Professional Photography

Colorful stacks of vegetables drizzled with rich sauces on a clean white plate with glistening table settings – you know the shots.

1. Lighting

Treat the food you’re photographing as you would any other still life subject and ensure that it is well lit.

2. Props

Pay attention not only to the arrangement of the food itself but to the context that you put it in including the plate or bowl and any table settings around it.

3. Be Quick

Food doesn’t keep it’s appetizing looks for long so as a photographer you’ll need to be well prepared and able to shoot quickly after it’s been cooked before it melts, collapses, wilts and/or changes color.

4. Style it

The way food is set out on the plate is as important as the way you photograph it. Pay attention to the balance of food in a shot (color, shapes etc) and leave a way into the shot (using leading lines and the rule of thirds to help guide your viewer’s eye into the dish).

5. Enhance it

One tip that a photographer gave me last week when I said I was writing this was to have some vegetable oil on hand and to brush it over food to make it glisten in your shots.

6. Get Down Low

A mistake that many beginner food photographers make is taking shots that look down on a plate from directly above.

7. Macro

Really focusing in upon just one part of the dish can be an effective way of highlighting the different elements of it.

8. Steam

Having steam rising off your food can give it a ‘just cooked’ feel which some food photographers like.

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Various artists may create or develop specific parts of an art piece or scene; but a sole art director unifies the vision. In particular, the art director is in charge of the overall visual appearance and how it communicates visually, stimulates moods, contrasts features, and psychologically appeals to a target audience. The art director makes decisions about visual elements used, what artistic style to use, and when to use motion.

One of the most difficult problems that art directors face is to translate desired moods, messages, concepts, and underdeveloped ideas into imagery. During the brainstorming process, art directors, coworkers, and clients are engaged in imagining what the finished piece or scene might look like. At times, an art director is ultimately responsible for solidifying the vision of the collective imagination while resolving conflicting agendas and inconsistencies between the various individual inputs.

Photo session without an art director

Photo session with direction from an art director

The team usually works together to devise an overall concept (also known as the “creative” or “big idea”) for the ad, commercial, mailer, brochure, or other advertisement. The copywriter is responsible for the textual content, the art director for the visual aspects. But the art director may come up with the headline or other copy, and the copywriter may suggest a visual or the aesthetic approach. Each person usually welcomes suggestions and constructive criticism from the other. Ideally, the words and visual should not parrot each other; each should enhance or enlarge the other’s meaning and effect.

This is not to say that marketing sense is not important. The ability to develop concept to make the product/service that is advertised interesting is one of the qualities that separates an art director from a graphic designer. The two professions overlap in what is known as communication design, with individuals fulfilling both roles at the same time or alternating between roles. Although a good art director is expected to have graphic design judgment and technical knowledge of production, it may not be necessary for an art director to hand-render comprehensive layouts (or even be able to draw), now that virtually all but the most preliminary work is done on computer.

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I realize that not all of you are curled up with this website in one hand and a digital camera in the other. You might already have a digital camera and have just want to find out exactly what you can do with it. However, I’m guessing that quite a few of you haven’t taken the plunge yet. You want to find out more about digital photography before expending your hard-earned money on the equipment you need. You have questions that need answered first: Can a camera that I can afford do the things I need it to do? Can a computer fumble-fingers like me really do digital photography? What’s the best camera to buy? Others of you are digital camera veterans who are already thinking of upgrading.

Choosing a digital camera that’s right for you can be tricky because a lot more goes into your selection than simply the specifications. Two cameras with identical specs can perform quite differently. One can exceed your expectations while the other one frustrates the heck out of you. However, if you want to get the most, your digital camera should have certain minimal features and capabilities. For example, if your digital camera is one of those Web cams that can capture stills measuring 320 x 200 pixels, or maybe 640 x 480 pixels, you probably don’t have what you need to take serious or semi-serious digital photos. One of those $79 digicams with a lens that can’t be focused, no exposure controls, and no removable storage probably won’t do the job for you, either, other than as a fun toy. If you believe the adage, “Any camera is better than no camera,” go ahead and slip one in your pocket and be ready to take a snapshot anytime, anyplace (as long as there is enough light, your subject holds still, and a wallet-size print will suffice). Such a minimalist digital photo system, however, won’t enable you to do much.

Any digital camera costing a couple hundred dollars or more will probably do a fine job for you. Even the least-expensive, true digital cameras today boast resolutions of at least 2 megapixels (MP). (That is, at least two million pixels of information, usually 1600 x 1200 pixels or more.) Typical digital cameras have automatic exposure, a color LCD viewing screen for previewing or reviewing your photos, and removable storage so you can take out your digital film card when it’s full and replace it with a new one and keep shooting. Most have a zoom lens so that you can magnify an image without moving forward, which is invaluable when you want to take pictures of different subjects from one spot. Those minimum specs give you everything you need to take great photos. After all, it’s the photographer, not the camera, that produces the best images. I once wrote an article for Petersen’s PHOTOGraphic magazine, in which I presented photos of the same subjects, side-by-side, taken with an inexpensive point-and-shoot camera and a full-blown professional system that cost 100 times as much. After both sets of photos had been subjected to the vagaries of halftone reproduction, it was difficult to tell them apart.

Spending a lot on a digital camera buys you a few new capabilities from better zooms, enhanced resolution, interchangeable lenses, or a more sophisticated built-in flash. If you have a full-featured model, you can find lots of information on how to get the most from your camera’s capabilities. But this website also contains workarounds for those owning more modest equipment. You can find digital cameras suitable for the most exotic of photographic pursuits, such as the underwater set-up shown in Figure 1-1. It’s a Canon WP-DC300 waterproof case for the Canon PowerShot S50 digital camera. It provides full access to all your camera’s controls while letting you photograph those colorful coral reefs in Tahiti at depths down to 100 feet!

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