Let There Be Light

For the last year or so, I've been working on my food photography, practicing, collecting tools, and getting lots of great advice from beautiful photographers, but the only pictures that came out really stunning were those taken in the light of day. As I spend most of my day running after my kids, I ended up with a lot of food pics with a yellow glow.

Nothing looks good bathed in the angry yellow glow of my kitchen at night.

One night I tweeted that I was seriously considering buying a $100 Ego light and Marc from No Recipes chimed in to save me money and give me great advice. "All you need is a daylight bulb," he said, "it's what I use." Have you seen Marc's work? His photography is so filled with light, you would never know that he takes most of his shots at night because of his day job. I rushed to Amazon to get my hands on one of these magical bulbs.

This week, for the bargain price of $9, I found something that gives me gorgeous daylight long after the kids have gone to bed.

My secret weapon is nothing more fancy than a lightbulb, a massive phallic-looking thing that magically fits in the socket of a cheapo Ikea desk lamp. It's an Alzo 85 Watt CFL full-spectrum lightbulb. There are a few different brands of these daylight CFL bulbs and the key is to look for a high Kelvin number with a regular sized socket and a reasonable price. This particular bulb emits 5500 Kelvin of light, but some bulbs go as high as 10,000 Kelvin.

This squash finally gets its time to shine thanks to my new daylight bulb!

It's like magic. One minute, you have this ridiculous looking contraption, and the next minute, once you flip the switch, everything in the bulb's vicinity is bathed in a gorgeous soothing white. They sell these bulbs for depression therapy as well and I totally see why. The world is more beautiful in pure daylight.

Happy Wordful, Five Minutes Wordless, Wordless, and Way-back wednesday.

Getting the Best Food Photos in your Home: BlogHer Food Session 1

My first sesssion at BlogHer Food was given by Diane Cu and Todd Porter, authors of the White on Rice Couple blog, professional food photographers, and authors of two cookbooks coming out next year. Their photography is so beautiful, they would be easy to hate, if they weren't so down to earth and open, eager to share all they know to help others progress.

I'll summarize this session here, and you can also get some valuable tips on their website which still has their early not-so-good beginning pics.

1. Think before you shoot. Don't go for the lucky shot. You should be able to take 10 pictures and have 7 good ones. Decide the feel you want, the props you want to use. Before you pick up the camera, assess your environment, and only when you know what you want to achieve, begin to shoot.
2. Expensive gear is not important. You can take a great shot on a $100 camera, and a poor shot with a $1000 camera. Practice, practice, practice before you buy.
3. Be Dynamic with your light source. Where are you relative to the Light Source? Decide whether you want harsh, diffused, or shaded effects then move to get that light. Photography is all about how light falls on your subject. A 12 o'clock light (from behind subject) will give you a light, airy, dreamy look (Todd calls it "girlie"). A 9 o'clock from the side lighting will give you a dark, foreboding feel. A 6 o'clock shot with the light straight on will remove the shadows. 4 or 3 o'clock will be fresh and dewy. Play around with light, really experiment with it. Test yourself by looking in magazines and blogs and seeing where the light came from for that shot. 
4. Shadows are not your enemy. They give life to the shot, tell a story, give it depth.
5. Don't Fill the Shot too much. Use both positive and negative space. Draw the viewer's eye to your subject. Don't be afraid to put the subject to the side, using the rule of thirds to know where the energy in the shot is.
6. Be Prepared with a little photography mise en place. Choose your props and setting before you take the cobbler or the souffle out of the oven.
7. Know your best light source - Look for the light in your home, don't limit yourself to the kitchen. If your bathroom gets great morning light, use it! And move anything, from pets to kids, to get good light.
8. A few incredibly useful tools to buy at Home Depot: Black and White Foam Core to act as backgrounds and light bouncers, simple clamps to hold them up, slate tiles to act as bases. All of these cost under $10. Don't buy them at photo shops.
9. You can even use light at night and in low light restaurants. Use napkins to bounce light. Use sheets or white pieces of paper to shield lightbulbs. 

Later tonight, I'll fill in this post with some pictures and diagrams. This session was incredibly valuable for me. I can't wait to play around with light in my shots.

Making the Grade in Food Photography

I feel most alive when I'm learning something new. I love a challenge, even when I struggle, or fail. My mother once told me that there's always something to be learned no matter what you're doing. At the time, I was crying to her about my high school summer job making collections calls for a credit card company in France.

I felt alive during that brief, brutal period in high school when I tried out for the girls' ice hockey team (I was thankfully cut before breaking any bones), I felt alive during those terrifying sleepless nights when I first became a mom, and I've felt electrified for the last year that I've been learning about food photography.

Learning doesn't mean excelling (especially on the ice), and that's definitely been the case for my food photography. I'm still struggling to make the shot in my head appear through my lens. Last night for example, I read a wonderful post on the Pioneer Woman's blog about aperture. She made it seem so easy, but today everything came out blurry. But I'm still trying, snapping away, and learning as I shoot and erase.

In a few months, I'm headed to food blogger camp in California to learn a whole lot more about food blogging and food photography. They've asked us to submit our rejections from the Tastespotting website. I'm scared of being held up as an object of ridicule, but this is a chance to improve. What's a few seconds of embarrassment if I can learn?

I'll be sharing the pictures above. The first was rejected for blurriness. The second for composition. Just one word answers when I could have used more explanation. I thought they were good... but they didn't. Soon I'll know why.

Happy Wordful, not so Wordless and Way-back wednesday! 


And click here if you want to see the one picture that did get accepted!