Food Office by Shiva

As a food photographer, we must shoot the food immediately. They changed just a minute and become a ghastly picture. So, quickly shoot them. These photos are the example.

I shot a piece of biscuit and a glass of cappuccino. I drew a love shape on top with cocoa powder. I focused my camera to the love shape on top of the cappuccino. It looks lovely I think. Here it is…

Then, I busied to explore other angle. Minute to minute, the love shape was vanishing. The cocoa powder drown and became one with the liquid.  If the food has changed, the only one trick that we can do is just explore other angle, don’t focus your camera to the changed food.

Here are the example. I changed the focus to the biscuit. Get it close up, and make the cappuccino as the support background. If I compelling to focus my camera to the cappuccino, trust me it would be a ghastly picture because the cocoa powder was disgusting.

So, you must be quickly shoot them before they changed. You can also explore other angle and don’t show us if the food has changed.

 Honestly, this idea came from Angger’s head. He went to his kitchen and brought me this spices. Fortunately, his mother has a classic old style chopping board and a stone pestle, ( I don’t know what its name in English exactly but in Indonesia we usually call it ‘ulekan’)

There are some chilies, cabbages, garlic, onion, salt, and the things that drizzled around is coriander, one of the condiment family. I arranged them on a classic old style chopping board and added a stone pestle as the background.

I didn’t add any lighting by flash lamp, I just relied on the natural light here. To support the concept, I think the properties are suitable. The spices usually used in Indonesian food, they are so common and feasible to bought. Except the coriander, I think its common in Asian food, in European food, it is rare enough to be used.

I shot them in two angles, first from 0 degree angle, and another one from bird’s eye angle. In my humble opinion, it’s good at 0 degree angle, because I think it’s more vivid. We can see the dimension and the light partition.

Here I used f (aperture) 8.0, shutter speed 1/80, and ISO 800. that’s why this picture looks darkish and not flat I think. There is no special technique here, I didn’t use flash lamp, just relied on the natural light. But the properties are very foster to support the concept. It’s ethnic, to acquire this concept well, so take the classic old style kitchen ware, don’t use silver ware or glass ware, they are suitable for futuristic, simplicity, or elegant concept. But if you want to use the wooden ware, it’s convenient too!

Dududu....! let’s play with layered cakes. These photos are the example of layered cakes. Honestly, I didn’t make that cake by my self, but I bought it done. I bought 4 packs of soft cakes, they are all different flavor, products, and color.

The bottom one is pandanus flavor. Bottom two, is chocolate flavor. On third layer, is cheese flavor, and the top one is black chocolate flavor. I bought them in a mini market, very instant... hahah... To beautified the food, I drizzled coffee powder around the plate. It makes the picture more vivid I think.

When we could choose layered concept? I think the answer is, when the object, in here is food, has layers to show the delish. Like a slice of layered cake, we shoot it from 0 degree angle to show viewers the layers. Food photographer must know what is the key of the delicious from the food.

I think layered cake look so delicious if we shoot the layers, it will show us the components, the structure, texture and surface of the cake. But it doesn’t matter if you want to shoot layered cake from bird’s aye angle, it’s not a sin anyway. This one could be the example.

I used layered concept in another photo. These wafers are the example. Actually my boy, Angger, taught me and gave me this idea. I didn’t find a good angle before. I shot the wafers from bird’s eye angle but actually that was not a brilliant picture. Then he gave me an idea to stack the wafers. And here they are. The picture looks nice in layered concept. Don’t stack it straight up, but make it lil’ messy. I think it’s better. Say thanks to my boo, Angger. J

Last week I felt I lost my spirit to do my hobby, food photography. I didn’t know why but I felt so heavy to work with my camera and my foods. I discussed to my boy and order a solution of my problem.

I actually disappointed with my photos, they are look not so brilliant, they are look very bad in my opinion. I thought I was not suitable in food photography and unable, never be able to be a professional food photographer. I looked all of my pictures in my laptop. Nothing good for me. I thought I didn’t have any talent in photography.

But I was wrong. Angger told me that every photographer ever feels the same thing like me. They reach the success from efforts they did before. The way is not feasible even very hard to passed. They ever felt when their pictures were insulted by people. They were nothing without efforts.

Success requires totality, sacrifices, and efforts. You must understand that the path to obtain success is not easy to passed. There must be very vast painful experiences while you passing the path. You have to learn more from your painful experiences.

So, to get back your spirit, maybe you can do these things:

Don’t worry if you just have one food, you can make any concepts from just one food. For example, these are my photos. I had a pack of cookies and I used two concepts for this time. One, the cookies in the afternoon, and another one the cookies in the morning.

How about the property? Can we use it twice or more? The answer is, absolutely you can! These photos are the examples. I used a bottle of beer named Bisquit as the background in donut picture. And I used a bottle of beer named Baileys  as the point of interest in another picture. Actually, the both of that beer bottle are different, but they are still beer bottles. They are same. So, don’t be hesitate to use your properties twice or more, just take it with differences angle or concepts.

If you don’t have any flash lamp or you just don’t understand how to set the light, just rely on natural light from sun. Me, as a newbie in photography, I’m not good at setting the light so I rely on natural light though. But next time I will try to learn about setting the light using flash and reflector.

You must know the mood of light if you wanna use natural light. Sometimes it’s cloudy, or even very bright in the afternoon. Let’s see these examples.

I shot the honey nut photo around 9 am, while the sun shine bright enough, but still soft and smooth. And the cookies one, I shot them around 11.30 am, while the light from sun too harsh. Can you see the differences between these photos?

The honey nut, looks more dramatic and soft lightning and the cookies one looks more pale (besides, the napkin I used has a pale color). Actually there are many solutions for this problem. You can use a reflector and a study lamp. But our topic is, just rely on natural light.

From that examples, I recommend to take a photo in the morning if you just rely on natural light. But if the weather is cloudy, just heighten your ISO on your camera. You can choose winter concept if the weather is cloudy.