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!