Lessons

Lesson Info

Natural Light Food Shoot Prep

So we are gonna be doing an actual photo shoot, I'm gonna have Molina on food styling. I'm gonna have Jack on Digi Tech in so I don't lose my images. He is also in charge of doing and Capture One. He is in charge of getting the white balance of doing basic color corrections that I know are gonna be global that are gonna go from image to image and Capture One has a knack you can say, "This is how I want the images from here and how to look." I will give you a big warning about that though. I love Capture One, but if you start to knock down highlights, or if you start to adjust too much about your photo and it translates from one image to another, you'll actually have blown out highlights and not even know it. 'Cause you've got the highlight meter knocked down and it looks great to you, so try not to do too much beforehand is that fair to say? Yeah, I'm always very careful when I'm doing adjustments in capture because you don't want to end up in a situation where you're tweaking your l...

ights because you forgot that you had made a change in your settings. So you might knock your highlights down a couple points in capture because that's the only way to get it. But you have to be really sure that you track that you did that so when you move to your next shot and change your lights, that you don't start from a position where you're trying to overdo your highlights with the lights because you knocked them down and post. So you just gotta track what you do and not fight yourself. Thank you, Jack. I did a very editorialesque here and said, I looked at this this morning I'm like, "That's not gonna work." The blender is gonna be too high, I wanna make sure and have a good variety of things to show you as far as how to style and how to place. But we decided to go a route where we're gonna do sort of a semi breakfast lunch scene, where we're gonna have some juice and some peanut butter and jelly. And it's gonna look really graphical and we're just gonna kind of, we're gonna work the scene from start to finish. Whereas this is gonna be sort of set in stone and I'm gonna force myself to stay with that direction, regardless of what happens. 'Cause I don't know what's gonna happen. I have no clue. I haven't shot like this before. I've never put a light inside of an oven like this before. It's always been either a cutout or... So we're gonna mess up. We're gonna look ridiculous and we're gonna kind of hopefully overcome that and kind of show you that mistakes are part of the process. You sort of get a frame that you're happy with and they say, how can we just push this further and further and further until you start to see diminishing returns on the way, on your how yours sets behaving. If the food is staying fresh or you know, how things are looking. So we're gonna get going we just kind of gathered a bunch of props. So when you get, when you have an idea for an imagery, you get somebody who wants you to create an image, you kind of, you speak to your prop stylist, food stylist, you think of the gear of the lens you're gonna need, what angle this is gonna be shot at, right now I'm running a 45 millimeter. I was tempted to do a 25 mil, but it really pushed everything out on the table. It almost looked like it was being warped like you know. So I went for a 45, you can still see things kind of curl out so you can see the sides of things which I really like . If everything is just too flat, if you have an 85 millimeter and you're just going right down on it, it's hard to see the sides of things a lot. So in the middle it's very flat and you'll see things kind of curl out a little bit. So you can see the side of the glass and not just the top, it's not exaggerated, but you can see it. So the, I think we should just get started and see what happens. And I urge you and people online to kind of either call us out on stuff that you see, ask questions find out 'cause we're just gonna be doing this for the first time. So this particular set and not my first time photographing, so ask questions along the way if you see something you don't understand or would like to know more about or a piece of gear or technique or a suggestion, blurt them out will respond on demand And I'll tell you one of the things I've discovered recently my go to light and set up for especially for conceptual splash, is two strip lights on each side backed off a little bit. And then sort of like a white field card in the front to bring white into everything. I don't do a top down very often, which is very common for splash work because you don't wanna get splashes into your soft boxes. I don't care, I throw it at them, they get messy, but I love that edge lighting. And then I've also been doing lighting where I edge the front of it. We're using the strip lights. So I get all the texture on this splash and this applies to even food. It doesn't have to be a splash, but then another light coming in from behind, so you're having, the translucent nature of the liquids really kinda glow, but also the front is being edged out by two lights and you see all the beautiful texture. So you get the best of both worlds, so we're always messing around and trying new stuff, seeing if it works, it usually doesn't. But when it does, it really works. So let's get started, let's go over the digital tech station. So we've got, we took a base image of the overhead. We have a camera mounted, I use a Nova flex ball head, not for any particular reason. I know everyone uses really right stuff and I'll get to it, when I was doing panoramic photography, this allows you, it's just a really robust well made, they're both really well made. But it allows me to kind of go up and down the rail here. And this macro focusing rail allows me to make my new adjustments both in framing and focus if I want. So if I zoom in closer the focus moves along with it. So this one, this is a 45 millimeter, I think we're, two seconds. What do we have on the exposure time here? Exposure will add about one two and a half so in the second ish, (laughs) It really awkward and we're f? Where at f 19, 19. f 19 a little bit shallower than that's getting crazy for me. So, and especially with overhead stuff, I love everything to be completely unfocused. So when you're doing, if you have stuff that's really tall, like the one we were gonna have, I would back this off even further and I would give, because we have a higher resolution camera we can back off and then crop in. And especially with splash work, I do this. I don't frame at exactly how I want it. I give myself a little bit of breathing room, so you're not absolutely locked into anything. So when you have a tripod this high and you don't have a camera stand like in a home, the ceilings are a little lower than this not much, you don't want this massive camera stand rolling around. So having a good tripod that is not only just fun it's a good thing to have 'cause when you do photography that's not food you'll bring it out, you'll travel with it, You'll do a lot of things. But if you can stand it all the way out and then you tilt it all the way down and then I have this shifted so that I'm getting, like I said earlier the center of the table, and what I'll actually do is I'll get on a ladder and I'll look through the viewfinder, I'll pre-focus to where my hero is gonna be, which is usually a little bit higher than the plate. And then I'll go and focus on that and then make sure that I don't have to go to the camera again. 'Cause what you don't wanna do is have to go up and down, up and down refocus, so I'll pull the ladder away so not tripping over it and then I'll just leave this be. This is no longer, of any use to me. This is just a camera on a stand, I'm not gonna change any settings if I need to, we can change it from there. So that way you don't have a big ladder you're not messing around. And what I'll do, sometimes if it's really crucial, I'll actually tape, I'll put gaffers tape on the frame edges on the surface so that I know exactly when I put a plate in a frame, exactly where that is in the frame, so you're not guessing. 'Cause a lot of times, if you're not up at the camera, looking through the viewfinder, you don't really know what's going on. So if you do, if you look up and say, "Hey, let's take that edge you see a little knack in the word that accurately represents that." You can actually create a visual representation of where the thing is, where the frame is lying on the table. So we're just gonna get started, but feel free to interject with any questions. I know you're a little further away, so whatever you can see, if you need any explanation, I can provide that, but we're gonna get started. Let's get, we've got Molina on props and food. So let's get, let's get some peanut butter. Let's get some peanut butter spread on the toast. So we're gonna be doing jam on toast, peanut butter on toast, orange juice and I have this awesome cutting board that I love using. I probably use it too much, it's completely charred. It's just burned to a crisp, but it looks awesome on camera. I was gonna say film. So, and why not? Let's put some ice. Let's actually put some ice in the, in the cup, in the glass here. Do you have my ice cubes. No I bought some. Oh, did you? My favorite ones. Okay. So yeah, we're just gonna get working interject at any time with questions especially in the even if they see something, I know we have an overhead camera so that we can cut to see that. And if you wanna, via this okay so screens on your computer. All right let's take a shot. Did you already check white balance? I have not touched white balance yet. Let's do white balance. So if wanna pop this in. First things first. Steve, you have to get the full color card. Oh yeah, for sure. So I'll angle this towards the, I'm gonna turn off the data light cause that's interfering. But you want this to face the camera both the camera and the light. So we're gonna need to prop it up a little bit. Let's do that here. There you go. Hopefully that's in frame. Yeah, it should be. There we go. So then all we are starting to get a base recording of the, so there is like an eyedropper in Capture One where you can just click on the eyedropper and then click on the area and just, I think just like in my room. And it'll give you that base image and you won't have to worry about it for the rest of the shoot because it carries over from one image to another. One thing I really like, I don't know if that's true in Lightroom, although it might be. I actually really like Lightrooms, the way you can work on images. The funny thing about my workflow is I'll start in Capture One for capture, Capture One and they'll go to Lightroom for, I'll import everything onto my desktop to actually work on the images. So Steve and Jack, just to clarify, are you then setting a custom white balance? Correct. Based on what you have there. Yeah. 'Cause there is no way, I know that the Kelvin temperature of these lights, but regardless, it's not just the color temperature of the light, it's the color relationship between the colors in the image, which can sometimes be off. So we will actually do sometimes a calibration for the specific camera and how it reads colors. So it's actually doing a profile for the camera. So it knows exactly how the red should interact, so it's not just about white balance solely, it's about how these interact and it can really have a dramatic change on your image when you do that. The way it reads, it just looks more vibrant. It's almost like you've done a lot of post in, post production but not you haven't done anything really so, yeah. So what we're gonna do is we just, I just threw a plate on the set, we don't know what we're looking at. I love this plate and the way it's kinda circular and spirals, I'm kind of like in the peanut butter, but we need to make sure that it reads as peanut butter. That's really important, to know what food is. In fact we were working on the toast earlier and we were spreading the peanut butter all the way to the edges, but you couldn't see, if were an angle it wouldn't be a problem. But if you're looking straight down, it just looks like peanut butter on the plate. You can't see the sides. So the camera angle and how you spread is really important. So that's where we collaborate. I'll let her know, I really let her know a lot about the angle of what I'm seeing through the lens specifically. She'll sure look at the angle that we're working on when she's working, but then I'll relay specific information about how things are translating. So how's that, that deb is looking good. Yeah that looks really nice. Is that (mumbles) No, I think that was good. Just make it more and not square and maybe do a thicker clump, not so literally pushed up and, so it's more of like a morphous and then do drops, drops doesn't have real word. No doubt no drops. Drops. So I'll put this, can I put this on set? Yup that's all right if you like it yeah. All right. I like the crumbs that are going on too. So if you see the surface, it's a chard, it's my favorite. It has this really dark look, so it makes anything that's on it stand out really well. And so I don't know if you can see the peanut butter was spread really well. This is a technique that takes a little bit of work, but you're looking for especially with overhead stuff, you're looking for all the texture and dimension you can get Your you're just working with a flat surface. So anything that will bring out and I'll show you what the data light and what you can use with the flashlight, how this extracts the most texture out of the peanut butter. So we're gonna put this on set, I don't know where this will go. Let's make a decision on that. I would like this coming, I want this to be near the light. And that's another thing I have to think about. I always, especially though we're at shots, I'll tend to put my key light in the same place every time. I'll put it at sort of an angle coming in from the left and then raise it a little bit off. So there is sort of a vignette. It doesn't immediately come in as really hot. So it's not just really, really bright and then really dark. It sort of comes in dark a little bit brighter and then tails off into a vignette. So it's pretty dimensional to begin with before you even do anything. So let's bring in this from the upper left to kind of lead, let's lead the eye on from the upper left we'll see what happens. And I'll get rid of the, this spoon here. So we'll take that shot, I already know this spoon it doesn't translate very well. So what you're gonna do is you're gonna work on your hero, you're gonna select a surface that you know is gonna work with your hero really well and then Jack is already checking sharpness on it. How are we? I would push sharpness.. Are we tech? I would put sharpest in the frame a little bit. We'll get into the top of the-- That's why I want that. The jam jar and this could do with the, the bread itself could do it being just a hair sharper. So to push focus forward you twist the lens clockwise? So I don't have to actually go up and I'm just nudging it, so try that. That's better right? Yeah. Cause I don't wanna go in, I wanna leave room because of the backside of your focal point is drops off so fast and the front there is so much room for (mumbles) I want at least Pull it, pull it back, up just a little bit further. Kinda in that way. You wanna waddle first. That was too much of a nudge. Try that. The thing about these lenses is I have to send them in for cleaning all the time 'cause there are just stuff in them like jam in the lenses. I mean, they're not cheap lenses, but I've never been afraid to get them messy 'cause I'll actually open them up and clean them for you. But some of the aperture rings won't even it gets so messy. I'd pull back just a tiny bit for yeah. That was a big nudge. Yup. There we go. See how efficient that workflow is though? 'Cause it's just, I don't have to get up on a ladder and bent, you know, ruin my back and it's just a matter of the camera. Once we get the focus locked down, nothing technical is in my head. I'm not touching any computers, I'm not doing anything, I'm more of a director of how things are looking on set and I'm just looking at the image as opposed to letting the technical stuff get in my way. All right lets begin. And then it's always with a tilt shift lens, you always, you need to make sure your lens is zeroed out, ' 'cause you can shoot all day and your lens will be like half tilted and you won't even... See you really have the zero at your lens and not just your camera. And the one thing I do when I'm shooting is I'll look at the settings and make sure that the ISO is not an 800. I mean, you guys probably know you just always zero your camera. Especially with food, especially with clients. 'Cause that's the one thing that he double checks that I double check because you can't, it's just as bad as losing the file. If you have an ISO 1000 image then you've shooting all day, you might as well just throw them all away. So there is the milk. Okay. Let me just put in the glasses. You wanna go over like how you clean glasses and that kind of stuff? Yeah with glasses. I mean, we use there is a lot of things you can use to clean glasses and I'll kinda make sure I'm not hiding behind. I always wear one white glove. (mimics) (students laughs) I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Just that when I'm handling glassy, fingerprints show up everywhere and dust. So I always have, when I work on set, I always have gaffer tape. I have a compressed air and I have clean clothes, a lot of clean clothes. Sometimes I'll actually, the thing about food is being a former chef I'll always grab like a side towel and just have it with me all the time It's like a comfort thing for me, like wearing an apron is I just feel weird when I'll shoot without an apron. So I'll actually use and its bad habit I'll use the lint towels or the the lens cleaning towels for side towels in the kitchen. I'll go back and forth and then so I have to make sure that I say, "Oh God all right so I gonna wash that now." But I've wiped (mumbles)yeah. So it's a habit you don't wanna get into. 'Cause you're dealing with food and photography, it's not just people, it's not a sanitary environment. You're gonna get messy so protecting your gear and caring for your gear is really important. So we've got the milk, where did I? Oh, it's over. Its right here. Thank you very much. Those are cool gloves, where'd you get those Chocolate they're chocolate gloves. So the one thing I'm noticing about the shot is that the hero needs to be the peanut butter and jelly. That's what we've decided is our hero, if that's fair. What's going on the plate is really just gonna be some cut-up grape fruit and there is gonna be some orange juice. So what we wanna do is, crop angles go from one image to another right? Yeah Rather than move the plate 'cause I do at least at this point I do. I don't mind the relationship between these two. I am going gonna move this you don't want stuff touching. Now one of the things when I first started shooting food is when I did overhead shots, I was like, nothing can touch the outside of the frame. I don't know why I thought, I don't know if you guys think that too but I didn't like things kind of going in from outside of the frame. It just bugged me for some reason. And now I've kind of let that go and it's just, it leads your eye on it, it's kind of a cool way to bring, so I always had this like really strict artistic approach that it has to be a hero and then everything has to fall around it and then there has to be a vignette. I like it to be a little bit more natural. Now we're shooting for ourselves, so we're shooting for a client in Capture One and I don't know if it's true in my room, you can have an overlay over your image. So they'll show up over your image on every shot that you take, so when you have copy from a front of a magazine, they'll give you the file and you'll just place it right over the image. And as you shoot, you'll know if you're getting in front of the text, so just be aware of that. You do have to make room for texts on occasion and copy. I don't know what you want the grapefruit and Let's do, this looks awesome and let's do, let's do some slices out of that one. Just kind of cutting through the line and then we'll do a three shots like that. Do you want a napkin I there? Yeah, so yeah let's do a napkin. What I wanna do is we need to fix, the first thing we need to fix is the fact that this plate is just right there. And I love that plate I do not wanna get rid of it. Maybe it should be out of frame a little bit. Yeah, I think-- So maybe this should be, out a little bit so you're not getting a full plate. Yeah. That's good. Jack let's crop in and I'll move the plate too. But let's crop in so that this is not, this is going slightly out of frame and then we're coming here and then right down through there. And then leave that as it has been below and we're free to use, at least here we're free to use any crop format that we want, but there is gonna be obviously very specific crop formats that you'll need given wherever you're shooting. So you do need to be aware of that too. So we, we have the ability to crop into our shot and we are home we can do that because you have total freedom. It's a really fun way to shoot. But one of the constraints you have to realize is that yeah are all gonna be dimensions associated, and pixel density is associated with the images that you're gonna have to deliver to the client. So how's this feel to you, Steve? Further end, I would say get rid of more plate. There is almost like a five by seven shot now, which is cool. I'm (mumbles) should be moved down a little bit. We will I'll move it further yeah. It's not-- Do you wanna cut-- No back. I'm gonna move the plate out of there so there is room. But for your eye to be happy there has to be, there has to be room for your eye to rest and there has to be a place for, there has to be a hero. There has to be hero that is not only lit to be a hero, but placed to be a hero and then a supporting cast. And I tend to use colors that I love wood, but wood is very, it's kind of orange and reddish in color sometimes, which is a very dominant color and it pulls forward. My favorite backgrounds are very cool backgrounds that are subtle, but I love this blue gray background because anything that you put on it, that was between, I don't like colors that are perfect. You know, color matches like orange and you know orange and blue. I like things that live on one side or the other of that. So we're working with blue and orange would be the comminatory color, but I love working in kind of rust all the way to you know rusty yellow all the way to really deep. So you're not just getting any kind of color matchy, especially right in green. And I saw it all kind of move to one side or the other on that. That's really great, because actually people have been asking about backgrounds and online and Kirby had said, "Speaking of background colors, when do you prefer photographing against dark versus light? And do you ever use nonwhite plates?" Yes, Yeah yeah. I don't mind, I really like white plates but I like things that have a little bit of subtlety to them. Like this plate here has both texture and a touch of color that compliments with the background. So we're kinda creating this mood of mixes of shades of cool colors that will then this will explode off the... But for myself photography, I do a lot of dark images that are moody and have black backgrounds that are really dramatic. You see a lot of that on like Starbucks ads and that are very like have a deep dark background and very bold up front so it's very easy, it's almost like the opposite of a high key image where it's really easy to see what you're getting and see what it is. And it looks great. So dark panels help me achieve that without actually needing to cut too much light, I'll use, if we're doing a three quarter shot going in like this, or even, I love my favorite perspective is actually coming up from below but any background that is dark already helps me cut the light so I don't have to cut it using gobos or any additional, but it really just depends. I love, we're getting more and more into sort of a lighter, brighter conceptual images, so we have more light backgrounds. But any background that doesn't, it has to serve, everything in an image has to be there for a reason. It has to be adding to the image or it's taking away. And the story has to make sense. You can't have, we couldn't put Thanksgiving stuffing in here for no reason. People will be like, "Why are they going to school on Thanksgiving?" So there has to be a reason you have to know what story you're telling and why you're telling it in one shot. So here we have to be really careful and we're not gonna second guess ourselves is something adding or is something taking away? A majority of the things we're putting on the set are orange and the toast to the peanut butter, the jam everything is that way kind of for a reason and everything that's not food is cooled in colored temperature for a reason. And especially in a flat image, you use that to your advantage. The cool colors, recede the warm colors and you're already creating, we haven't gotten to the lighting yet. And you're already creating sort of the separation in your flat relatively flat image. which is crucial for overhead shots. So yeah, we'll get back to it. Are there any pressing. Let's get kind of a one third shot or one-third cut of a-- (mumbles) grapefruit? See your already. I'm already. (Steve laughs) I was gonna put the napkin into once is that how you wanted it? Yeah. I kinda like the rustic look. Is there a, there is another one, right? Can you do like a wedge almost? Like a watermelon cut? I'll put this on see, I'll actually take three of these. You always like to, I always like to work in odd numbers. It's a basic kind of art concept. I don't always do that, but having a, and let's actually peel, let me get rid of spoon. All right so I peeled one of those now there is, you have to separate the artistic from the, it does this make sense sometimes. I see occasionally I'll be tempted to make an artistic decision. Like I wanna appeal, I wanna make this look more textural or more. And so you start to peel and cut in bizarre ways, but you also have to say, would that really, would that happen? You have to think for real like depending on the shooting situation you're in what the client wants, does it make sense that's the way it is. 'Cause I did over a shot of cassoulet that's on, I think it's on my website and it's mid prep of the French dish which has tons of different ingredients. But I calculated, I didn't just do artistic decisions. I did decisions based on what would actually be happening when you're actually making that dish and what time it would be happening. 'Cause I have a pot of boiling water on there and there wouldn't be that boiling water if this wasn't cut or if that wasn't cut. So you have to think through your dish and figure out an image that makes sense because a lot of people will just read right through it. Oh, I've made cassoulet and that just doesn't make sense. Please. How does the cropping work actually? This is pre crop, I mean, can you go back after the fact and just get more information or it's I mean it's just for visually, just for composition what's-- The great thing, The reason I shoot loose sometimes, and especially when things are flying around is that none of this is permanent. Especially Capture One you can always go back 'cause it doesn't get rid of the information. So you'll shoot another image and then it'll apply the crop, but you're not losing what was, it's not cutting out, what was there, if that's your question. So your getting the crops, so you're getting the composition when you download it and then you still have the option to go back? Which is really important because you don't know, they might say, "Oh, we love to see the edge of the table. It's really cool." I mean, it dropped off to this concrete floor, but it didn't look like concrete floor we were like, so you need to be able to, there is a lot of, especially in commercial stuff where they're coming back to you saying, "Oh, did you shoot that?" And they weren't necessarily clear on it and it's always good I mean, Jack will always get a shot of the surface before we add anything, so if we have to eliminate something from it, we can actually just draw it out in Photoshop and there is no, it can just be drawn away and the lighting hasn't changed too much. So it's easy to do. So we get base plates of everything. We get the final shot and then he's also marking what shots at least you should, marking the shots (laughs) He mark shots like what the shot is. If it's nothing, we still keep it. We don't get rid of it. But he'll mark he'll write a note in the note section saying or on a piece of paper saying "Shot number, oh we nailed it on the shot on this." And then, so we'll nail something else with food. Maybe you have peanut butter or something that's time sensitive. This peanut butter is not gonna go anywhere. So we can shoot that to our heart's content. But when something is on set that we will or do something else, we shoot typically especially in a commercial setting for that only. Sometimes even for just a leaf. I mean we wanna do a really nice leaf so we actually style droplets of salad dressing on a leaf and that's it. And so that's sort of layer. So that's why it's so important to have consistent lighting like the led, whereas natural light you're forced and you're in this rush to make everything happen on set all at the same time and you're freaking out. And it's always fun to do that, but to have some control especially with food and kind of break it down slow down a little bit, allows you to do better images to create better images but it does require some knowledge of at least the layering and layering mass in Photoshop. So we're trying to get everything in one shot so that won't be a requirement of this. 'Cause you can get Photoshop is an unending learning experience. I'll never master it. So we do very basic stuff. We'd like to get everything in shot, even when it's a really complex image in one image and then push certain areas or we do the salad with something that's kinda wilted on set. But these lights are so cool that we have a lot of time to work. So it's not too bad. Let's get back to it. (mumbles) images if you-- Yeah, lets put them on... If you want those. I just love to see, oh yeah yeah. Don't you want it? This is cool. This one. And these ones. Yeah, those are nice. And I might even separate one of these open. 'Cause every time you see a flat cut and this is a really good way to cut citrus is to cut them where you can actually see the segments. You don't wanna cut a line where you're going along with the segments It just kinda looks like this weird, You almost can't tell what it is. This, says grapefruit. And I think I might even just peel them apart so you can see each individual. And that seems like something that would actually happen, as opposed to just peeling that like that. So we'll have this and if somebody were to cut it, they wouldn't be cutting, sections but they might cut it in half If they're trying to, I think these are, I'll put another one of these on there 'cause they look so good. Maybe three. Alright. And always ask, Molina and I work together a lot, but if you are working with food styles you've never worked with before always ask, who will be touching stuff on the set because you know a lot, if you don't have an open relationship, they'll wanna work on the set they'll wanna do the detail work. So we always talk beforehand, it depends what kind of shoot it is. Who's gonna be doing the final kind of little minute stuff or placing stuff. Or am I allowed to touch stuff on set? So just needing to ask beforehand to let you know, to figure out where those boundaries lie.