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Shoot 3: Bacon and Grits

Lesson 10 from: Food Photography

Penny De Los Santos

Shoot 3: Bacon and Grits

Lesson 10 from: Food Photography

Penny De Los Santos

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Lesson Info

10. Shoot 3: Bacon and Grits

Lesson Info

Shoot 3: Bacon and Grits

(laughter) Let's look at how these guys are cooking the food, shall we? (laughter) Oh, she's leaving. So we're making the bacon, everybody needs to see bacon. People are probably about to eat lunch or eating lunch. So we're doing grits next. We're doing grits, no we're doing, is it grits? Bacon and grits. Bacon and grits. Anne's turning some grits right now. We've got the bacon ready, bacon stays for a while so we don't have to worry about it. It'll hold, it's not gonna die on us. And she's turning the grits, so we're gonna do a super sexy bacon and grits shot with, on a kinda of a rustic, actually why don't we start propping this? Is Karen around here? Okay. Kaleo? Yeah. Yep. All right so we'll just start the conversation. So did you see where Anne was turning the grits in that big pot? So we're basically gonna do this food in preparation. So we're gonna leave the grits, we already talked about this, and I'm sorry, I'm just not telling you about it. So we're not gonna plate ...

it, we're gonna leave the grits in a pot, but we're gonna change the pot, because that's not the pot we wanna shoot in. And so Kaleo pulled some cool cast iron pans, as if the grits were cooked in that. I think for scale and just a little splash of color we just sorta landed here. We started with this one, but it's big. It's a little too big, yeah. I think we'll start with this. As far as like, the rest of it goes, I mean if it's just bacon resting on the side or is it-- I think we're considering the bacon on the pan. It might be broken up on the side or something but-- Cool. So-- So now it's a matter of, you know, surface color and texture. And so the grits are kinda brown. No, they're yellow. They're yellow. And we talked about putting a-- Fried egg. Fried egg on it and cheese, right? So the idea with this shot is to take the grits and kinda just keep it straight up with bacon and then punch it up a little with cheese, or bacon and cheese. And then after that add a poached or fried egg on top. Fried egg. Fried egg, yeah. Fried egg is better. I don't know maybe a-- So what-- Check style-- What was gonna go on here? Well, we were talking about putting the grits in here. You think? Yeah, what do you think? So you'd have the grits and then the bacon? Yeah. Okay... And then the egg? Do you think we need to go bigger? I don't know? Could this also be, oh no, definitely, yeah that's too big. Also, are you thinking of plating it. We could plate it, let me think what we did before. We have the citrus shot, we just shot. If you want we could have the grits in here. I just thought it'd be kinda cool. The other option is Kaleo pulled all these really beautiful wooden bowls but I wondered if that would compete with tone, with the yellow grits and-- Like these guys or... Did Anne have some? Yeah, she's got-- Or, that's too much in tone. Yeah. That's... What other bowls do we have? This could be cool. Yeah. You're sure? Penny, could I ask you a question? Yeah. Why would that bowl be too much in tone? With this brown bowl? The one that you just picked up. The blonde one. Oh, this one. Yeah. Let's go look at that. So if you look at the color of the grits, the grits, are yellow. So you put yellow and yellow it's just gonna fall apart. But let's look at it just so you see it. You can see, right here. So you put those, you put those yellow grits in this bowl and they disappear. There's, it just doesn't quite work. So you have to separate the food to give it, 'cos you're featuring it you don't wanna, you wanna separate the food. This wouldn't do that, so we have to find something darker or with color. So where we at? We're just considering this as your under surface. Oh, that could be cool. Yeah. Maybe coffee. Yeah, and then maybe-- Black coffee. That could be cool. We may not need it. I mean the grits and bacon are just hot. You're hot. (laughter) Why does this follow me everywhere I go man? (laughter) It's a little tall. Yeah, maybe it is just the-- Yeah. The grits. But do we have a crustier board. Crustier? You like that word "crusty", huh. I'm crusty. You are crusty. (laughter) Crusty is at the back, I don't know. Just to add. Is there anything on the other side? All right, well let's just try it. All right, we'll think of something else. No, you're right, that is pretty crusty. Yeah. Cool, let's start here. Let me give you some stand in food. All right. So Karen's gonna give us stand in food-- Just in case it doesn't-- While I frame it, do an exposure and we start to kinda see the photograph. Do you think, it's all right? Do you think you'll fall off the edge of this? Do you wanna just put this down underneath just to-- I don't know, might as well. Well, this is fun man, this is cool. This is fun. I love this kind of stuff Yes, this is awesome. Cool. Is this yours from your house? It is? That's just sweet. These people are so sweet. Hey Penny. What strikes me, is when you're doing this without all of us here, it probably has very little to do with words. I mean you guys are doing your short hand back and forth. So the fact that you're stopping to explain all this to us is a gift. But it's probably also a little exhausting. It is exhausting. Today I actually didn't think I was actually gonna have to talk. (laughter) In fact I actually was able to sleep last night because I was just like, I'm just gonna shoot, I don't have to worry about talking. But, oh well. Okay, let me go put this on a prop table. (mumbles) like a kinda fork. Do you eat grits with a fork? Well, there's gonna be grits and there's gonna be egg. That's true. What'd you do with the fork though? Did you... I don't know. You have a spoon? You have a spoon? Plenty of spoons here. Do you have a crusty wooden spoon? Crusty again, already. I don't have a crusty wooden spoon Yeah, but you wouldn't really have a wooden spoon. Yeah, but it's just a question. I don't know. You think Andrea's watching? I don't know, she's probably like, "Oh my god, those guys". She's probably arguing on set. (laughter) Nothing's changed. This one's cool, look at this one. Yeah, that's cool. Let's bring these out. So, we're keeping it pretty simple on set. I think so. I'll answer my own question. They're ignoring me. (laughter) So that's just stand in. It's gonna look way better than that. Hey Penny, so I have a question. So, I see steam coming off the grits, and I personally, well, you know, steam I think is hard to shoot a lot of times. Do you wait for it to cool down? I mean I know this is sort of stand in food, while you get it lit and framed and so on. So where you done, like sort of, do you wait for it to cool down so you don't have the steam? How do you-- A little bit of both. If the steam really works well, then yeah, we'll use it. But if it's distracting, then we won't use it. But we're also gonna put an egg in it. So, it might not need that steam, you know? The thing about steam is that it can distract from the subject, so you've just have to be really careful. And you have to make sure that, so we've got a light yellow and then steam. So that might, I'm not sure what that would add. So like me personally, I'm thinking that might really be distracting unless I shoot lower and I can break the steam and the yellow a little bit. Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah, were not gonna do the steam. It's too crazy. So when you put the grits on Karen. Yeah? That is more full. There'll be more, this is just for color to see if this is going to work. Do you think we should use a bowl? Does it look a little weird to you or is it going to look-- I don't know. Let's try it, it seems a little bit too contrived to me. Yeah it does. I think we should just do a bowl. Yeah, I think so too. It's too cute. So let's pick a bowl. Okay. So Kaleo, this feels contrived a little bit. So we're gonna-- The surface? No, the skillet, it just feels a little forced. Gotcha. Yeah. You wanna plate it in? A bowl. A Bowl? But I don't know what bowl? That's just it. It's gotta be this shallow. Shallow? What about that bowl? That's, I love this, but we're not gonna see that. Also the mussels with that. That's the mussels, okay. Something like this size. Yeah, 'cos the bacon can sit on that. What about, this is too big, too small. That's kinda cool. Yeah. What do you think Chantal? These are, it would be weird if I filled it up. If you don't mind the inch of-- Water. Water. What I do like about this is this, but I don't know. That probably will go away once-- Yeah, that'll be gone. I don't know. What about, those are too deep. They're very deep. All right, we just gotta make this work. She wants something like this so the egg won't... This looks a little too small. Yeah, that's it. Could do that I like the hula girl. That's from the house. That's awesome, I wish that was a little cuter. Well can we line it with something? No, it's too small, I mean the diameter of the bowl is too small. Something else too, let's see. We can make it work, yeah this will be fine. As you can see grits are gonna like always solidify so... Yeah, that'll work. That'll work, it'll be fine. No, I think that'll work. And this edge is kind of a nice texture. Yeah no, that'll work. Okay. So you know on the grits, I didn't realize the grits were so yellow. Well they have white grits too, but all they had here was yellow grits. Oh, really? Yeah, which is okay. And so the egg's white, it should separate enough you think? Yeah, and the yolk. I think we'll be good. Cool, I'm just gonna, okay. I think that's better. Cool. So we need a surface, or we gonna put it back on that sheet cam? We could try it. Yeah. Okay. Oh yeah, it'll be nice on this. Because you have the brown and the bacon. What do you think? Yeah, I think this is good. So I don't know if you wanna go vertical, horizontal? I'm gonna look at it. This is cool. Yeah, it's good. Yeah, that's gonna be great. That is gonna be cool. So... You know what? I think we should shoot it horizontally. Let's do it, okay. Yeah, like it's a little, that's gonna be beautiful. Okay, John, I'm gonna do an exposure of this. They get brighter? Is the sun shining outside? Could be a truck parked outside too? Oh is it really? Might be, his wait wasn't here before. That's much better. This is just a test shot. It's gonna be way sexier than that. Let me put this camera right here. Okay, so... So I'm gonna put a fried egg on this, right here. And those grits are just stand in, so we just did a test shot. Got our exposure, we like the composition. So then Karen's gonna swop out those grits, make some new ones, we're gonna play with the bacon and then we're gonna put some Parmesan on it, some shaved Parmesan. And then we're gonna shoot that, then we're gonna do a second version, which will be a fried egg on top. And then we'll shoot that and then we'll probably break into the egg and get the yolk running, and then we'll shoot that. So we'll have three versions of this dish. And from there we'll select our hero. I think that looks good. Super, I mean that's just like immediately... Yeah, I love that, the tray you know. Just a crusty tray. And maybe fill on this side? A little bit, yeah. So we should put a little fill on the left hand side of the bacon. You know what John? I like the texture, kinda fall off, yeah. No, I like that, let's leave it. We might have to cut it a little bit if the egg gets a little hot. On the right hand side, we might have to cut the light a little bit. So we'll block it. You guys understand those concepts? Cool. I can take a question from the internet. I've got one. Penny, could you tell us how trends influence your work? This was asked by "Hydrangea". Who was it asked by? "Hydrangea". "Hydrangea". Well I'm always looking at photography, always looking at food, so, yeah, I guess trends affect how I am influenced, for sure. But there's, I mean I want it to be within the same style in which I like or react to. I hope that answers the question? Yeah, I'm always paying attention to what other people are doing and how they're shooting it. Yeah. I have another question from "Cozen". I'm not really sure how to say it, the name. How do you deal with weird reflections on food and dishes? Food on dishes? Food and dishes. The reflections-- So, we'll block the light. We've had a couple, so reflections on food and dishes? So if something gets a little hot, right, basically? So John, he'll cut light. I don't know if you noticed that? We did it in two other shots, and we had an overhead kind of camera angle of it. So the light's coming in from here and we'll cut it with like a black card or a white card. And you can block the light really well, especially with these windows and kind of drop your exposure by like a half stop pretty easily on something like this. And you can localize it based on how small your little card is. I hope that makes sense? But we can do a sample, we can show them. Should we just block a little bit of this light so that they can kind of get an idea. Do you wanna, can you... Do it first with a translucent? Tell me when you're ready, hold on John. Okay, so first we're gonna do like a transparency. Do you see that? So go back John. All right, so now that's normal and that's, can you put it right. So that would be blocked. So you're diffusing the light a little bit, you're cutting it by a stop. So that's without diffusion. You got that difference there. You could do the same thing, just in local areas. Yeah, so you're blocking just one section. Let's move, let's just move this off set so you can see. So you can see basically here, where you're cutting like just slightly. I mean it's very subtle it's like a quarter stop. Maybe a half stop. It's just minor things like that. And so when you're building a set, sometimes you can have these little black cards coming in on little arms and you can have dozens of 'em. You know, and just build it out. You can be that, you know about your photography if you want to. And you can punch light back in with this, and you're punching. If we felt like we needed to do that we could, but this drops off so nice, tonally, that it just kinda gives it a really nice mood. It kinda feels like morning. You've got direction going on there. Yeah. So there's that. And then you can do it again with white. You see that difference? And these are totally collapsible, so you can throw these in a camera bag and then you know, put 'em back up. What was your question? I was wondering, do you ever use mirrors? To get highlights or is that-- Yeah no, I mean that's totally feasible, I just haven't, I don't use, I haven't had a chance to use a lot of 'em. I mean in essence those reflective surfaces are mirrors basically so. Yeah, basically. Yeah, I mean definitely. If you're wanting to get like super strong spectral highlights or something? Totally, yeah. That's totally fair game, yeah. You mentioned, you wanted to keep the tones because it felt more like morning. Do certain, can you describe how certain light or certain tones of food might reflect different-- Times of day? Mood, times of day, that you would be eating or moods. Well, I mean, you know, this necessarily you wouldn't eat this necessarily for breakfast. But when you, I mean I'm just kinda putting this in that context, so the light drops off. And it kinda gives it more mood really. And I like that. So I think it's okay to have shadows, it can give something definition. And I also think, you know that's making a decision because the light can add mood. So it's one thing to expose it perfectly and then it's another thing to incorporate shadows, because it gives the photograph a little bit more dimension. And so those are things you just over time realize that you can do. So we could cut the light here to give it a little bit more mood. If we felt like it was just too bright. Am I explaining that well? Yeah you are. I was thinking like morning or evening you have a low raking lighting, you get longer shadows as opposed to lunchtime, more overhead light. That's how I was reading the question. Take into consideration the angle of the light, and how far it casts shadows. Is that what you meant? Yeah you know, I'm thinking if it's brighter it's cheerier it's cheerier food it's, you know. So yeah. I think it's honestly, it's an artistic decision. Okay. It's how you want it, what you want to communicate. I think I like it a little moodier. I think there's space for brightness, for sure. But I guess this just feels, I don't know, it has the potential to be a little moodier and so that's why I like the shadows kind of falling off on the left and the light falling off on the left. But that's my choice. You may decide you want it to brighter and that's completely acceptable. Well, see a lot of times I'm not deciding. So I want to get better at being able to make a decision. So, I mean, you could, so what you do is when you get in that situation you just play with it. Okay. So like John and I at one point we thought should we fill this and I looked at it and thought, no, I like, I kinda like it falling off. It just feels nicer. If we fill it, it starts to feel too perfect. You know? Yeah. I want it to feel more real. And maybe just a little moody, you know? I think it gives it a little bit more emotion. Okay. No, I like that, I like that answer, it's good, I get it. I mean I think that's hard to do with food you know. I mean the idea is, yeah, I think it's hard to put emotion in food and so this is one way you do it. You look for shadows, you accentuate the shadows or you accentuate a highlight, you cut light and you learn that, you know. I mean I'm constantly learning and every food is different. And I have not shot every type of food. So, when you have a chance to play with it you can. But... Yeah, I think it's important to, I think that is the goal, to make food moody. To give it some emotion. It's very hard to do. At it's best, I mean when I think about the photos that I react to, they're the ones that feel kind of like they have energy and emotion in them. That's, and you know when you're looking at those pictures 'cos you wanna eat that or you wanna make it. And that's, you've done your job. It's hard to look at a plate of food and intentionally decide how do I tell this story of this plate of food? You know, without having human interaction. And so the lighting obviously plays-- Yeah, that's one way you do it, and then you do it with props and textures and lighting. Thanks. Totally. Okay. Ready? I'm ready when you are Karen. 15 minutes, all right we gotta wrap in 15 minutes. Hey Penny. Yeah. Can I say that I just love what you said about the food looking too perfect and it's all sort of like, there's a staticness to a lot of photographs that people are taking when they're first starting blogs. They're trying so hard to make everything so pretty. That it ends up not being about the food at all. It's always about the photographer or the little setting you know and I just love the fact that you said make it real, make it messy, I wish every blogger could hear what you just said. (laughter) That's my two cents. Is everybody else hungry? Yes. I mean I'm staring at that monitor, those cold grits it's so good. The internet is officially hungry. All right, we have a question? Yeah, absolutely. Can we address maybe for you or for the stylists about cooking the food. Like how would you cook it differently for a photo shoot? What choices might you make other than being in your own kitchen? Karen and Anne, I'm gonna let you guys-- High heat, would you ever put, like sear a piece of meat like and it's completely raw on the inside but it looks good? So talk to us a little bit about that. Just to make the outside look good? Depends on if you cutting into it or not. It's all about the factor also of how you cook meat or, a lot of times the style now with photography and food editorially is that they want it to be as natural as possible, so you kinda cook it as you would at home. Like if you're doing a steak and you're searing it and you're gonna cut into it, I would just cook it as I was gonna do it. If I were to eat it, if they wanted a medium rare or rare steak. You just want a nice sear. It's almost like you want it to be really brown and look really, almost over brown. Because it tends to lose a little bit on camera. So you just sort of exaggerate that a little bit. Grill marks you exaggerate but I don't know, I think with meat I pretty much, for editorial try to cook it as if I were gonna eat it. With the parameters of what the client wants in that particular meat or, chicken could be a different thing. Turkeys or chickens, sometimes they're not cooked all the way through. Because they'd look too shrivelly looking. So sometimes they're under done a bit. It just depends on the client, so yeah. I don't know if that answered it? Thank you that was great. Okay. (crosstalk) Karen, another question. Question from "Zenpon", would like to know how do you get started as a food stylist? How did you start? I have no culinary background, I'm all self taught and I actually assisted prop stylists before I assisted. I assisted a food stylist maybe a half a dozen times and then just sort of jumped in there. My jobs for a client got progressively more difficult, they would just tell me to maybe just cut some ingredients up and then it progressed to maybe searing a steak and then I just kept adding on, and I just kept researching it, because I didn't have any culinary background. And of course food for photography is different than food from if you got to culinary school, it's not completely different but they have different parameters. So I just entered it that way. I just sort of decided I liked it without even realizing it. And now it's 20 years later and I never had a career picked out and I guess this is my career now. So that's how I entered it, I was just sort of just flying by the seat of my pants and doing it. I just love food, so I think that's a key factor is you really have to enjoy working with food and have some patience with it because it's a live animal and it doesn't always co-operate the way you want it to, but that's the fun of it too so, yeah. Flying by the seat of your pants, good way to live. Sorry? I said flying by the seat of your pants, good way to live there. Yeah, well that's what it is every day I guess. All right, almost ready? Yeah. Nice. Perfectly frying an egg. Oh we got a couple of perfectly fried eggs. You guys see this? So we got our egg heroes. So we'll swop those in. So a lot of you probably don't realize this. So you'll make the eggs, they'll stay for a while and then you, so you make, you kinda get your perfect egg and you'll swop it in So this is actually a great trick. You probably have never done that before, have you? Well why don't you guys answer that? Why do you make multiple eggs? Because they have different characters and sometimes they're, let's say we break into this egg and we have to do another one, we have to have another one ready and as in nature eggs aren't always going to look the same or fire up the same and we may not like the shape of one and we decide to use the other one as the hero, so we always have to have multiple of any thing, bacon, it's all different looking so, just so that we have the options of having something that will work on set, so that's why we're doing, there are only going to be four though this time. I'm ready to make a photo. Are you guys close? Penny. Yo. Question from the internet from earlier. Who pays for the food? How does that work? In this case the client would pay for the food. So the client would give us a food budget. And with that we would have to stay within those constraints to create the dishes. So you know, you can bind by your budget obviously. That's always the case in photography. So, you know we had a budget. We knew our dishes we wanted to make. So, well first we knew our budget and then we decided on the dishes we were going to make. So the client always pays for that. It should be that way. I can take another one too, while these guys kinda get finalized. What makes a perfect egg? I'll default to these guys. For photography? Or just-- Yes, for food photography. Just the way it looks, I mean just what they decide. That is a open question. It's up to the aesthetic of the photographer and the stylist and the, what the egg, how it's gonna be shown, so. Anne, did you have anything to add? I'm not quite clear on the question. Really fresh firm eggs instead of older eggs, they break down, they don't stay as firm as the fresh ones. Farm fresh to yolk is beautiful. That's a great answer, the farm fresh, yeah will make a difference. They'd asked about, you might've been pouring off some of the white. They asked about that. That's because the egg, if you fry it and you don't wanna keep it a bit contained, the whites tend to spread out all over the place so you end up with a very thin, which is not bad. It depends if you would like that. But we're working with this bowl, which has a certain surface area and we need the grits to show and the other components of the particular dish. So I poured the whites off just to keep the egg white sort of you know, within the boundaries of that particular dish. So that's why I did it. I'm just trying to stay on time here. Karen's rocking on the egg dialog for sure. But I don't wanna distract her because we gotta make a photo too. She's gotta do a great job. Sounds like they have questions for Kaleo. Cool, are there any prop questions? There was a prop question. How much does the prop person get involved? Do they just bring the props and then you, do you actually get involved in the shoot? It depends on the chemistry, depends on the client, depends on a lot of things. In this case, I talked to Penny on the phone and we've had emails and looked at tears and stuff. We definitely have to be aligned on the front end before we see anything in front of the lenses as far as character and texture and color. And it also depends on how swamped the food stylist is. What do you mean by tears? Tears, different photographs you know, that suggest what we're trying to capture. Sometimes it's really hands on. Sometimes it's setting up kind of a buffet and just standing back. I tend to like the input from the people that I work with. I mean to me, we're making the picture better. But it has to be the right chemistry. I wouldn't necessarily, we have a good chemistry. I think we're all wanting to make really great images and I want their help. So, yeah. And it's also, this is a new relationship. I've not worked with Penny before and so I don't wanna be too presumptuous and I also wanna see where she's going, what direction she falls into. Those things tend to develop over time too. Okay. We close? Oh God, those are gorgeous. That's kinda nice, yeah I like that. Kaleo, can you push that plate, I'll just have Karen, one of you just push it up couple, yeah that's great. So we are gonna use that glass? Yeah, I like it actually. Oh yeah, it's perfect. Yeah, it's great. Actually moved it, sorry. But I think it's pretty close to where it was. This is why I have different bacons. 'Cos it depends on how it's gonna fit onto the dish. How about that? Is that good? Yeah. We can do three, right? Three bacons? Want three? I'll take six, but-- No, let's do it. Let's do it-- You want vertical? Yeah, let me just see, vertical kind of maybe to 11: and 7:30. Yeah, yeah you got it. I'm bad with numbers, but like that. Like this? That edge there, yeah just like that. That looks like a big X though. Lets just try it, lets just try it. Yeah, and then can you tilt it that way? This guy? Yeah, just slightly. No, you're right, just slide it in. Yeah. Let's just see that. And then we're gonna put a spoon in it, right? I don't think I wanna do the cheese on there though. Might be too crazy, but what do you think? I can do cheese. What is the cheese? Is it Parmesan? No, I have Parmesan, and I have white cheddar. Yeah, I don't think we need it. Let's not do it then. You know what? It's the same tone, it's white and yellow, it's-- Do you know what would be pretty though? I have hot sauce. Yes, hot sauce would definitely give it, that's great. That's a great idea. I should probably put the spoon in because it's gonna, it's already getting-- Let's do it. So here or here? Let's do the spoon between 2:45, I'm just kidding. I'm joking. Right here, right here. Right there, and here? Yeah, come down more, down more, this down. Yeah, and then open up a little bit. Yes. Make it a little messy. That's it, yeah. Oh my God, I can't wait to show you guys this. Should I wait on the hot sauce? Let me just get one. I don't know, should we just-- Let me throw this in. Just for, lumpy orange juice, okay. So that, that glass needs to just come in, like a half an inch, just directly towards the plate, yeah. You know what? Sorry. Yeah this is gonna be great. Let's just put the hot sauce on it. No, let me do one, I don't want 'em getting too excited. Okay, here we go. I'm going to set, I'm going to film. (camera clicks) That's great. Okay. You know I liked it, let's just turn it like a quarter inch counter clockwise. Sky? Yeah, it's almost too perfect. The bacon should be separated a little bit more. So that edge, that, the piece of bacon that is the bottom one, can we break that edge on this side, just to bring it out. Pull that one in. This guy? Yeah. Kinda wanna see it, yeah, just a touch. Yeah. That's great, that's it. Yep. (camera clicks) Yep. Done. That's really great. Hot sauce. Hot sauce. God, you know what? That black on the bacon just pops. Oh, that's beautiful, that looks great. Okay, let's put some hot sauce in. Looks great Karen. You had to fly on the edge too. So I'm just gonna let it run for a minute. (camera clicks) So I'm at like, seven, one and 200, for the internet. Shooting at about 500. It's a pretty bright room. You guys seeing that yet? Yes. Okay, I think we're good. We can go to the egg. Yeah, that's great. You know it looks like an S. You know what I love Karen? See how it's starting to run around the edges there? That's great. I just don't want it to look like an S. Let's get some of the water off the edge. I liked the water on the edge. Kinda right here. So can you-- Do you wanna do another? Can we just break that a little bit. Put it out, not towards the S, but away from it. This way? Something, yeah, so it doesn't feel like a letter. Karen, what were you spraying there? That's great. It's just water, to make it look like it was just poured, that I just put it in there and it was nice and hot. It gives a little bit of shine. Okay. Yeah, that's nice. Okay. Very cool. All right, so now we'll put an egg on it. Yeah that bacon is hot. That bacon looks great. Okay, so which egg do you like? Looks really good. Yeah, we're all hungry. You're making us hungry. So where do you see this? I see it right in the center. In the center, here? Dead on, yeah. You want me to salt and pepper it? Yep. You know I don't like that egg so much, it's almost too big. That one. Yeah, right in the center. Oh my God. So, okay it looks like a happy face. What do you mean? See that little smile with the nose. Cyclops happy. Which way do you want me to turn it? Let's take it up, yeah. It's like a plastic egg. Okay, let's just try it. Salt and pepper it. You know what Karen? It looks like a clown, smiling. What do you mean? See this is like the nose and this is like a smile. Oh, I was like what are you talking about? I was wondering what you were talking about. So yeah, muck that up a little bit. Break it in the bottom there. That whole edge, yeah. It's like smiley face, it's like what're you smoking? Sorry. Stylist on the set. (laughter) No, you're doing great, okay. Okay, just a little pepper... You want salt too? Yeah. You know that egg's kinda funky a little bit. We'll crack into it. It'll be all right. You said okay, it's kinda like-- Ripply? No, on the yolk it started to look a little spent. Throw some oil on it. You want this other egg in there? This one got cooked more. You know, it's too big for the-- One more little egg. (camera clicks) I got you another egg coming up. Yeah, I think you gotta break that edge, so. That is gorgeous. Take a look at it though. This just feels it's-- What's that? Just break that a little bit. That looks great. Yeah. Yeah, there we go. That's a little more organic. Yeah, that looks great. Right, let me just make a shot of that. You want me to get the other egg in there? Yeah, let's just try it. Here's the newest one right there. Oh, it's a mini egg. Wait, let me make a shot of that real quick Karen and then we'll go to the next one. Give me one second, it's a little dry, hold on. (camera clicks) That looks so good. Maybe I'm being too anal about that. It just seems a little crinkly. Yeah, it's a little crinkly. I think that was the first, second one I did. So let me try-- That looks great. I did one of these. Let's get the other one in there. So here? Yeah. Can we get some salt? All right. And you know, once I put the salt it'll start speckling like that, so we won't have a not like we have a ton of time anyway. Tends to make it get weird. Okay, here we go. (camera clicks) That's great. All right, let's break into it. Hang on one second. Once we see that, once (mumbles) comes up. That's nice. Yeah, that looks great. Yeah that looks great. All right, that's our hero. I had a fried egg on my cheese burger last night. That looks great. All right, I'm gonna shoot a hero. And then we're gonna crack into that, okay? Oh, okay. Shoot one or two more. (camera clicks) Okay. So can I... Let's see how we should do this. I'll just go with the fork. Yeah, be nice if the yolk ran this way. It will, I think it's gonna go downhill so do it this way. Yeah, great. (camera clicks) I think it's died but, we got it. Looks good, yeah. I think we got it. Done. (applause) Great job, thank you Anne, thank you Karen, Kaleo. Oh my God. Okay. So... That was really cool. Can I have a piece of bacon? All right so, are we going to lunch now I think? Okay, cool. So, we're gonna break for 45 minutes for lunch and then we're gonna go for another set. And you wanna come back because the next one is really, really hot. It's mussels with frites. So it's gonna be amazing, so come back for that for sure. I'm not gonna shoot from overhead. So come back. (laughter)

Ratings and Reviews

Michelle B
 

Penny is the best with Food photography and at telling a story with pictures. This was the very first class I ever saw on Creative Live and Penny was amazing! Her class is so informative to all the aspects of food photography, from styling, to plating to shooting and lighting. and how to tell a story. What she taught me will never go out of style and will inspire you too. Thank you Penny for this outstanding class!

a Creativelive Student
 

Totally love this course!! What a find especially for the price - such a wealth of information and what a great positive spirit!! Thanks Penny for sharing - keep up the excellent work!

joayne
 

Love, Love, Love Penny. What great energy. I will never look at food the same way. Her story and her vision really touched me. She was so generous in sharing her knowledge in such simple terms. One of my favorite classes!

Student Work

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