always use manual focus on your camera.