Why Use Natural Light?
Lesson 7 from: FAST CLASS: Getting Started in Professional Food PhotographySteve Hansen
Why Use Natural Light?
Lesson 7 from: FAST CLASS: Getting Started in Professional Food PhotographySteve Hansen
Lessons
Class Introduction: Getting Started in Professional Food Photography
05:57 2Tour of a Modern Food Photography Studio
04:37 3Prop Styling with Malina Lopez
06:03 4Food Styling with Steve & Malina
03:28 5Working with a Digital Technician
05:19 6Food Photography Gear
24:29 7Why Use Natural Light?
08:01 8Natural Light Food Shoot Prep
30:23Food Photo Tools & Tricks
02:30 10Capturing Food in Natural Light
06:54 11Natural Light Shoot Final Touches
19:50 12Shooting For a Client
07:24 13LED Lighting Overview
08:51 14Prep for Oven Shoot with LED Lights
10:36 15Food Photography Print Marketing
04:49 16Food Photography Portfolio Tips
09:14 17Pricing and Negotiating for Food Photography
12:13 18Final Food Photo Career Advice
03:01Lesson Info
Why Use Natural Light?
Yeah, so this shoot, we're going to be doing an actual shoot in the studio. This is the first time I've shot anything in the studio. I will reiterate that, but we're gonna be shooting in natural light using LEDs, if that makes any sense. So I'm going to go into kind of what natural, I mean, what natural I can do for your images, how to harness natural light, but then how to use LED lights to make it look like natural light, which is really what you have to do in a commercial setting, where you need everything to be very seamless and have every image be the same. So, naturally, when I first started, when I moved back to Seattle and I first started photographing food here, I was with a friend and she was saying, you know, so you shoot food, you shoot natural light, Right? And I said, never. And they freaked out. It's like telling him I don't use an Apple computer. I don't know. So they, they were confused cause natural light. And the reason natural light is so popular among food photogra...
phers is that, there's a way that natural light interacts with food. So if you, if you have the spectrum of natural light allows all the colors on a plate and on a piece of cake or whatever, you have to be evenly and accurately represented to the camera. Just because of the way the light interacts and reflects back to the eye. If you've ever used. When I first started, I got one of, I don't know if you own these, but they're the fluorescent light bulb. It's not an inner light, but it's just the, it's like a soft box, but with two fluorescent light bulbs on it. And if you ever want to just destroy your images, the fluorescent lights really have peaks and valleys in the way that colors are represented. So if you have the color red from lightest to darkest on the strip and you photograph it in a fluorescent environment, there'll be kind of peaks and valleys in the color it's subtle, but you can see it. So you always kind of have that bizarre feel when you shoot something and fluorescent lights, which we have them in the ceiling of the studio. And I'll tell you if we weren't shooting video, that'd be all off. But so we're going to have to compensate for that when we're shooting this image, 'cause this light you can see in the plate. So there'll be things we have to adjust for. When you're shooting natural light, you're shooting in longer exposure times you're shooting sometimes four seconds. It depends on your lighting situation. If you're in a dark restaurant with just a little bit of light coming in, it can be six seconds. I mean, it can be a lot of time for camera shake to happen, for the clouds to move away and sun to hit it. And a lot can happen in that amount of time. And the last thing you want to do is crank up your ISO and shoot handheld. If he shoot natural light handheld, you can just discard the image now. It's not going to be usable unless you're going to, if you're doing Instagram, if you're doing a small format, pretty, you're pretty good there. It's not gonna affect you very much. How many of you shoot, How many of you shoot food on a regular basis right now? So a lot, Okay. How many of you were just kind of looking to get into it? I want to start, it's the cheapest way to have amazing pictures. 'Cause it's really good light. There's nothing wrong with natural light, in my opinion. If I could use it all the time and it were consistent and if we weren't in Seattle and if the sun didn't go down at four in October, you'd be fine. But if you need to shoot later or if, you know you need to have, it's good to have, I think North or Southern facing windows, this is a west-facing window. And we have yet to actually it's a little kinda hazy back there. 'Cause we had to get light, get to actually install curtain back there. So that's just something we're going to have to live with. But I like having that control. I like being open up a window and if somebody wants a nice, that ethereal natural light shot and we're not doing compositing, we're not doing any complex, you know, photographic moves natural light is great. So, I don't want to dissuade you from using it 'cause it's the least expensive light source. Anytime you purchase an LED, you're investing in a lighting setup that you want to continue using. 'Cause I've used Broncolor for some time. Now I've used Westcott for some time. Now I use Westcott for all of my, the majority of my soapbox is my LED lighting and Broncolor for all the strobe stuff. And I like them. I like working with them, but you can, you don't wanna over invest in something and then regret it later because it doesn't fit your style or your style changes. So I think natural light is really a good way to start out. I mean, it's, it's beautiful for a reason. It's really good with backlighting. I really like natural light with backlighting. You do have to watch highlights. If you're shooting in a sunny day and you have blue skies, those blue skies will show up in your highlights as blue highlights. And I see it pop up in some photos and it's really bizarre. I love clean neutral highlights, maybe a little tinge here and there can add a little interest, but you do have to keep track of that and keep mindful that. Kind of a gray overcast day is, is a really nice soft light, but I just, I don't find it as interesting unless you really work to cut the light. And you can have a gobo or something in between like a black card cutting that light. But if you're shooting six seconds that light's just gonna marinate and marinate and marinate, and it's almost as if you did nothing at all. So you're, in natural light with these longer exposures, you're sort of cornered. It's really hard. Anybody you can really, one of my favorite photographers is Noel Barnhurst and he's a really good photographer, but he's carved a niche and very shallowed up the field. I don't know that he uses, I think he has a lot of natural light. I'm not sure what he uses as far as strobes, but or artificial light, but it sort of corners you into, into looking very similar to a lot of other photographers, which shouldn't be the goal really. So, but if you're able to carve a nation, just natural light photography, you do it amazingly well. And you have a lot of specialized tools that you've developed and worked overtime, to kind of carve a look just totally doable, especially if you're sort of a one-shot photographer, we're getting everything in one image. That's really helpful. Cause anytime you can pause it, if the light changes even a little bit, I have a very organic approach to Photoshop. I'll just sort of naturally blend layers in where everything's locked down. And so I don't do a lot of cutouts that leave door open for kind of weird borders and weird. I want it to look really natural. So I need every image as even with stroke to be almost identical and exposure with no changes. Controlling natural light, like I said, the over, when you have gobos or when you have stuff at marinates, it sort of just kinda re homogenizes itself. And so that's the goal. I mean, we have, we have an overhead shot here, which is being supplemented by natural light. And I love using natural light and then sort of doubling it up with an artificial light source of the same similar color temperature. Because this will add sort of a fill, but this light will definitely provide a direction and a meaning to your light. If that makes sense, like a here's where I intend the light to go. But this act is the natural light in this room acts as its own fill a really beautiful film. So it's a good thing to maybe invest in a small, you know, one by one LED panel that is really high quality, like the Westcott stuff. And just use that in conjunction with natural light and you have a very defined light in a very, nice ethereal look too, I'm mixing those two together, is a lot of fun. It's something I do a lot. I'll even like here I triple up the light. This is something that I always do. I have a natural light source or some other broad light source that just creates the fill and I'll have a very directional light source as the key light. And then for accents and to sort of bring things out in certain areas to say, look here, not here, I'll use the Datalight or you can use an LED flashlight, not as ideal, but still usable to kind of point here and say, this is where the eye needs to go. Because if you just have a very bland source, a low contrast scene, you're not telling the eye where to go. So that's why you see a lot of natural light photography is shallow depth of field because it tells your eye where to go. That's how they tell you where in the image you're supposed to look. Whereas I use light and shadow and light and shadow in a really deep depth of field. So you see into the scene, but there's still mystery there because I'm using steam or fog or, or light or a lack of light to create those elements of, layered elements of light.
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