Photowalking Utah Food Photography Clinic


I have been told that I BETTER have a good post for this or else. So for better or worse here it is.
I LOVED IT!!!
Rich Legg (link) and Nicole Young (link) did a tag team teaching presentation. Which they said that they would have as a PDF posted the group’s web site. I will put a link to that as soon as it is available. My notes are a little weak and maybe when the PDF is posted I will talk about what was said in the clinic (or at least what I remember).  So that being said here goes my take.

  1. Use colors correctly. See picture (link). Figure out what the main color is and use complementary colors to make the photo pop.  Rich recommend that we go get a color wheel for this from Micheal’s Crafts.  In the picture the main color is the yellow of the tart and the complimentary colors of yellow are blue and red the colors of the berries.Remember that warm colors come towards the eye and cool colors withdraw.
  2. Get good information.  They recommended a book Food Styling for Photographers (link).  Also there is a whole bunch of web sites out there.  I have listed a couple.  Nicoleys also posted today a couple of other books here (link)
  3. Try and aim for “Just Left Look”  It should look like someone has just left the room and should not look like pristine piece.  There is probably a fine line where a little “clutter” is good, a lot is probably not.  In fact in the live shooting demo Nicole actually took pieces of the crumbs and placed them on the plate.
  4. Use angles and layers to create interest.  In this picture (link) they pointed out several angles the plate, the chopsticks, even the stack of sushi is at a slight angle. And in this picture of a chef (link) it is easy to spot (at least it was to me once they pointed it out) the foreground (the parsley/pasta) the midground (the chef) and the background (the kitchen equipment in the back)
  5. Most food used in food photography is not suitable for human consumption.  They did mention Kelly Cline (link) a food photographer that takes pictures of food you could pick up and eat.  For example, in the beautiful pictures of breakfast cereal, Elmer’s glue is generally used in place of milk.
  6. One thing that they did not point out (maybe they did and I missed it).  Was context the food always told a “story” is was not just sitting there alone.

I also got to meet a great local food photographer,  Quinn Curtis from LimeLight Food Photography (link) check out her flickr stream.
Really that was about it the real fun was after it was all over there was alot of just hanging out. Rich, Nicole, and several others stood around and answered all of the questions that were thrown at them with knowledge, grace and a great amount of fun. I will be to as many of these as possible in the future.

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