"Basic Photography with Bake along #5"

So here I’m, again :). As we have completed the basics of camera and light and I think most of you understand what I wanted to convey in those write-ups. I hope you guys are now a bit comfortable with your camera settings so I want to introduce a fun element in our session. This would be more practical kind of thing in which you have to click and post the same week’s bake along recipe ;)

Today’s session onwards we will start discussing the best part of food photography i.e. Object/subject and its composition which is quite interesting :). Object in food photography is an interesting thing because you can eat it in the end :P and it grabs audience’s attention better than anything else :P. It can be a beautiful cake, cookies, brownies or anything. The main motto of these whole write-ups is to tell you how to present your food in a way that it looks appealing to the eyes. There are several techniques that a food photographer uses before clicking the picture. I hope to cover many of them and you guys have to promise me that you will apply them in clicking your photographs from now on.

Following are a few basic techniques for your click:

1. Placement of object- placement of an object is important. You have to see what suits you best. Sometimes the object looks good in centre of the frame but at times it looks better off-the-centre. So you have to decide which position is the best for you to capture the photo. Like in below pictures I wanted to capture the tumbler of strawberry ice-cream. 

Center 

Off center

In the first picture I placed it at the center of the frame and in the next picture it was little bit off center and I’m not wrong in saying that off center photo looks more appealing to us. This rule can benefit you in many other situations. Like if you have only few pieces of shapely cookies then keep them off center and focus on those shapely cookies only and let the other cookies off the frame or out of focus ;).

2. Angle- the angle of capturing the photo is equally important. There are two major levels i.e. eye level and overhead level. These two are regularly used by photographers worldwide. In every picture you have to see what you actually want to show in that. Most of the food photographers prefer eye level angle to capture their food. It is good but sometimes it loses details of the dish. 

Eye level angle

For example I clicked this strawberry ice cream from two angles one is overhead and another is eye level. From eye level angle, i captured not only the ice cream but also the front of the tumbler, so if you want to flaunt those flashy utensils you can use this angle ;) in the next picture, i captured the same ice cream but from the overhead angle to show the content of the tumbler.

Overhead angle

From the overhead angle the ingredients of the ice cream are clearly visible like fig chunks in the following fig ice cream photo.

3. Colour scheme -A colour wheel    

 

Courtesy: Google

      

Artists; especially painters, designers, photographers; always keep handy a colour wheel which enables them to decide the use of colour harmony in the painting or for clothes etc. Every food picture tells a story. So pick a theme in terms of colours. I’m sure you all know the value of colours in food, after all you guys are cake artists. But at times we all must have thought, oh! I should have used that colour or I should not have placed that mat or napkin or I should have used a different background colour there or a flower would look better in that corner. The colours you pick must look flowing with your main object it should compliment your object, not over shadow it. Like a flowers bouquet with different coloured flowers just behind your cake will confuse the viewer as what to see. Whether to see the cake or the beautiful bouquet? You have to assist not confuse. Even if you want to use the bouquet, make sure it contains such colour flowers due to which the photo looks flowing and not confusing. You can use the same side colours of the wheel to match colours or just diagonally opposite colours to show the contrast, like I choose 1. Violet and blue(same side) 2. Violet and yellow (diagonally opposite) 3. Violet and blue with hint of yellow. But you can’t abruptly pick any colours like red-violet or red-orange. I clicked a picture below and as you can see there is very little harmony in the colours of this picture except of the background which is almost neutral. 

                                            

I hope you guys will take care and refer the colour wheel in future :). In contrary of above photo, i clicked one more picture in which every colour is complimenting to each other. From the background colour to corn and to the coaster. Even my logo is in harmony :)

4. Background- Choosing a background for that perfect picture can be very very tricky. Your background should never ever dominate your main object. It should compliment your object and not overpower it. You should check what kind of background is suitable for the capturing a picture. You can try different backgrounds and see what suits your object and if you don’t understand what would be the best suited background then keep it neutral so that it won’t overshadow your object. You can use the colour wheel for choosing the colour of background in harmony with your object. A background can be of anything, from a table top to wall tiles, a simple plain coloured cloth to a coloured chart paper. You can use a wooden plank also. Floor tiles sometimes give a nice texture to the background. If the colour of your object is plain, like a plain vanilla cookie then you can use a bright multi-coloured background but make it sure that you use a small aperture setting to keep the object in focus and back ground blur. I clicked the following photos for independence day. Object of each photo is same but background is different.

So I’m concluding this week with an exercise to be performed by you and upload the photos.

Exercise no #1

Click this week’s bake along recipe with different background. Make sure you understand the colour wheel and pick colours according to it. Try to portray a story with your picture :). for all people who have already baked this week's brioche recipe or not baking because of some reason, try to click with any other object. All the very best!