Food Photography: Natural Light vs. Artificial Light - Community Education Series

Hi, I'm Chef Dennis Littley, and tonight we're here for our community education series, uh, with Adam Barnes of Picture Perfect Meals, and we're gonna go on with another photography seminar here, and it's gonna be natural light versus artificial light. Okay, and how to use them or how to understand them a little bit better. And Adam's gonna show us some examples of his work, and we're gonna do some screen shares. We're gonna try that tonight and see how that works out. And if you have questions, please leave them in the comments section underneath the event, and we will do our best to get to them. And have fun, enjoy tonight's show. I'm gonna turn it over to Adam. Adam, here you go.

Well, thank you, Jeff. It's great to be back with you guys. And thank you for inviting me to do this. Like you said, we're going to be talking about light, natural light versus artificial light. Somewhat prior to this event, I posted a photo on the event page, and I'm going to put it here on the screen share now as well. And it was just a little quiz, a little question for you guys. Which is: of these two photos, which impresses you as having been done with artificial light, and which impresses you as having been done with natural light, and why? And if you want to either type your comments onto the event page or into the chat box, at the end of the— at the end of this event, we will I'll let you know. Okay, I see a lot of comments, a lot of people talking about natural light. You know, it's, it's this quasi-mystic thing that we as photographers chase continually. To my way of thinking, the fact is pretty simple. All light is natural light, whether it's generated electronically or whether it's, you know, streaming in through a window. It's all natural light. It's all photons. And I think that we need to be careful not to confuse the source of the light with the quality of the light. What most people refer to as natural light is daylight. Now daylight can be great, but daylight under certain circumstances can have some severe disadvantages to a food photographer. Some of the comments I saw from a lot of people were that they wanted to know something about artificial light because they don't have, you know, windows that provide good light in their homes. They have to shoot at night because of their work. All of these reasons, all the limitations that life imposes on all of us bloggers. And these are the good reasons to develop a healthy relationship with artificial light. And in professional photography studios, and obviously there are exceptions to this rule, but almost all the photography is done with electronic flash because it's fast, it's controllable, and you don't have to wait on the sun, and you're not controlled by the weather. There are exceptions to this. I know cookbooks, and particularly a lot of editorial work, is done with natural light, but for the most part, it's done with some form of electronic controllable source. —and this gets back to what I was saying— we don't want to confuse the source with the quality of the light. What most people are referring to when they discuss the quality of the light, when they— or rather, when they're referring to natural light, is the quality of the light. It looks like something that is window-lit. It looks like something that is is naturally there. The trick of artificial lighting is to create that same sense. In fact, with certain exceptions, a photograph lit with artificial light that looks like it was lit with artificial light is a failed photograph. There's a lot of information out there, and I know it can get very, very confusing. There's information that deals with fill light. There's information that deals with mixed light sources where you're mixing daylight and usually tungsten light, which can be very effective and can be extremely beautiful if properly executed. Cameras are designed unlike the human eye. To read a specific spectrum of light at a specific setting. This is generally in the digital world called white balance, and how we deal with white balance goes a long way to creating successful photographs. I'm sorry, I'm trying to find images as, as I'm talking, so bear with me here. Starting with white balance, we're gonna go now to this shot here, which is an example of properly and improperly set white balance. Okay, the source for this photograph was an electronic flash. Electronic flash is essentially daylight. It's portable daylight, and so it runs in the same color temperature as daylight. Color temperature— what is being referred to by color temperature is the actual temperature of the light measured in degrees Kelvin. Now, this is getting a little scientific here, but simply put, a daylight setting for your camera, or rather, it will yield a natural result. If you have the wrong camera settings, say a tungsten setting, which would be for artificial light, or tungsten-based artificial light, which are like, um, Photofloods, most household lights, a lot of halogen, big halogen studio lights. What you get is this blue because the, the sensor is designed to take the yellow and the red out of the color temperature of the light, thereby giving you a more natural look in your final photograph. Yeah, and so when you look at the photo on the left here— sorry, this is like rubbing your head and patting your stomach at the same time— when you look at the photo on the left, okay, all the blue that is in the photo sensor to compensate for the yellow in the tungsten light is what is showing up there. And so resetting your white balance to the proper white balance, which would be daylight, is what gives you a more natural feel. Conversely, okay, when you do the reverse— let me get the screen share up here— conversely, when you do the reverse, all right, in this case on the left, the camera was set to a daylight white balance, which is again for daylight or for flash. And all the yellow and red that is native to the tungsten light source. This was shot with a 1000-watt studio spotlight. All the yellow and the red that is inherent in that light shows up on the sensor, so you have to set your white balance correctly, which was done on the right, and so you get a more natural color spectrum. Happening in the image. We're done with that. Let me see, what else do we have here? So artificial light, I mean, is really the basis of most food photography. It's great if you have a daylight studio. It's great if you have a home or room that is has floor-to-ceiling windows, and you have that beautiful natural quality of north light that allows you to, you know, to create well-balanced images. But most of us don't have that. The other thing that artificial light allows us to do is control our setting. What I'm putting up now is a photograph of a hand that we shot around Easter. And one of these is shot with so-called natural light, which is just the ambient light in the room. This was shot actually at our home, and our home, we are lucky enough to have big floor-to-ceiling windows. It used to be an artist's studio, and there's a lot of natural light that comes in there. But if you look at the difference here, the photo with, with the natural light is actually, to my mind, kind of boring. There's not a lot of visual interest going on there. Everything is kind of flat. By bringing in the artificial light, where I can create an exposure that is fast enough that the natural light falls off and everything that the natural light would fill in, making the image flat, goes away. And the strobe then becomes a directional light. Directional light is very, very important in, in, in photography, particularly in food photography, because Food is all about texture, and lighting food is all about maximizing and exploiting the texture inherent in the food. Where most food photographs fail is in lighting that's too flat. I was privy to a conversation between Chef and someone last week wherein he was talking about how he had brought in a flash unit on a an extension from his, you know, so he could have it off camera, which I applaud. Okay, that's an absolutely correct instinct, but it was still— what he didn't understand was how to use that light to advantage. He was still simply filling in the shadows, and it was still flattening out the dish. What you want to do is create enough shadow so that the light rakes across it and creates the chiaroscuro that enhances the texture. I mean, if you look at these slices of ham coming down here, I'll put up the screen share again. If you look at these slices of ham in these two photographs, the so-called natural light leaves them kind of flat. I mean, there's some definition and there's some highlights and there's some nice highlights, but if you look at the one that was actually lit with artificial light, you have much stronger definition. Your highlights are much stronger and the overall shape of this food is much more clearly defined. And it makes it a more interesting photograph. This particular photo on the right was done with the same basic lighting setup that I have discussed with you guys the last few times, which is simply a single light source. In my particular case, or in this particular case, is a, a 3x4-foot softbox with a 750-watt-second electronic flash unit in it. This is, for all intents and purposes, okay, a window. It's just simply a portable window. The same lighting techniques can be used. I'm going to show you another example here of, of exactly that lighting setup. Which is here. On the left you see— and this is done with natural window light, and this is also done with sunlight, and we'll get to discuss that in a minute because there's— that's one of the disadvantages of dealing with natural daylight, one of the challenges that can arise from it. On the left here you see a very simple lighting setup. There's windows on the left and there's a white reflector card held up by an A-clamp. And the result you can see on the right-hand image. And this particular thing is nice because the sunlight is kind of streaming through here. What allows the sunlight to stream through and to not create extremes of contrast, which— if you'll bear with me a second, I will show you here. This photo is an example of extremes of sunlight and of one of the difficulties of shooting in so-called natural light. We wanted to, you know, create sort of a picnic-type atmosphere for this shot, and this is one of the outtakes. But as you can see, there's an extreme— on the right-hand side of the image, the coleslaw is extremely blown out, and then there's too much density in the pepper grinder, and there's too much density down in the area of the lower part of the plate. So again, this is one of the disadvantages to shooting with pure natural light. There are solutions to this kind of problem. But they are complicated and usually expensive. You can bring in electronic flash and things like that, but you end up with an artificial-looking photograph. Now, how we light things, how we view things, is very subjective. My particular philosophy, if you will, is I like to make photographs that seem to tell a story, that, that are credibly something that you might experience. I think that that adds depth and it adds dimension to the viewer's experience. And as bloggers, we always have to remember that our photos are our calling card. They're the first impression that we make on people. And what we do and how we use light to tell the story that we want to tell, and propping and styling, but that's another conversation. But how to— we use light to tell the story that we want to tell is the name of the game. This here is an example of a shot where I wanted to create a sense of being in a sort of a bar. It's a cocktail, so you want something that's a little bit elegant, something that's maybe suggestive of the end of the day, okay, at 6 o'clock hour where you're sitting there. And this was done with a single spotlight. Now, this goes back to getting the discussion of natural light. We've all, I'm sure, been someplace at 7 o'clock some late spring evening and seen the sun streaming through across the table, you know, through our drink, whatever. That was the sort of mood that I wanted to convey with this. This was really the same principles, okay, that were used in this shot of the coleslaw. It's exactly the same type of lighting, okay? It is a strong, hard beam of light, which is generally referred to as a specular light. But what is done differently here, and this is the other thing about lighting, whether it's natural or whether it is, um, artificial, is light is only as beautiful as how it is modified. So we get back to not confusing the source with the quality of the light. What makes life— life— what makes light work for us is how we modify it. In the case of this Martini or French 75 cocktail, the light is modified on several levels. Okay, there's simply a beam of light coming into this shot. There's no overhead fill light. It's a single light source. To the right of this glass is a white card. All right, which is bouncing some of the light back to fill in the purple napkins below and a little bit of the shadow side of the lemon that's out of focus in the background. That's one modification. Okay, another modification is behind there, there is the— you can see the shaker, the cocktail shaker. That also is modifying the light. Because we, we modify light by two ways: by reflecting it back or by removing it. And what that cocktail shaker is doing is creating shadows. So suddenly, instead of just a flat image, you have a three-dimensionality to it because you have light in the foreground, okay, going down to this very strong highlight just below the lemon on the drink. You have the translucence in the lemon, you have the shadow area in the middle ground, and then all the way at the back you have another light area. So what you have is a three-dimensionality, and this is all about controlling the light. Everything is about how the light is modified, how the light is manipulated, and it doesn't matter what the light source is. Okay, windows modify light, lace curtains modify light, softboxes modify light, spot grids modify light. It's all about— and books modify light. You don't need to always have a lot of expensive and cumbersome equipment to achieve these things. It's about looking and thinking about what it is that you want your photograph to say. Going back to those Ham photographs, wherever they are. Let's see if we can pull them up this way. I must have closed it out. Going back to these Ham photographs, again, it's how the light was modified here from being just a flat light. I mean, it's not that that photograph on the left of natural light is a bad photograph. It's not. It's a nice photo. But to my way of thinking and to my taste, if you will, the photo on the right is a much more interesting photograph, and I think it tells much more of a story. It creates more of an ambience, and that is really what we're doing with light, whether the— whether it is a natural light source, as in daylight, or whether it's artificial. We would all do very well to familiarize ourselves with artificial light for the simple reason that so many of us have demands of family, of job. If we're exclusively relying on our, you know, beautiful window and it's a rainy, foggy day, we're not going to be able to accomplish what it is that we need to accomplish. And so really what we're talking about when we say I love natural light is that we love the quality of natural light. And with appropriately applied skills, if you will, and knowledge, then that same quality of light can be created with just about anything. And I do mean anything. I'm going to post one other photo here, which is—

Adam, while you're posting that, I have a question here from Erin Clark. Okay. She just joined us a little late, but she wants to know, and it's a good question, that's why I'm interrupting you, says, what is the typical white balance that you recommend for indoor lighting?

Lighting? Usually most cameras— I mean, you can get to very, very precise, depending upon the camera you're using, very, very precise white balance settings. Most cameras have either an indoor or a tungsten setting. Most indoor lights are tungsten lights. They're about 3200 to 3600 degrees Kelvin. And you can either set— I mean, it depends how much you want to get into it. If you can set your camera to a specific number of degrees Kelvin, then I would start at about 3200 and look at your results. If your camera is one of those that just simply has— it's just like a little icon, like a little light bulb. Then that's the setting you want to use, um, for the most part. Now, some corrections can be done. See, uh, this is another reason to shoot RAW files rather than JPEGs or TIFFs, if your camera will do it, because a RAW file, when it opens up in, uh, your imaging software, should give you the options to change the white balance, and it's usually pretty effective. I have many times made the mistake of not, uh, not changing the white balance when going into a shot, particularly more in my photojournalism days. And when I was shooting outside and then I went inside and action was happening and we were shooting, and I, uh, I never changed the white balance. Well, fortunately you can go into your imaging software if it's a RAW file and do that very easily and very effectively. Once you get into JPEGs and TIFFs, that changes the equation a lot, and changing color balance when you get to there is a lot more arduous affair, and you really need to understand a lot more about the, the nature of color. So again, I strongly recommend shooting a RAW file just for those times that that you do forget to change your camera settings. And generally, most camera settings for, you know, decent cameras are pretty reliable, and you can fine-tune them a little bit in Photoshop or whatever your imaging software is. But I would get in the habit of always checking your white balance settings before you start shooting, because it really does make a difference. Now, there are times when you may want to use deliberately a mismatched white balance. A lot— particularly shooting a daylight white balance in tungsten light can yield, if you overexpose it, can yield a really very beautiful looking gold tone kind of image, and you do see that a lot. But it has to be done. You need to experiment with it and, you know, take some pictures, pull them up on your computer, make sure your monitor is calibrated, and play with it a little bit. But ideally, the appropriate white balance to the light is usually the best way to go, and most of your camera settings are are adequate. Are there any other questions, Jeff? Jeff, I've lost you.

I have my mic off. Simi J just said, what is the most economical light to get for someone getting into food photography? Anything you can recommend?

Yeah, you know, Amazon has these really great little light kits, and they're like $58 or something. I can't remember exactly what, what they're called, but they are very economical, and they come with something that can serve as a softbox. They're designed for photographing jewelry, and it's 4 lights with a little box of translucent material. And what you can do is actually turn that box on its side so that it functions in the same way as a softbox. I'm gonna put up this image here because it is, um, Alright, this is a shot of my studio and of a set. Now again, you see there's simply a light source and there's a reflector. I use this kind of lighting about 90% of the time because it's always effective. In this particular photograph, you can see an arm sticking in with a small scrim on it. What that does— the reason for that is that there was a highlight I didn't want, and that creates a very soft shadow which reduced the highlight. That's just an aside here. My point is, again, that is— well, that happens to be a Studio Spotlight, but any spotlight. Smith Victor is a company that makes terrific, very affordable, inexpensive— well, relatively inexpensive lighting systems. This particular one is like a 1,000-watt spotlight, but they come— you can get them at much less, much lower wattages. In front of that light is a screen, and that screen is nothing but a piece of translucent cloth. Okay, it's like nylon or something. My point is that this is not a complicated lighting. You can set this up with a simple— It's 8:30. You can set up the same lighting situation with a white sheet. And you know those, those clamp lights you can get at Home Depot? They're like a silver reflector. You put a bulb in them and you can just clamp them, you know, when you're working in the basement. This exact lighting principle could be achieved with those with a white sheet and a couple of those clamp lights. And if you get a couple of 100-watt bulbs, you're gonna really have pretty good power to be able to make a photograph. You will probably need a tripod, but as some of you may recall, I strongly recommend using tripods as much as possible. They can be— there are a lot of great and affordable tripods. They help not only hold the camera still, and I know that there are cameras out there now that will shoot— Canon particularly, I know, makes these cameras that shoot at incredible ASA ratings with incredibly high resolution. I still always recommend to use the lowest possible ASA rating that your camera will take and put it on a tripod. Not only because it stops the shaking, but because, um, it aids in your composition. You can set the camera and the camera is still, and you can look at the camera and you can look in your viewfinder, or you can look on your screen and think about what it is that you're doing. So, um, uh, Simi Jay, I will find the link for the lighting kit I was thinking about, and I will post it on the event page later today or maybe tomorrow. And, you know, hopefully you'll find something there that's useful. You don't have to spend insane amounts of money to create successful lighting. Lighting, again, it's about what you do with what you have. Whether it is a window light, whether it is a bare bulb behind a sheet, whether it is an EcoLite or, you know, a studio flash unit, it's how you modify the light, which brings me to another point that I think it was— was it Jason Scheff who had the two photos? Yes. Okay, Jason, if you're listening, this is for you and for all you folks out there who are using these speedlights. Speedlights. I mean, Nikon calls them speedlights, Canon may as well. You know, the flash units that you pop on top of your camera, you pop off, and then— or you put them on an extension cord. You have the right instinct, absolutely. Shooting with the camera on the flash is the kiss of death to any food photographer. What I would suggest, and this is not an expensive solution, and you may already have one, they make what are called shoot-through umbrellas. They're translucent white photography umbrellas, and those are great tools. They're inexpensive, and you get an inexpensive light stand with the, with the appropriate mount for your flash. Now, they're— you know, it doesn't cost very much. And you have, again, a soft, broad light source, which is the essence of what we are talking about when we talk about natural light. What we refer to that quality of light is that it is a broad, soft light source, and that's generally what we're attracted to. And Jason, I'm pretty sure that what you will find is that If you set your light off, you know, again, going back to this photo and you look at the relationship of, you know, the light, and instead of that panel, imagine that as your umbrella with your flash behind it, you will get exactly the same kind of effect if you have it in relationship. We need to have our light at an angle to the food to create the texture and to create the play of light and shadow that we want. The big mistake that we make is that we flatten the food out completely. Now, the other thing I wanted to address, and I will address this with the last photo here, is another way that we modify light Okay, some of you have seen this shot before, but I like it and it illustrates my point. So, um, is the— one of the ways that we can modify light is how we position ourselves, or what is technically called the camera position, relative to the light. In this particular instance of this meatball, the light is actually directly behind— it's directly opposite the camera. And I did that specifically because I wanted to create the effect of like a bistro at lunchtime, almost an outdoor kind of feel. Um, and to do that, I deliberately This is a technically very incorrect photograph because all the highlights are deliberately blown out, but that, that is exactly what I wanted. And so how you position yourself in— or you and your camera in relation to the light is another means of modifying the light. So to recap, we have a source, whether it's a window or a strobe head, a flash head, or a tungsten floodlight of some kind. So we modify that light in several ways. We modify it by adding reflectors. We modify it by adding diffusion materials in front of it, which can be softboxes or sheets or diffusion panels like the one in the photo of my studio. And the other way that we modify light is how we put ourselves in relation to the light. And you could always tell where the photographer is in relation to the light if you look at the shadows. Shadows tell you a lot. Going back to this photo of these meatballs, the shadows are coming directly at us, and so you see the light is directly behind. It's not about fancy equipment. Although it helps. It's about looking at your light source and understanding what you can do with it, and you can accomplish an amazing amount. With the exception of the Martini shot, every one of these photographs was made with the same lighting principles. And if you can master these lighting principles and understand what I've been talking about manipulating them, your, your photography will improve exponentially almost immediately. We have any other questions, Jay?

Yes, we do, Adam. Erica Harris asked about mixing light sources and how to— if there's a way to do that.

Well, there is a way to do it. You just need to— I don't have a good example of a mixed light source photograph, or I would have put one up. You just need to decide what light source is going to dominate your photograph. For example, If you want to make a cool shot of, let's say, a bottle of vodka, you can light the— you can use a— let me see, let me get this right because it gets confusing. You would want to set your camera to tungsten. Yeah, you would want to use like a blue, let's just say for the sake of this imaginary shot we're doing, doing. We want the environment of this camera— of this bottle of vodka to be all blue. We want it— but we want the bottle of vodka itself to be its proper color. So we would use the inverse white balance to what we had. If we wanted a blue environment, we would set the camera to— I get confused with this, be patient here. We would set the camera, say, to a tungsten white balance so that the overall environment of the image would be bluish. And then we would take a secondary light source and we would illuminate just the bottle with a tungsten light. And so the bottle would come out in its natural color, but all the environment around it would be blue. You can do this with filtering lights and things like that in the studio, but it has to be done carefully. Mixing light sources can be extremely cool, and it can be very, very effective. But it needs to be done carefully because otherwise it just, it just looks not right. One thing that is very effective to do, to, and particularly with food photography, is using a tungsten source, almost like a tungsten fill light, where your— most of your image is lit with natural daylight or daylight balance. But you bring in a little bit of tungsten to warm it up because it adds a nice gold cast. If you're shooting something like, I don't know, fried chicken or some— something that has sort of all these gold tones in it, then using a little bit of tungsten to just paint it lightly is a very, very effective means of doing it. I have a a friend who did a lot of food photography for a ham company. I want to say it was Clifty Farms, but what he did was he always put a big spotlight way up high and diffused, and it would just, just barely caress all the food with this little golden glow. It was very effective. So you can do it. It's tricky, and like all of the stuff we talk about, just experiment with it. I mean, thank God that it doesn't cost anything to experiment except a little bit of time. Back in the film days, it was quite expensive to experiment, but now you just— you don't like it, you delete it. So I mean, play with the different sources. It can yield some really, really cool results.

Chef? Yes, sir. No other questions right now. Okay. I'm just trying to help someone, uh, is having a problem seeing the video. Okay, any other questions out there? Yeah, what white balance did I choose for For, uh, well, early on Charmaine Christie had asked if she's using bulbs, what type of bulbs to use.

I don't think it really matters, provided you set the white balance of your camera to match whatever bulb you're using. A lot of people use daylight bulbs. They're expensive, they don't last a long time, and I've always found them not to be all that accurate. I would, you know, if you have some kind of a PhotoFlood or you have some kind of a, of a, you know, reflector or some kind of a light box unit, I would go with, with a tungsten, just a regular tungsten light or halogen light, because I think your camera will match up with it better. A tungsten daylight, the bulbs are actually coated in a, they're coated in a light blue. You probably actually be better off using a tungsten bulb and filtering it for daylight. But I would just use tungsten bulbs and set them with— just set them with the appropriate white balance.

That's good to know because I know everybody always says use the daylight bulb, so it really doesn't make a difference as long as you set the white balance.

Yeah, I think it does make a difference. I don't really like the color of those daylight bulbs.

No, I meant it doesn't hurt to use regular bulbs then. I would use regular bulbs.

All the tungsten lights that I have in my studio when I use hot lights are— they're all tungsten. They're none of them daylight balanced. They're all 3200, 3400, 3600 degrees Kelvin.

Question 2: I remember you once saying that actually The regular— the overhead bulbs, fluorescence, were not a bad light source.

They're not. They make a lot of lights for digital photography that are fluorescent light sources, and they're actually very, very good sources for— digital cameras work very well with fluorescence. They give a very clean, very neutral light. Now you may want to do something with that. You may, you know, in Photoshop— one of the things that you can do and often should do with food photographs is actually warm them up a little bit in Photoshop because— or whatever your imaging software is. Because food, it's— well, actually, here's a good example of it. This is a shot that was done in daylight. And I had to go into the studio, rather, into the computer. And warm it up. The one on the left was shot with— that was the existing light. Now, I did not adjust the camera for shade. I tend to, when it's natural light, I just leave it at a daylight setting. But then I went into Photoshop because I didn't like how blue it was. Again, this is one of the downsides of using exclusively natural light in shade. Shade has a lot of blue, and the sensors pick up on all that blue. Our eyes compensate for it naturally, but the electronic sensors don't. So I went into the studio— I mean, into Photoshop— and I just added some red, some yellow, and just warmed it up so that the bread had a more pleasing color. And again, this is where color temperature becomes important in what we're doing, because what our photos project to the viewer, we all want, you know, to capture their, their appetite and their, their attention. And the ways we do this is we make the food as appetizing as possible. And part of the way you do that is, you know, you emphasize their gold colors and warm tones. We associate these things with food, not exclusively and not with every food, but by and large we do. And for a long time, back in the '80s and '90s, pretty much everything the food that was shot was shot with the addition of, of amber-colored filters over the lights to warm it up intentionally to create that sense of warmth. The styles have changed, particularly from the late '90s into the 2000s, where there's a lot more of daylight type photography and a daylight type look to things. Which is a little bit cooler. It's not as— it's just a little bit cooler. It's a little bit more neutral looking, and you see that a lot, particularly in like Cooking Light and a lot of those type magazines, and a lot in cookbooks too.

Okay, now we have a couple other questions here. Gail Watson wants to know, when she's using a tripod What things should you look for, cost aside?

You need something that'll support your camera. They make very, very lightweight, inexpensive tripods, which are fine if you have something in that compact point-and-shoot type of camera. If you have any camera sort of like a Canon Rebel type thing that has a little bit of heft to it, you want a tripod that will support it. And if you use long lenses, you want a camera that will— tripod that will support a camera mounted with a lens like that, because they tend to make them very front-heavy. And I've had cameras fall over. Believe me, it's not a pleasant experience. So it's mainly you want something that you feel comfortable operating There are several different kinds of heads for tripods. Some have a ball head, which basically just rolls around and you can set it as you will, and then you tighten it with a screw. You tighten it with— I find those a little bit— I don't particularly like them. There's nothing wrong with them. It's, it's just I I like tripods that have 3-way handles on both axes because it— I feel like it just gives me more control. And remember, tripod is not just about holding the camera steady. It's a really important tool for maintaining your composition because we haven't discussed composition at great length probably get into that next month, but literally millimeters make a difference when— in graphics, and what you're dealing with is graphics. And how— where you— how and where you weight your photograph can make the difference between a successful shot and one where you kind of feel like you're left scratching your head. You feel like just something's slightly off. And a tripod goes a long way to steadying the camera enough to be able for you to hold it still and keep the composition that you actually intend, because even the most experienced of us always have a little bit of, of camera shake.

Okay, she also wants to know— she has another— Gail has another question: Do you have any good hacks Do you have any good hacks for snooting?

Say that again?

Do you have any good hacks for snooting? And I actually had to look snooting up, I have to admit.

Well, a snoot is a directional thing for light. I don't understand the hacks.

I'm not sure. Gail, do you want to elaborate on that?

Yeah, can you elaborate on that a little bit?

Okay, and also, Erica meant when you said regular lights, she asked when you said regular lights, you mean incandescent light bulbs?

Thank you. Yes, yeah, what I've been referring to as tungsten and incandescent is probably a better word to use.

Okay, all right, so we'll wait for that.

That was— I didn't understand the first word, hacks, H-A-C-K-S? Correct, hacks. For snooting? Yes. Well, the snoot is just a tube. That, you know, again, it's a long tube that— I don't know if I have one here.

I have some here. I never really knew that's what they were called, so that was good. I learned something.

Yeah, I mean, they just restrict light and allow you to kind of make a little spot out of it. If what she's asking me is, do I have any suggestions about how to make one? Yeah, there's this stuff called cinefoil, which is basically extremely heavy-duty tin foil. And it's very pliable, and you just, you know, take a couple layers of it and set it any way you want to set it.

That's what she said, a homemade way to make a snoot.

That would be the way to do it. You can get Cinefoil. You could actually probably do it— now, Cinefoil, you have to go to sort of a professional supplier to get it. You could probably do it with enough layers of tin foil, aluminum foil, and you just layer it so it's, it's thick enough that it'll hold its shape. And then, you know, wrap it into whatever form you want, making sure that light can come into it at one end, and you can fit it around whatever your light source is, and then wrap it to whatever dimension you want so it'll create whatever lighting effect, whatever modification you want. I would actually try some tinfoil. You just have to get it thick enough that it'll hold. That should work just fine.

Okay, sounds good. Now we got that. We have a picture that Julia Alara posted, and she wanted something, but she didn't post the question with it. So, Julia, what was the question with your photo? All I see is a photo. So we'll come back to that. Alright. And Julius Mayo is here. He says you can use craft foam paper to create a snowman.

Also. Okay, thanks, Julius. Thank you. Excellent.

Okay, she has a— you see it? She has a question on her. Julia has a question on it. Says, this is the kind of light that I have, natural light from the right, from a balcony. What do you suggest I can do to make a better photo? She has a Canon PowerShot and a tripod.

Yeah, that actually is not— that's not a bad photo right there. There's a lot I really like about this. It's good composition. I really like some kind of a vignette around there that sort of washes things out. That's kind of a cool effect. It's nice use of color. The only— what I would do is is to try and get— although your photograph as it stands works very well, but to have more options, I would try and find a situation in which my light was a little bit more directional instead of so flat. You really don't have any shadows here. It's just everything is kind of flat and evenly lit, which works in this particular instance. But I would try and find something that would give some modeling so that there's light and there's a movement of light and dark across the photo. That would be the primary thing. Again, you know, going to just a simple, you know, choose another window in your house and, you know, get a white reflector card. That would be That would be my suggestion. I mean, this is very nice as it stands, though. I think that if all your photographs look like this, it, it might be problematic. So just find something that gives you more of a directional movement of light. One of the things that is important, again going back to the discussion of texture and everything like that, is that light needs to move directionally. Light always moves in the natural world, you know, from east to west or right to left or north to south. There's always a movement. There's a light and a shadow side, and it's that play of light and shadow that is really the whole point of lighting. That is the whole idea of the— it's what makes things look real. It gives them three-dimensionality. It gives them texture and it makes them appealing. It's what makes them look like natural light. Because this is a good example of natural light, and it is, but it's also— it's very flat light. And I think that it would benefit from a little more contrast.

Okay, Erica Harris just looks like she posted a picture of her studio setup.

Hold on here, where's— I am refreshing here. Oh yeah.

Any question with that, Erica, or are you just showing us They're asking.

Okay, this is interesting. What, what, Erica, is all the way to the right-hand side? Because I'm assuming that's another light all the way over there. On the red? Yeah, on the red table or file cabinet or or whatever that is. Is this a good direction for light on my DIY reflector? Light is always so harsh. Okay, judging, Erica, from what I'm looking at here, part of what's making your light harsh is that you have a— what looks like a light right in front of it. Blasting right into it. Do you by any chance have the actual photo that was taken here of the 3 bottles of whatever, some kind of condiment of some kind? If you have that, why don't you go ahead and post that. But what it's looking like to me, you have sort of the right idea here in a way. You've got this kind of a hair light thing. You have this big overhead light which is creating some separation from your background, which is good. The only thing I see here that's a little bit suspect is that it looks like you have a light source right next to your camera. And— 9 o'clock. And that, I think, is what is creating the harshness in your lights, because what creates the softness is the fact that the light is lateral, it's angular. And just simply create— simply, simply putting a light again in front of the— of your subject, you flatten it out. This goes back to my my aversion to on-camera flash, those little built-in flashes. This is essentially the same thing. This is what you're doing by putting the light in front of it like that is you are diminishing the effect of everything that's coming in from the side. Now you can light it from the side and use your reflector opposite to fill in the shadows, and I think you'll get a photo you're much happier with. But I think the harshness is coming from that light that looks like it's right in front of it. And then, like I say, if you have the final—

she's looking for it. She's, uh, alright. It does look like the picture in her profile shot too, so We have a very snippet of small—

All right, well, let me, uh, okay, I see. All right, if it is that photo, let me see if I can see. Yeah, but you can't see enough of it, just that one bottle. Yeah, but that tells me a lot right there. Yeah, I mean, look at— looking at the— well, if she uploads it, let's just—

no, that's not it. Oh, that's not it. So, okay, all right.

Are there any other questions while we're waiting on her?

I have nothing else on here right now for questions, so that's about it. Anybody has anything else they'd like to talk about, now's the time to put it in the box and ask your questions.

Okay, does anybody have any thoughts about that photo? Here, I'll post it. Yeah, post it one more time.

And let's see if—

I'm just curious to see what— what— I'm curious to see how you all think about things and how you come to the conclusions that you come to. About, about light sources and what it is that you want to do with them. It's uploading now.

You've definitely given us a lot more to think about in terms of lighting, which you always do every time we get together.

Well, lighting is the whole name of the game here.

And I really found it so interesting that someone said that everyone tells us to use daylight bulbs now, and that may not necessarily be a very good thing.

So, well, I mean, it's not that it's a bad thing. It's— I mean, I just have never found them to be, to be as I just don't think that they have that great a color balance. I mean, that's just— and that may just be me, but I just don't think that they're as great— they're a good color source. I mean, I have the same feeling about actually filtering lights when I shoot as well. I mean, I'd rather just use— I'd rather filter to what is the natural the natural, uh, the native quality of the light. Okay, see me, I see you posted a picture here. Well, that's cool. Did you have a question, see me, with regard to this? I'm just trying to hear.

Alright, so you have your pictures up there, Adam, and you want to know which one was taken with—

well, I just want to know what people think as to which of these might have been shot with natural light and which of these might have been shot with artificial light. It's just, uh, it's like a little quiz to see, because see We all need to learn to observe light. You know, when you're walking around, no matter what you're doing, you're driving your car, you're going to the market, you need to get into the habit of looking at light and look at it and analyze it and say, "Okay, where is this coming from? What is the direction of this light?" I mean, if you really want to improve your lighting Start thinking about light when you go to the supermarket, when you go to the drugstore, when you go to the beach, when you go out to dinner, when you go out to lunch, when you're having a picnic. Look at light and look at how it plays with the food. Look at how it interplays with what's in front of you. You know, start thinking about direction. Start thinking about where is this light coming from. Because it's not always flat. Light is not always just surrounding us in this big flat cloud. It always has a movement to it. And the trick to really, you know, interesting images and images that get people's attention is the use of light and shadow. It makes things so much more interesting. They don't have to be dense shadows. But when you start to emulate the natural, the natural flow of light, then you really do start getting into what is called natural light. And then it doesn't matter because the light source is just what it is. How you create natural light in your photographs, oh, is really the question, and that is not dependent on natural light. Or on daylight, that's dependent on your understanding of how light works, how light moves, and how you can modify and manipulate light to create results that are pleasing to you. And at the end of the day, what's important is that the results be pleasing to you, because chances are, if they're pleasing to you, they'll be pleasing to some— someone else. And you know, you want to keep it interesting for yourself.

Okay, Erica did post the final picture.

Okay, let me see where it is here. Here we go. Yeah, yeah, it's kind of what I suspected. This is actually a really neat idea though. I mean, you're definitely on the right track. I like what you have in the in the— with that overhead light kind of coming down. Product shots are really very difficult to do. You're definitely on the right track. I like quite a few things about this. I love the background. I think you chose it really well. I think that it complements without overwhelming the subject, your product. Where you're running into problems is that light that is shining straight into your product.

There—

what you're actually trying to achieve here is quite complicated to do this completely right, but you're on the right track. I would just make your lights directional. As a general rule of thumb, you really don't want a light coming flat onto your subject, okay? Whether it's a bowl of cereal or whether it's a, it's a condiment, a sauce of this nature, especially if there's glass involved because you get all kinds of reflections. And what is flattening out your photo is that light that you have down in front. I understand why you put it in there because you're probably thinking, well, you're having too much shadow, but that's what I would do is I would make your main light— take it to— I would take it to the left-hand side of these and have it move from left to right. I would bring in a reflector, a white card, on the opposite side of that light and bring it in fairly close. I would also— this gets complicated— I would move your your product out just a little bit more from the background. And I would find something that would block the light. I would, I would, I would scrim off the light from the actual background, and that would allow your overhead light to stand out a little bit more. But I mean, this is— you're definitely on the right idea, but don't— it's not useful to fill from the front, because it just— it's what ends up giving you very harsh highlights, and particularly with white, like your front label's a little bit hot there, and it just doesn't— it actually kind of defeats all the other work that you did to create kind of a really pretty quality of light. So I think that, that's the main thing I would do, is just get more directional with what you do.

Okay, Simi did write, she said that she did that with natural light and wants to know if it was flat or how you thought you can improve it, the one with the candy.

Yeah, I like this. I tell you what I would do to improve this is I would open up my exposure at least a stop. I think you have a really cool idea here. I like it. It's very exotic, which I think is probably what you were going for. I think it's very neat, the candles in the background. This is actually a very good idea of mixed light sources because you have a daylight color here in the food at the front, and you have that golden color that I was talking about back in that candle. Candlelight and incandescent light are, for practical purposes, very close to the same thing. I think that this is very nice. I think it gives a— it is very exotic. I would open it up a little bit more. I think that it looks muted. That's the only criticism I have about it. It looks a little bit muted. But it's a very interesting composition. It's very interesting looking food. And I think it's— you just need to brighten it up a little bit more. I think you could try maybe using the curves, not so much the exposure, but maybe using the curves function in your imaging software. Which is what— it brings up the midtones and leaves the extremes pretty much where they are. I think it would just make it pop a little bit more. It's a very nice idea though. It's cool.

Okay, and Julia posted another picture, and she said she's got a comment that it's dull light. How can she make the light not dull? More shaz. I think that goes back to the other one she posted.

It's, it's Again, it's similar. This is actually another very nice photograph, though. I, you know, I really like this photo. It's a very good composition. I like everything about this photo. I do. I like the way this lights, to be honest with you. I don't know where it is that you're doing this, but it is giving you a very interesting and a very neat quality of light that I think is, is very beautiful. Again, to get a different quality of light, you need to make your light more directional, more angular. The reason your photos are so flat is because there's no shadows to speak of. And with this, what you would need to do is get a light source that would give you, for example, shadow that would, you know, where the backside of this, of this, uh, omelette, or yeah, yeah, had more curvature to it where you saw more of the curvature. But I will tell you, I would not alter this photograph. I think this photograph is really quite beautiful. The only thing that bothers me a little bit is the way you cut it off. Uh, the— it's a compositional thing, the way you cut off the corner of the omelet at the top of the image. I think you could have left that in. I really think that the quality of light that you have is very beautiful. I understand your question that you want to be able to create more variety, but this is not bad light. This is actually very nice light, and it's nicely exposed. But to get, you know, a photo of more interest, you need to make light more directional, okay, which again gets back to how we manipulate the light. But I think that this is a beautiful quality of light to me. Now, I know this is all very subjective, but it's soft. I like it. I do like it, but to change it, you need to change the nature of the light. You need to go to a different window in your house that is more, you know, where the light moves more directionally and where you create denser shadows. And that's what will solve the problem that you're having.

Okay, well, that looks like about it on questions. Do you want to go back to your two pictures there, scroll down to them? And we're getting mixed comments on which is which, the right and the left. They look about even.

Are we about even? Uh-huh. Okay, of the ribs or the pancakes? Anybody, anybody have any reasons as to why they think what they think? I know Jason had said because he saw the big specular highlight on the pancakes. Actually, you said that as well, Chef, right? Yes, I did. Yeah, anybody else have any thoughts on that? No? Well, the truth of the matter is that they were both made with artificial light. They were just simply, uh, one, the pancakes was was designed specifically to look like a breakfast type of thing, and the ribs were designed to look like, you know, sort of sitting outside at a rib joint. My point with this was that properly executed artificial light will yield the same feel as natural light, and that's the point I wanted to make. And that is the point that I hope I have gotten across this evening with all you guys, is that it's not the source, it's the quality of the light. And the quality of the light is achieved through how we modify the light, either by reflectors or by diffusion materials, or how we position ourselves with our camera relative to the light. And, you know, if you can take that idea away from here and you can learn to start looking around you at light and start thinking about how, you know, carry a little camera around in your brain and start kind of making pictures. And because everything informs what you do, you know, the light at the beach, the light on you know, your daughter's hat on the beach, okay, can inform a food photograph. But you have to become aware of looking at it, and the more aware you're looking at it— don't be confused, don't be sucked in by the idea that it has to do with tools. Tools are great, but tools are not the whole nine yards, okay? It's what you have in your mind. And you can get those results with really the simplest of things that you have already. You can get those results with just a simple window light.

So there it is. Great. All right, very well done, Adam. Thank you so much for your thoughts on that. You know, every one of these has been very informative and really is teaching us really to look a lot more than we do when we just set the camera up. I think it's look at the light, look at the composition, make it tell a story. You know, it's, it's really— and I think when you get down to it, that's what makes a photograph a photograph, and that's what makes it our own, is how we see that, how we interpret it.

But it's also, you know, not to be a pure mercenary, it's also what draws people to us, right? And you know, at the end of the day, what we all want is for people to find what we put out there on our blogs to be memorable. And your photo is your calling card. And the more you can understand how to make it appetizing, you know, the better off it'll work for you. Great.

Alright, thank you very much. This has been the third in a series from photographer Adam Barnes from Picture Perfect Meals. And we're going to have another one next month or shortly afterwards. Sometimes we'll let you know when. And if you have some thoughts on what you might like Adam to speak on, you feel free to leave them in the comment section too. He's been gracious enough to give us his time, and I'm sure we can talk him into speaking a few more times if we play nice. So thanks a lot for coming, Adam. You were great as usual. I really appreciate it. Pleasure. And, uh, this was our Community Education Hangout for the G+ Food Bloggers community. And thank you for coming, and we'll see you next week.